ZTE: Indoor coverage challenges will not slow WiMAX deployment

ZTE: Indoor coverage challenges will not slow WiMAX deployment

Despite confirming poor performance indoors for mobile WiMAX (802.16e), a senior executive of ZTE’s WiMAX solutions group is confident that the technology will gain at least 20 per cent of the global mobile market in the future.

According to Yuan Wei, ZTE’s senior director of global marketing, WiMAX solutions, indoor coverage is one of the biggest challenges for operators looking to roll out a mobile WiMAX network.

“The current spectrum of 2.3GHz and 2.5GHz that is available for mobile WiMAX is much higher than GSM and CDMA, so the indoor penetration will be a headache for WiMAX operations,” Yuan said. “You cannot just install the macro base stations. In urban and high-density areas, you have a lot of blind spots. You have a lot of office buildings, apartment buildings and residential houses. You need to think about a cost effective solution for indoor coverage, because 90 per cent of the service will rely on indoor coverage, indoor penetration.”

This not only affects the amount of equipment needed, but also presents operational challenges in terms of installation.

“There are a lot of operational challenges. Because when you get the equipment for the indoor penetration, you’ll need to install it, you’ll need to have people to do that, so you’ll need to think about operations costs,” he said. “Also it will be difficult to negotiate with real estate owners because sometimes they don't allow you to install the equipment inside, or they don’t have any cables inside the building, or they don't want to share the cable with you. All this will be headaches for WiMAX operators.”

To help operators solve these issues, ZTE has developed a series of solutions that address the requirements of different deployment scenarios.

MORE EXPENSIVE THAN CDMA: All these efforts however still cannot solve cost issues for mobile WiMAX, which unlike popular belief, will be more expensive to deploy than CDMA and GSM. “CDMA networks have better coverage. WiMAX needs more infrastructure, more base stations and also economical solutions for indoor coverage,” he said. “According to the calculation of the infrastructure, you need to invest more, but you can earn more. Mobile broadband services are more profitable than basic voice services.”

Despite some bad press for WiMAX lately, Yuan says the technology is poised to take off. “I think a lot of operators will choose WiMAX in the following years because some fixed line operators want to go mobile, some CDMA operators will want to upgrade their network and some emerging markets will have companies who want to get into telecommunications. These operators will want a technology to compete with other players and WiMAX is the best one,” he said. “Right now, they are preparing the business plan, calculating the costs, doing the RF planning and preparing the human resources. They are quite interested in WiMAX and preparing to go commercial, but it will take one year or one year and a half.”

WIMAX VS LTE: While the industry is ripe with speculation about WiMAX and LTE, Yuan says that competition between the technology won’t start for another three years.

“This year, next year and probably in 2010, the choice in the market are quite clear – WCDMA will go to LTE, CDMA will go to WiMAX and fixed line operators if they want to go mobile will probably go to WiMAX – so that is not really competition between LTE and WiMAX,” Yuan said.

“Of the 80 per cent of the market that is using GSM, only the WCDMA operators have a convenient migration path to LTE.