IEEE halts work on 802.20 standard
In a fight that demonstrates just how high the stakes are for the mobile wireless broadband market, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, or IEEE, took an unusual step last month by halting work on the 802.20 standard — which is designed to compete with Mobile WiMAX — after Intel and Motorola threatened to file formal complaints about the way the working group’s chairman, Jerry Upton, allegedly handled draft proposals in favor of Qualcomm and Kyocera.
Upton called himself an independent consultant, but reportedly revealed to the IEEE that he had a relationship with Qualcomm. Intel and Motorola have been complaining since mid-November that Qualcomm, which subsequently merged parts of its technology submission with Kyocera’s proposal, submitted an incomplete technology proposal and violated other IEEE procedures.
It’s clear that 802.20 technology will be a competitive threat to WiMAX, a technology heavily favored by Intel and Motorola. The 802.20 standardization process had been spinning its wheels for more than two years, but contributions from Qualcomm revived the process late last year. However, the process ground to a halt after Flarion Technologies, now a subsidiary of Qualcomm, tried to standardize its proprietary Flash-orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) technology under the auspices of the 802.20 standards body.
Flarion had hoped last year to hammer out the standard within 12 to 18 months, but ironically, political maneuverings from various vendors — including Qualcomm — slowed the process considerably, as Flash-OFDM was deemed a competitive threat.
With its acquisition of Flarion complete, Qualcomm now is working to use its considerable influence on the 802.20 working group to finalize a standard by the end of 2006, in a bid to provide an alternative to Mobile WiMAX. Qualcomm dominates the standards process as it holds an estimated two-thirds to three-quarters of the votes in the 802.20 working group. Qualcomm’s dominance has been the largest area of contention.
In a statement on the IEEE Web site regarding his decision to suspend the working group, Steve Mills, chairman of the IEEE Standard Association (IEEE-SA), said: “The working group has been the subject of several appeals from the very beginning of the group, with three appeals now pending at one level or another, and recent activity in the group appears to have become highly contentious — significantly beyond what is normally experienced in IEEE-SA.” The statement further indicated a preliminary investigation into the working group’s operations revealed “a lack of transparency, possible ‘dominance’ and other irregularities.”
Because Intel and Motorola have a large stake in seeing WiMAX succeed, Qualcomm has accused those companies of stalling the process because 802.20 directly competes with Mobile WiMAX. If true, such a maneuver shouldn’t come as a surprise, said Philip Solis, analyst with ABI Research
“A number of companies such as Motorola and Navini, are focusing closely on Mobile WiMAX, and Intel has been a strong WiMAX proponent. They don’t want to see 802.20 dilute the market,” Solis said.
For its part, Motorola said the complaint is valid. “We filed our appeal because Motorola wishes to ensure the working group follows IEEE standards policies and procedures to ensure that a diversity of participation and transparency is allowed in 802.20,” said a Motorola spokesperson. “The findings of the appeal panel supported many of our claims.”
Members of the IEEE 802.16e standards body, which is developing Mobile WiMAX, recently began attending the 802.20 meetings in droves after initially sending no more than one representative per company for the majority of the sessions in 2005. The 802.20 working group’s charter runs out at the end of 2006, yet the group’s suspension is scheduled to last until Oct. 1.
“It remains to be seen whether the 802.20 working group can or will be revived,” Solis said.
Interestingly, Qualcomm’s 802.20 technology proposal is not based on Flarion’s Flash-OFDM technology, which gained some inroads into the public-safety sector when the District of Columbia launched a pilot network in early 2004. Flash-OFDM also is already operating commercially in other countries.
Rather, Qualcomm’s proposal is based on OFDM/OFDMA technology that was developed in-house. Like WiMAX, Qualcomm’s proposal uses OFDMA for the data channels in the forward link and reverse link, but uses CDMA for the reverse-link control channels. Kyocera’s approach, which is based on high-capacity spatial division multiple access (HC-SDMA), is included in Qualcomm’s proposal as well. The proposal also includes a frequency division duplexing and time division duplexing version and addresses power control, seamless hand-offs between cells and scalable bandwidth.
Analysts predict, however, that Qualcomm likely will change its proposal to match that of Flash-OFDM, or at least make an additional profile, because Flash-OFDM is the only OFDM/OFDM-based technology that is proven to work in a mobile environment, a key advantage to commercializing any mobile OFDMA system. Qualcomm still hasn’t announced any solid plans for Flash-OFDMA, despite the fact it has closed its acquisition of Flarion.
According to Michael Thelander, president of Signals Research, the IEEE’s decision to halt work on the 802.20 standard will slow the development of the standard but not stop development of the technology.
“Qualcomm is free to spend its R&D dollars as it pleases,” Thelander said.
