- WiMAX vendors like Airspan start to cross border to Wi-Fi Alliance
- The two technologies will combine for many early metrozones
- Still question marks over effectiveness of large scale VoIP network
In the early days of WiMAX, there was a gradual shift of Wi-Fi
specialists to embrace the more powerful platform too. In particular,
enterprise switchmakers like Airespace and metrozone network providers
like Tropos and BelAir saw the opportunity to beef up their
offerings.
Now there is a reverse movement, with some WiMAX and broadband
wireless companies taking a fresh interest in Wi-Fi. In particular,
this is driven by the metrozone and consumer broadband markets,
where in the coming couple of years, WiMAX will often feed Wi-Fi
front ends, at least until its own subscriber units become cheaper or
embedded in laptops.
Airspan:
Airspan, one of the WiMAX vendors most open to combining the
platform with others (it also recently formed a satellite equipment
partnership with iDirect) has joined the Wi-Fi Alliance and
is placing increasing store by the citywide mesh boom. It has already
provided equipment for a huge planned metrozone to be
implemented in Tokyo by Japanese operator Yozan.
With Tropos and others coming from the opposite direction, looking to use
WiMAX initially for low cost backhaul and then to introduce it
into their Wi-Fi meshes for high quality links, the Wi-Fi/WiMAX
combination model will become well established and the equipment
market very competitive.
Airspan marked its joining of the Alliance with the launch of its
AS.NET product line, which integrates Wi-Fi hotzone technology
with broadband wireless backhaul. AS.NET can also be sold in a
point-to-point configuration, providing broadband backbone for
hotspot locations, outdoor coverage access points and DSL
switches.
CEO Eric Stonestrom commented: "In the very near future, we
foresee the widespread combination of WiMAX and Wi-Fi solutions
in wireless broadband access networks. AS.NET's patented
RoamNET technology will now allow us to add the dimension of
mobility to these networks, providing further impetus to the rollout
of broadband wireless.
VoIP:
While major municipal projects will increasingly use a combination
of Wi-Fi mesh and WiMAX, there remains one crucial question
mark over the technology - how effectively it really supports
voice over IP. This is seen as the critical application for metrozone
and broadband wireless service providers in the first year -
after which it will likely become commoditized in the consumer
sector - but there are very few large scale VoIP networks being
used in the real world. Since few data-only public access business
models have ever delivered serious profit, VoIP and - in future -
video applications will be of paramount importance, and vendors
are racing to enhance their voice technologies and reassure nervous
would-be operators.
A recent survey found that mobile VoIP was more important than
data as the leading driver for metro area Wi-Fi deployments -
50% of service providers and prospective hotzone builders questioned
said portable voice was either as important as, or more
important than, broadband data. A year earlier, fewer than 10%
identified voice as a core application on their hotzones. The survey
also found that more than 75% of network operators and service
providers now have voice identified as a mandatory requirement
for new metro Wi-Fi networks.
This will put pressure on hotzone equipment makers such as
Tropos and BelAir to optimize their systems for voice. Most
such suppliers have only recently introduced second generation
meshes that go beyond data and support full quality of service.
Airspan itself has focused heavily on increasing the VoIP content of
its products, acquiring voice specialist ArelNet last year and en-
hancing quality of service beyond the bare specifications of Wi-
MAX standards.
Voice enhancements:
Some help will also come from vendors that have traditionally
focused on the enterprise wireless market, where VoIP is more
advanced, but which are now eyeing the rich fruits promised by
metrozone build-outs.
One example is WLan switchmakerAruba Networks, which has updated
its Mobile Edge architecture with so-called Voice Flow Classification (VFC)
capabilities, which monitor and prioritize voice packets being broadcast
on the Wi-Fi and reroutes calls to avoid congested areas of the
network. These will make voice over WLan suitable for very
large voice networks including citywide blankets, the company
claimed.
Another is VoIP optimized switch maker Meru, which claims
superior quality of service to the 802.11e standard and has also
started to target metrozone operators as well as corporations. Its
client Azulstar Networks claims the world's first metro scale
voice over Wi-Fi service, adding voice to its 103-square mile
hotzone in Rio Rancho, a suburb of Albuquerque, New Mexico
earlier this year. The voice element will be added using equipment
from Meru. The need to rely on such specialized additional
equipment does increase the build-out cost significantly
when supporting voice as well as data, and price pressure from
free offerings like Skype does not guarantee a good return.
However, as Cisco, Motorola and others, with experience of
VoIP handsets and end-to-end networks, take new interest in
metrozones, the voice facilities should get ever more robust,
and voice oriented enhancements to wireless standards will reduce
cost of investing in equipment.
