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The WAVE Report
Issue #0421------------------06/04/2004 |
The WAVE Report archive is available on http://www.wave-report.com
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0421.2 Security
NVIDIA and AMD Deliver Improved Security to Protect the PC
Desktop
0421.3 Wireless
Businesses and Consumers to Soon Feel the Noise of
VoWLAN Reports In-Stat/MDR
0421.4 Standards
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***Broadband World Forum Seoul 2004
By John Latta
Seoul, Korea
5/3-6/04
Broadband World Forum has become one of the best venues to see the union of suppliers and operators in the telephone industry broadband market place. Given the low role that cable plays in the international market this hardly plays here. Asia is the hot bed of the broadband activity and this is the value of this location for the conference. The down side is that there are few from the US market in attendance.
This event made a transition from the impact of mature broadband markets, Korea and Japan, to an infant market, India. Yet, to use stereotype glasses in seeking to understand these markets would be flawed. This reflects the complexity of broadband both as a technology, its impact on society and the degree of localism which shapes where and how it is deployed and employed. What is striking is that there is such a uniform thrust to deploy broadband across many countries. Much has been written about the impacts of broadband and it seems to be rivaling transportation and communications in emerging countries. Without both of these, developing countries find it very difficult to advance. It seems now like a digital infrastructure is becoming a third element and thus a triad of foundation infrastructure must haves: transportation, communications and digital infrastructure.
NTT Will Handle Consumer Security in New RENA Network
Yuji Inoue, SVP, NTT, and responsible for research stated in his keynote that NTT in is developing RENA (REsonat communications Network Architecture) will carry the responsibility for security for consumer devices attached to its network. Citing the time and lack of consumer awareness on updating the OS for security patches Inoue-san stated that NTT would protect consumers. It is NTT’s view that consumers just cannot handle the complexity and time demands of keeping their computers secure. It was interesting that on his home computers some of the issues are sufficiently uncertain or complex that he asks his staff for help. However, as Inoue-san stated, consumers do not have access to such talents.
Inoue-san claimed that there would be 5m FTTH subscribers by March 2006. Yet, even Inoue-san stated this was aggressive and described this could slip to the fall of 2006. The price for 100Mb/s service was stated to be $30 - $40/month. A chip called the RENA chip is being developed for the home equipment market. This supports: QoS, Firewall, Routing, VoIP, Packet Filtering, and Switching.
Cisco SVP and GM Routing Technology Group, Prem Jain, took an aggressive view of the home market. He described how single connectivity would enable: communications services, information services, automation and control services and entertainment services. No specific reference was made to Linksys in the talk.
What is the Economic Value of a Digital Infrastructure?
Since 1995 Korea has made leadership in digital IT technologies a national effort. The efforts in broadband, a fiber infrastructure in Korea and broadband usage are direct results from this effort. At a national level one has to ask the question – what are the tangible benefits? In his remarks, Chang-Kon Kim, Vice Minister, Ministry of Information and Communications, Republic of Korea stated that the result includes the following:
13.5% of GDP is IT
30% of exports are IT
These seem high but if this is the case there has been a significant benefit to Korea’s thrust. Chang Kim also stated that the success it has had is causing the IT strategy to be rethought. New factors are:
Greater promotion of IPv6;
Emphasis on Ubiquitous Computing;
Drive to 50 – 100Mb/s broadband delivery; and
Accomplishing Anytime, Anywhere broadband delivery.
Summing up, the government of Korea wants it to become an IT powerhouse
on a global scale.
Korean Telephone – Seeking to Overcome the Impacts of a Mature Broadband Market
KT touts that the household penetration is greater than 70% but this has market impacts. It has begun to see the effects of a slowing market. As a result of a recent trip to KT we summarized the issues as follows:
KT is finding out that being a leader in broadband does not
necessarily translate into sustainable financial
performance. This leadership reality is also important to
the rest of the industry. For example, on Wednesday,
February 4, 2000 KT reported that:KT Corp. has reduced its earnings target for 2005 by
15.6 percent, or 2.3 trillion won, to 12.4 trillion won
as growth slows. The original target was for earnings
at 14.7 trillion won in 2005.KT reported 2003 sales at 11.57 trillion won, which is
Short of its target 11.7 trillion won. The net income
was down 58 percent from 2002 to 830 billion won.In Korea broadband penetration is at 69% and KT has 50%
market share. In saturated markets growth can come in two
ways: increased income from the existing customer base and
expanded markets, especially international. Driving ARPU in
Korea has proved especially difficult. In March 2003 KT
launched VoD and its subscriber numbers have stalled at
200,000. KT intends to launch its HDS (Home Digital Service)
as a comprehensive consumer offering. It has a demonstration
facility at its headquarters in Seongnam, Korea outside of
Seoul. By the end of 2004 it expects to install integrated
gateways for this service into 300,000 homes. The services
include: home control, appliance control, television control
and home security. Yet, in our brief visit to Korea it is
not at all clear consumers care about these services that
will increase their monthly bill. Consumers state they want
fixed known monthly costs which are within their means.
Jong-Lok Yoon, EVP, described how the Octave Project will address this. The name Octave is important – to double ARPU. They predict that ARPU will rise from $30 per home today to $60/month by 2007 and double again by 2010. In the process KT will be seen as a solution provider not a telecommunications company. The key to this transition is that KT will introduce tiered pricing. One theme for justifying tiered pricing is the impact that a few are having on the system. That is P2P is eating up significant bandwidth. It was stated that 10% of the users consume 50% of the bandwidth.
The Octave Project is to make KT into a “Multiple Service Provider.” That is the company would provide applications to the broadband users. These were labeled with colors:
Red Service: Happy Home
Content Services – Pay TV, VoD, AoD, GamesGreen Service: Intimate Home
High Quality VoIP
High Quality VideophoneBlue Service: Hopeful Home
E-learning, EoD, Educational BroadcastingYellow Service: Secure Home
Intelligent Robot
Home Viewer
Monitoring Elderly and Children
Each of these will rely on a KT Octave Device and a Managed Broadband Network. As an example of these an Octave Living Room was shown to illustrate multiple services in a single box and pipe. Included in this living room are:
Video Telephony
Voice Telephony – W-VoIP
Megapixel Internet
Pay TV, VoD and Interactive TV
EoD (Education on Demand)
These services are justified with the following:
Red Service: Happy Home
Rapidly growing online content marketGreen Service: Intimate Home
High potential for multi-media over IPBlue Service: Hopeful Home
Rising Private education marketYellow Service: Secure Home
Increasing demand for home security
The Octave Device is a Broadband home gateway. The device is identified with the 4 color services described above.
NTT – Will FTTH Trump the Competition?
Continuing the chorus that FTTH is all things good in Japan, Ken’ichi Narumiya, VP, Technology Development, NTT East, showed how it was taking Fiber-to-the-Home from a Vision to Service. The delivery of digital in Japan falls under the FLETs services with B FLETs being the FTTH. The services that NTT East is delivering includes:
FLET’s On Demand - Movies
FLET’s Square - NTT East Communications to FLET’s Users
FLET’s Safety - Security against Virus and Illegal Entry
FLET’s Office - IP-VPN
FLET’s GroupAccess - Networking to support group meetings
Access means
M-FLET’s - W LAN
B-FLET’s - FTTH
FLET’s ADSL - ADSL
FLET’s - ISDN - ISDN
It is claimed that
B-FLET’s pricing will be within $10/month of
FLET’s ADSL by the end of 2004 and this difference will erode to
the point that fiber will be priced the same as ADSL.
NTT East was also crying the P2P blues. They cited that 1% of the users
are consuming 60% of the bandwidth and that only .1% of the users are
taking 15% of the bandwidth. An interesting tidbit was that on 11/27/03
two P2P users were arrested for suspicion of violating copyright laws.
The network load in Japan has not yet recovered from the dip in bandwidth
consumption since these arrests.
The future network will be based on Resonant Communications – like what was described by Yuji Inoue, SVP, NTT. He called this RENA (REsonat communications Network Architecture). Today it was claimed this would:
Allow people, corporations and any objects to be connected
to anyone or anything.
Supporting this are the following attributes:
Ubiquity – Anytime Anywhere
Interactive broadband networks
Safe, secure, simple and seamless.
India – It is Different Here
Jagbir Singh, Group CTO of Bharti Infotel – India gave a presentation on the broadband condition in India. It was refreshing but also insightful in how difficult this market will be. Jagbir gave some interesting statistics and assessments.
With a population of 1.05B there are 200m households. Within these households there are 50m televisions and 50m cable television households.
The India telecom market was privatized in 1994 – 1995.
There are 42m fixed line phones which grow at only 5.5% per year while the wireless phones are at 28.4m and growing at 164% per year.
Today there are 4m internet subscribers and 10m users.
The access technology in India includes:
Dial up 3.8m
DSL 60,000
Cable 52,000
Wireless 12,500The total number of broadband subscribers is 125,000.
The government of India recognizes the importance of broadband and is reducing duties on PCs and broadband
devices.The PC penetration is low – 15m installed PCs in only 2m households
There remain major impediments to the broadband market. These include the lack of broadband from the incumbents and there is no unbundling of the local loop. The cable infrastructure is not capable of bi-directional broadband.
New infrastructure, especially copper, is unattractive due to the cannibalization of the wireline market by wireless.Another interesting impact relates to the role that English plays in the Indian society. That is, most Internet traffic
goes to the US, while in other societies, such as Korea, 95% remains in the country. As a result Internet becomes
expensive due to the high speed cross-ocean traffic. Thus, many see that the lack of indigenous content slows the
demand for broadband.The factors which are expected to change this include:
Some companies, such as Bharti, are laying new copper and offering DSL services.
Incumbents are planning of rolling out DSL to 1m lines in 2 years;
Copper unbundling is expected;
Cable operators are deploying Ethernet networks;
International bandwidth pricing is dropping and
The government is encouraging broadband penetration.
The market estimates are based on the following:
10m by 2010
Target price: $12/month in order to support this market growth
Content: Education, entertainment, television, medicine and gaming
Access: DSL, cable and wireless
The pricing of DSL services is critical to market acceptance. It is expected that:
Many packages of options will be required to appeal to a diverse market which is very price sensitive. Bharti
plans on 20 packages which begin at 64kbs and go to 512kb/s.The CPE prices are also strict:
USB Modem - $35, Rental - $2/mo
Ethernet - $45, Rental - $4/mo
DSL w/WiFi - $125
India is one tough market.
Where is China?
Noticeably absent is China. In Asia the big market is China and when heads turn in this direction one looks to: Ministry of Information, PRC, China Telecom, CNC and Huawei Technologies as the leaders. Yet, there is not a single talk from any organization in China here at Broadband World Forum Seoul. The WAVE Report spoke with John Janowiak, executive director of the International Engineering Consortium (IEC), organizer of Broadband World Forum, and he was hopeful that the situation would get better at Broadband World Forum Tokyo 2005. Yet, the WAVE Report expressed doubt that China would have a presence, even at a conference, in such a well developed market as Japan. Face has significant meaning and for an emerging market to face a mature technically advanced market would be unlikely – he smiled in agreement. Thus, as we saw at PT Wireless & Networks Comm China 2003, Beijing, it is essential to recognize the individual characteristics of each country. China is big but it is unique. Understanding this market requires patience and effort. The Broadband World Forum has a big hole to fill.
DSL Forum – Living it is Own World
In the session on Envisioning the Digital Home was the same old stuff heard many times over at US conferences. Intel chaired the session and gave a talk. Samsung talked about the Digital Home Working Group.
Laurie Gonzalez, Marketing Director, DSL Forum, rolled through the stock charts. The emphasis was on the DSL Home and the various technical reports being created by the Forum. The WAVE Report asked these questions:
The Ministry of Ministry of Information and Communications, Republic of Korea is working with the industry and operators to develop a gateway specification that was due out in April. This is expected to provide the basis for future
services in Korean and an export market for Korean companies. How will this compete with efforts at the DSL Forum?DSL Forum. [Vacuous words.]
Have you not reviewed this specification?
No.
Then the
Samsung representative was asked to comment and he would not.
Korea Struggles with NG Wireless
The first session exposed the thinking into where wireless technology might go beyond 3G. At the core is how to make ubiquitous broadband available. This addresses the so called “white spot” problem – voids in coverage between WiFi and other wireless technology such as 1xEV-DV or 1xEV-DO. Further, NG wireless is also to make broadband mobil. One point of the discussion addressed the maximum speeds that would be supported – a central mobility issue. Overall, from the audience response to the presentations, many are not aware of what is happening in these areas in Korea. Clearly Korea is setting its own course. What is the value of this? There are many issues directly related to WiMAX and 802.20 that were exposed in the discussion.
Broadband Mobility and the Future of Convergence – Will Korea Set Its Own Course or Define the Future of Broadband Mobility?
While the session addressing the topic appeared initially to be just a rehash of the same old issues of how to integrate wireless technologies with broadband, it was much more.
The word convergence is overused and thus its application is context sensitive. Here it means one number, one device, all networks. It can include the ability to take a cell phone inside and it becomes the home phone. Support for VoIP or PSTN which ever is better for the consumer. Other examples include mobil to fixed PC video calls or call routing from fixed to mobil.
The other charged term is ubiquity. In this context it is the ability to support any device anywhere with any service.
These definitions will help set the framework for the direction the Korea is taking.
Young-Ky Kim, EVP, Samsung Electronics, spoke of an effort in Korea called the Portable Internet Initiative. This is to bridge between WiFi hot spots and enhanced 3G. Portable Internet is to have 100MHz of spectrum, at 2.3GHz, support vehicular speeds to 60km/h and have bandwidths to 18.6Mb/s. The goal is an operational network by the end of 2005. The network backbone includes both 3G, wireline and the Portable Internet Network. Thus, the goal is a single terminal with a single number. This would operate in a Heterogeneous Network that spans the spectrum of systems: CDMA2000 1X/DO/DV, WCDMA/HSDPA, Portable Internet, WLAN and Bluetooth/UWB.
The WAVE Report asked the question
How does the Portable Internet Initiative relate to standards?
Response:
Right now it does not because this began before efforts surfaced from WiMAX and others.
Another apparently similar effort was discussed during the questions which is called “WiBro” or “Wireless Broadband.” This seemed to be even less well known. A Google search netted only articles on WiBro in Korean, thus it has not be reported outside of Korea. Portable Internet and WiBro are related to the Korean efforts for the next IT phase called the BcN Initiative. See below.
Myung-Sung Lee, SVP, SK Telecom discussed a Mobil Network Strategy for Convergence Age. Lee also spoke of the HPi concept which appears to occupy the same spectrum. This will support up to 33Mb/s and have mobility support to <60km/h. HPi was described as “Moving or Standing”, “Anywhere, Anytime”, and “High Speed” “Portable Internet.” SKT expects to have a license to operate by 2005. This seems consistent with the Portable Internet Initiative. Lee also descried how Vertical Handover was essential in this convergence environment. That is, there must be seamless migration between wireless networks. The real challenge lies in the terminal devices. These are multiband and multimode. The list of supported air interfaces included: CDMA, WCDMA, HPI and WLAN. Power management was highlighted as a major issue.
The questions afterwards added much to the discussion. It became clear in the discussion that Korea is charting its own course in the quest to provide for ubiquitous seamless broadband to mobil devices as fast as 60km/h. Many of the point attributes begin to link with the objectives of WiMAX, especially 802.16e. Yet, this standards effort has not shown the depth of systems and operational considerations which appear to be a part of the HPi and Portable Internet Initiative.
The CTO of Qualcomm asked how WiMAX technology would be relevant in this environment. His point is that for WiMAXto be competitive it must not only be very spectrum efficient but have volumes on the order of a billion units a year. Without this scale it is very difficult to compete with cellular in the market.
The CEO of eAccess,
Japan, made the statement that it was his experience with KDDI that
for a
mobil service to work it must have complete coverage
and work >60km/h. To have a service at less than what is expected,
by consumers, in cellular will fail.
KT Looks to the Future
The Keynote address was given by Sanghoon Lee, EVP, Networking Group, KT, and the topic was Beyond Broadband Access. He was instrumental in helping craft the directions that Korea has taken in broadband. When this happened in they had no idea what the impacts would be. For example, the Internet has become a way of life in Korea and he used the following to illustrate his point.
Over the period 3/2000 to 12/2002
TV watching has declined from 16.5 to 14.1 hours
Internet usage has risen from 6.76 to 13.47 hours
% of daily Internet users has risen from 30.8 to 71.9%Today
30% of all banking transactions are done online
50% of all stock transactions are done online
17% of total commerce transactions are done online
Online game market is 2.5X the side of the console game
market
One of the threats of broadband is fixed rate pricing. The consumer has come to expect this and at the same time continuing increases in bandwidth are available. However, this rising access bandwidth forces increased CapEx and OpEx spending to support the load. But to continue to grow KT must move from being just a telecommunications carrier and provide applications and value added services. The limitations of today’s broadband service are that it is limited to:
Specific locations
Specific time of day
Specific terminal and
Specific applications.
Thus, according to Lee the future business must overcome these barriers.
To go beyond broadband access the focus must span:
Ubiquity
Convergence
Quality
Handy and
Personalization
It was on this last point that Lee described the carrier’s responsibility to provide:
Site authentication which extends to personal authentication
Single sign on between network login and application login
Customer profile based network set up
To illustrate he showed Windows environments for Dad, Mom, Daughter and Son.
His concept of Handy had a close parallel with the disappearing computer. The future as KT sees it is the movement away from the PC to appliance like terminals. This must be a part of the support of the future network.
Lee ended by describing the BcN Initiative in Korea. This supports
High quality broadband services which integrate telecom, broadcasting and internet seamlessly at anywhere, anytime
and using any device.
This only strengthened the role that the Korean government is having is setting the technology focus of the country. Recent reports outline BcN.
The infrastructure will be known as the broadband convergence network (BcN) and will offer telecommunications,
broadcasting and Internet access from a wide variety of devices, the paper said, quoting the Ministry of Information
and Communication.Construction of the BcN will be worth 95 trillion won (US$80.4 billion) in output of equipment and services, and
will create 370,000 jobs by 2010, according to the Chosun Ilbo.The government will invest 2 billion won, together with 67 billion won from the private sector, in improving the
quality of the broadband multimedia service covering the whole country.Once the BcN project is completed, TV broadcasts, telecommunications and the Internet will be converged into
one single network with transmission speeds of 50~100 Mbps, which is about 50 times faster than the current VDSL line used in many households.Ubiquitous networking will also be available through BcN, whereby any electronic device, such as refrigerators or
digital televisions, will be able to perform as a network console, thus enabling customers to use Internet anytime and
anywhere.The MIC said that for BcN to be successful, it must provide a high quality of service, security, and sufficient Internet
protocol (IP) addresses using IPv6.
Taiwan Drives WiFi Usage
Chunghwa Telecom, the incumbent in Taiwan, gave an insightful presentation on broadband. The Taiwan government is pushing for the wide adoption of WiFi. One of the initiatives is the implementation of CyberCity in Taipei to have it completely covered by WiFi.
Broadband in Taiwan – Showing the Role of Government Again
Fu-Kuei Chung, the Managing Director, Data Communications Group, Chunghwa Telecom, Taiwan give the Taiwanese view of broadband in his talk “Broadband & WiFi in Taiwan.” Key points made include.
There are 8.8m Internet users in Taiwan. This represents a 37% penetration rate.
CHT has 8m mobil users and CHT HiNet has 3.5m users.
Household penetration is at 51.15% with 3.3m households having broadband service. Of that total, 2.992m have ADSL.
HiNet, the ISP brand name for Chunghwa, has 62% market share.
The ADSL rate table for consumers includes:
1M/64k
2M/128k
3M/512k
256k/64k (June 2004) - $20/mo
8M/256k (June 2004) - $35/moThe last two are new services. The slow one is seeking to get consumers off of dial-up.
Although Chunghwa can offer VoIP it does not want to in order not to cannibalize its existing voice revenues.
In 2003 the largest market using broadband was gaming at $137m and a distant second is VoIP at $13.8m and third
education at $7.85mThe government has allocated $1.1b for the m-Taiwan project. The goal is to promote public wireless broadband over the island by 2008. There is an office known as IDB to promote the usage of WiFi. The government has set these objectives:
1 Million wireless connected users over the Wireless Broadband Network by 2007; and
Deployment of 3,000+ hot spots across the island by 2007.In July 2003 an office called iB3G was established to drive the integration of cellular with WiFi. One effort will be to
make Dual-mode handsets for both standards. There are a number of experiments underway to support iB3G.Taipei has taken its own initiative with the CyberCity project. This has the following elements:
To make Taipei a world class city in the use of WiFi;
To create an unlimited “internet space” around the city;
It is a four year plan that ends in 2007.To support the implementation Taipei will:
Open street lamps, traffic lights and bus stops for WiFi APs;
All the private enterprise WiFi networks will be integrated in the city.Chunghwa has not decided if it will participate in this plan. At the present time Taipei has not decided how the
pricing for use will be determined.To date Chunghwa has implemented 250+ hot spots of its own. They participate in a number of international plans, such as iPass. On the local basis, access can be purchased as “post -paid” linked to the phone bill or “pre-paid” and with cards for use available in convenient stores.
To evaluate some of the implementation and operations issues for CyberCity Chunghwa has implemented a dense WiFi zone near the International Trade Center. This has 22 AP and covers 18 sq km. The architecture is quite simple. As much as possible all processing and network functions are handled at the Network Operations Center. It was stated that the network supports handoffs between APs. Thus, there is some degree of mobility support.
Like the presentation from India, this talk gave another example of how local conditions influence the roll out and use of broadband technology.
***NVIDIA and AMD Deliver Improved Security to Protect the PC Desktop
COMPUTEX - TAIPEI, Taiwan
June 2, 2004
Recognizing the need to thwart network level hacking attacks and other security risks, NVIDIA Corporation announced collaborative efforts with AMD and leading Taiwanese motherboard companies to help promote enhanced secure PC platform technology solutions and deliver innovative features and increased levels of protection for desktop PCs, workstations, and servers based on the NVIDIA nForce(TM) and AMD64 computing platform.
Already, NVIDIA and AMD have each incorporated security features at the
silicon level to help combat the direct threat of networking- level
hacking attacks and other common security risks. NVIDIA's solution
-- NVIDIA Firewall -- is integrated directly into the Company's newest
NVIDIA nForce media and communication processors (MCPs) for AMD Athlon(TM)
and AMD Opteron(TM) processor-based motherboards. It provides driver-based
protection the moment the PC is connected to the Internet or internal
network, as well as a graphical user interface allowing customers to
configure the Firewall, easily modify settings, and manage the security
settings remotely. AMD64 technology processors, which include the AMD
Athlon 64 FX and AMD Opteron processor families, incorporate Enhanced
Virus Protection (EVP) technology that will be enabled by the upcoming
Windows(R) XP Service Pack 2 to help eliminate certain security risks
and viruses by prohibiting common "buffer overflow" attacks.
The combination of NVIDIA nForce MCPs and AMD Athlon 64 and AMD Opteron
processors provides users with a great baseline level of protection.
NVIDIA and AMD are both committed to providing customers next- generation
security technologies in order to make the PC platform as secure as
possible.
NVIDIA is also working with the top Taiwanese motherboard manufacturers, including market leaders ASUSTeK and MSI, to help market their line of nForce- based motherboards featuring integrated security features for the AMD64 market. Together, the companies will help educate consumers on the importance of PC security and begin promoting built-in security as a "must-have" feature for today's PC enthusiasts.
Major motherboards utilizing the security features offered by NVIDIA and AMD include, but are not limited to:
-- ASUS K8N-E Deluxe
-- Epox EP-8KDA3+
-- Gigabyte K8NSNXP-939
-- iWill DK8N
-- MSI MSI7025
-- MSI MSI7030
***Businesses and Consumers to Soon Feel the Noise of VoWLAN Reports In-Stat/MDR
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz.
June 2, 2004
With total handset shipments totaling less than 60,000 in 2003, the Voice over Wireless Local Area Network (VoWLAN) market is still in its infancy. However, according to In-Stat/MDR, despite the relatively high cost of handsets and the lack of standardized QoS and fast roaming, this technology is already reaching a surprising amount of business users, and a significant number have it on their radar screen for the future. A recent survey of business users by the high-tech market research firm finds that VoWLAN has reached nearly 10% of respondents and 48% of respondents are considering implementing it. Based on this encouraging information, In-Stat/MDR expects that business-class WLAN handsets will experience a growth rate of almost 120% in 2004.
"The VoWLAN market has experienced much hype over the course of 2004, primarily due to the growing presence of Wi-Fi data networking in businesses and in homes," said Norm Bogen, director of In-Stat/MDR's networking research group, "Much of the interest has been in the expectation of combination cellular and Wi-Fi handsets, with a vision of the end user being able to switch seamlessly between cellular and WLAN networks, while simultaneously maintaining a call."
Currently, the largest and most effective opportunities for Wi-Fi telephony are in the enterprise and vertical markets. In these areas, WLANs have been adopted, and mobile users are easily identified. These businesses have control over coverage area, bandwidth utilization and QoS implementation. The users have access to the corporate telephone system, giving Wi-Fi users the same features and accessibility as their wired peers. It is cost-effective and efficient to leverage the investment in WLAN by adding wireless telephones.
In-Stat/MDR also finds that:
-- Of those respondents to In-Stat/MDR's survey that currently run VoWLAN, most come from companies with more than 1,000 employees, and use WLAN equipment from high-end WLAN vendors like Cisco and 3Com.
-- As could be expected, over half of the respondents to In-Stat/MDR's survey that run VoWLAN use PDAs in the wireless network, likely serving as mobile softphones.
-- 802.11b enterprise VoWLAN handsets have been shipping out the door since 2000. SpectraLink and Symbol have been the leaders in this market for the past few years, selling handsets mainly to the verticals of healthcare, education, retail/warehousing/distribution and manufacturing. Cisco introduced its VoWLAN handset in mid-2003.
-- An emerging area of growth is the handset space for the home/SOHO, where low-cost Wi-Fi handsets are used in conjunction with residential VoIP services. By 2008, 15% of VoIP subscribers with Wi-Fi home networks will have Wi-Fi handsets.
-- Combination Wi-Fi and cellular handsets are expected to penetrate the market noticeably in 2005 and 2006, as Wi-Fi silicon continues to fall in cost and size, and also becomes more power efficient. This combination handset is expected to penetrate both the business and home markets over time.
http://www.instat.com/catalog/bcatalogue.asp?id=18
*****WiMAX Forum Establishes Working Group to Address Worldwide Regulatory Issues; Organization to Tackle Spectrum Availability and Global Harmonization
SAN JOSE, Calif.
June 2, 2004
In an effort to create a regulatory environment favorable to the widespread global deployment of WiMAX Forum Certified(TM) systems, the WiMAX Forum(TM) has established a Regulatory Working Group (RWG). The aim of the RWG is to ensure availability and global harmonization of "WiMAX friendly" spectrum worldwide. The group will enable the WiMAX Forum to effectively combine the efforts of its more than 100 members in order to present a unified and consistent message when meeting with regulators around the world.
The primary goal of the WiMAX Forum RWG is to ensure the availability of licensed and license-exempt spectrum by encouraging the worldwide, uniform adoption of specific frequency bands for Broadband Wireless Access (BWA). Additionally, the RWG will work with regulators to develop flexible and technology neutral regulatory frameworks, allowing usage models to evolve as the BWA market matures and enabling service providers to deploy the most appropriate solutions for their markets.
Global harmonization, or the uniform allocation of spectrum worldwide, is crucial to lowering equipment costs because radios are a major cost component in developing WiMAX Forum Certified systems. To maximize radio performance and minimize costs, radios must be optimized for each of the major spectrum bands that are suitable for WiMAX deployments.
Initially, the WiMAX Forum believes global harmonization for broadband wireless access can be achieved in the following spectrum bands:
-- License-Exempt 5 GHz: Because license-exempt spectrum is free to use, this band is a key to enabling grassroots deployments in underserved, low population density rural and remote markets. The WiMAX Forum will commit additional resources -- notably in Europe -- to promote wider release of this band in a harmonized and timely manner.
-- Licensed 3.5 GHz: In these bands, the focus of the WiMAX Forum will be to minimize unnecessary technical and regulatory requirements that might constrain BWA usage models and overall market development.
-- Licensed 2.5 GHz: Though already allocated in the U.S., Mexico, Brazil and some Southeast Asian countries, the WiMAX Forum is participating in ongoing global efforts to make this band available in other countries on a technology neutral basis.
In addition to these efforts, the WiMAX Forum will work with world standards and regulatory bodies to advance the allocation of licensed and license-exempt spectrum in lower frequency bands. The propagation of radio waves is better at lower frequencies, such as the 700 MHz frequency range which is expected to become available as television stations transition from analog to digital broadcasting. In the U.S., the Federal Communications Commission is considering both licensed and license-exempt allocations in this band. The WiMAX Forum will work with the FCC and similar organizations globally to allocate lower frequency bands for broadband wireless.
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