WiMax is no longer viewed as a threat by GSM and UMTS family operators, according to Nortel cto John Roese. Instead, operators are regarding the technology as a good complementary way either to broaden the scope and reach of their service mix, or to enter new markets, Roese said.
"It's just a technology," Roese told Mobile Europe, "and technology can't be good or bad, it's just technology." He said that he has had recent meetings with three CTOs at European operators who all wanted to talk to him about the potential usage of WiMAX. Operators can use the technology to help them compete in the broadband and broadband services market, he said, as well as to open up networks in emerging markets.
But Roese did admit that operators are still "scared stiff" of the open internet model that would be enabled by WiMax and (he says) LTE.
Roese's argument is that the security architecture inherent in WiMax and LTE specifications looks like WiFi and internet security systems, rather than the accreditation system on wireless GSM and UMTS networks, in which if something wants to authenticate against the network it needs to be, or look like, a phone. Internet authentication standards have greatly widened the number of devices that can connect to the open network, he said, citing games consoles and the like. This open connectivity model still scares operators, he said, who think they may be reduced to mere bit pipes.
Instead, he argued, operators need to think about their place in the wider ecosystem, so rather than merely making money from subscribers only authenticated against their network, they can sell information and intelligence from the network 'upstream' to advertisers and other service providers, much as in the internet model today. Roese said that presence, location and 'velocity' (whether someone is on the move or not) information can all be commercially valuable, even if it is in ways operators have not yet realised. He cited Called ID as a current example of a service that makes money from network intelligence that only an operator can hold and has nothing to do with bandwidth or capacity.
Despite Nortel having sold its UMTS business to Alcatel Lucent, Roese insisted that Nortel was still a relevant partner for European mobile operators. The company continues to innovate in GSM technology, he said, as well as having key presence in core network platforms, as well as backhaul-relevant technologies such as metro-ethernet.
He also claimed that Nortel could compete at 4G, despite its limited 3G presence, because the move to 4G technologies would be a "real inflexion point" in the industry, as the huge increase in spectral efficiencies and bandwidth caused by MIMO and OFDM networks meant that 4G would not map onto 3G networks in any way,
But hasn't the industry been here before? Wasn¹t HSPA meant to offer an inflexion point, at which time players such as Nortel (which was losing $200 million a year on its UMTS business) and Motorola with large IP knowledge, would step into the market.
"I wasn't at Nortel at that time, so I have full deniability here," half-jested Roese. "But anyone who told you that 3G would be radically different from 2G, or HSDPA from UMTS, didn't understand what they were talking about. But the fact is, 4G is a genuine change from HSPA/ UMTS networks different technology, but more importantly different economics and different business models. That is why we are focusing our efforts there."