Technlogy Roadmap PanelThe explosion in wireless networking began three to four years ago and has included the use of unlicensed spectrum. In the 1990s, the ISM or 2.4-Ghz band was called the “junk band,” and there was little expectation that there was any kind of spectrum available to provide any kind of commercially useful service because of the degree of interference. The FCC made this spectrum available on an unlicensed basis and innovation nonetheless proceeded toward today’s Wi-Fi and WiMAX-like technologies. “This is by no means the end,” said Kevin Werbach, Assistant Professor of Legal Studies at the Wharton School of Business and an expert on the business, policy and social implications of emerging Internet and communications technologies. “There’s a notion that spectrum is very limited in capacity, but in fact it’s not nearly so limited as we think, which is why this exciting wireless development is happening.” Werbarch defined three pillars underpinning “this extraordinary opportunity”: • true leadership by government to trust that if they open a space for innovation, it will happen;
• researchers, academics, and engineers using the capacity in new ways; and
• the private sector, taking that research work, turning it into products and services, coming up with standards, making them interoperable, branding them, and fully unlocking the potential that is out there.
“That kind of virtuous circle is what enabled Wi-Fi to take off so rapidly over the past several years, and what laid the groundwork for cities to deploy networks to provide all these services to their citizens,” Mr. Werbach said. Today, basic Wi-Fi connectivity is widespread, interoperability is fairly understood, but some technologies like WiMAX are newer, and security and quality of service (QoS) issues are less fully resolved. What are the key technological drivers, opportunities and challenges going forward? Smaller Devices “No matter where we are, there will always be the next generation of technology, which is getting less expensive, smaller and smaller, and with more capacity,” said Marisa Viveros, Director of Strategy in the Global Pervasive Wireless e-Business Group, IBM. “Organizations want to see the benefit from this, but you must build on top of and beneath the network interoperability so you can take advantage of how your data and video can move across it. Make applications independent of the network layer as innovation continues to happen.” The growth in wireless will depend as much on standards, security, devices, and applications as it will on the network infrastructure, Ms. Viveros said. What are the drivers? “It’s not only about the convergence of networks—3G and 4G, Wi-Fi, WiMAX—but roaming services and policies allowing coexistence of networks and the convergence of devices that are multimedia, Wi-Fi, 3G and RFID-enabled.” Multinetworking Expect a huge wireless data pipe to open up that had once only existed for fixed infrastructure, said Paul Kolodzy, who is affiliated with the Stevens Institute of Technology and a former chairman of the FCC’s Spectrum Policy Task Force. Three or four years down the road will invite a multi-tiered wireless world with lower frequencies at the local level and middle and higher frequencies building out an entire infrastructure based on wireless—from the 38-Ghz range to the 70-Ghz allowing a gigabit data link at the higher infrastructure base. “It’s still not fiber, but it has a lot of advantages,” Kolodzy said. The disadvantage is that it won’t work very well for mobile cases and penetrate through buildings, and implementers will worry about the tradeoff between range—the size of an access point and its capacity—and what kind of mobility needs must be addressed. Toward that end, keep an eye on three efficiencies: • Dollar efficiency: how many people and how much data can you get out there at how much expense? You can be responsive to your constituents.
• Spectrum efficiency means you only have so much spectrum that’s out there. It’s not scarce, but in high-density areas it needs to be looked at carefully.
• Power efficiency: users will need to worry about battery-operated devices (because their wireless).
WiMAX Horizon On the immediate horizon, a great deal of attention is being placed on WiMAX, or the IEEE (802.16) standard, which can enable broadband connectivity at long ranges and is especially useful in rural areas and in developing countries where cable and DSL does not exist and people want broadband. WiMAX core technology is based on a wide-area, non-line-of-sight core technology allowing implementers to build a low-cost wireless access in a large area. Every packet is centrally managed and monitored. There is no pre-required network design, because WiMAX follows an open-network, interface model. It is targeted at licensed and unlicensed spectrums. WiMAX-certified equipment won’t be available until later in 2005, but so-called pre-WiMAX technology has been available for seven to eight years, with half a billion dollars in market sales, said Mohammad Shakouri, Vice President of Marketing, WiMAX Forum. “A common misperception is that WiMAX is Wi-Fi on steroids,” Mr. Werbach noted. “But there are question about where WiMAX is the best fit, and where Wi-Fi is more appropriate.” “Wi-Fi was designed as a LAN extension, to increase the wireless usage of the Internet,” Mr. Shakouri said, “but WiMAX is designed for central management of information, with five to ten miles access, serving narrow channels. It is like a wireline infrastructure, designed for outdoor environments and with different QoS such that the delay, amount of data, performance, and multi-task can all be supported. It’s a completely different design of the network versus Wi-Fi. “We wish WiMAX would do everything for everyone,” Mr. Shakouri said. “But when I’m inside a building, nothing beats a local area network [i.e., Wi-Fi]. The real revolution we see happening is with mobile WiMAX. It’s not just broadband to developing countries, it’s going to provide mobility.” Mobile WiMAX will be available in Korea in 2006, and in the United States in 2007. Security Concerns Should you worry about the information, or the network? For cities, if you’re going to provide a service, then you must think about the security aspects of providing that service. It’s the access you’re giving, not the network. You have to worry about monitoring your network. Anonymity is the friend of the hacker, and there are technologies out there to get rid of that anonymity.
Any time you have an open network, security issues will exist. From a WiMAX point of view, every packet is secure from a central management point of view, Mr. Shakouri said. “But there’s too much worry about security. You can break into wireless as well. People think wireless is open so it’s less secure. But you can add security that’s as good as on any network that exists. I think it’s something that can be managed and designed correctly and is not some major disadvantage.” Unlicensed Spectrum The Federal Communications Commission doesn’t set a roadmap for technology, but it does work to get advanced services at fair and reasonable cost to all Americans as timely as possible, said Kenneth Carter, Council for Business and Economics, Office of Strategic Planning, FCC.
“We’re not picking standards and technologies, but we like to foster innovation and experimentation,” Mr. Carter said. “We’re trying to have increased usage of unlicensed spectrum and to foster cognitive ‘smart’ radio. At the end of the day, we need to coordinate uses and mitigate interference—or coordinate so that the technology can do that.”
The government sets up general rules, such as the power limits on devices, and then allows any device that meets those standards to operate (unlicensed) in that spectrum. But Carter offered a correction: There really is no such thing as unlicensed spectrum. “We don’t allocate the spectrum to an unlicensed user or users. They can use the spectrum on a sufferance basis using unlicensed devices.”
“What is the unlicensed arena really like?” asked Robert Primosch, Partner, Wilkinson, Barker & Knauer. “Is it regulated or is it not? Well, it is.” Wireless-broadband service is not ubiquitous, and the idea is to leverage the benefits of wireless to deliver broadband at the lowest cost.
But there are barriers to providing broadband-wireless service: • The FCC has tried to make licensed spectrum more readily available at less expense. A lot of the licenses are consolidated. The process for license acquisition and interference coordination can include build-out requirements, so if you don’t build at a certain place and time, you can lose the license.
• The unlicensed alternative is cost free, there’s plenty of spectrum, the equipment market is competitive, and vendors are offering different products for different situations. Deployment can be fast if you have a good engineer and understand the rules. Wide-area coverage is now possible.
• With unlicensed, however, there is no interference protection from licensed or other unlicensed users. Smaller operators can go into the bands and operate “dirty” systems that bleed signal all over the place, but you have to live with them. This includes interference in city-run networks. “The FCC will say live with it, partner with them, or buy them out,” Mr. Primosch said. “This is also true of tenants of airports and other quasi-public buildings. You can’t stop them from putting it up.”
• Deployments on public versus private property—poles, conduits, rights-of-way—can also become an issue. “If you’re the regulator of these and you’re providing services, there are all sorts of issues that come up with that,” Mr. Primosch said.
“There’s a limited amount of unlicensed frequency,” said Allen Hammond, CEO and Founder of Bay Broadband. “As cities and counties build out their own networks, they need to think about that and leave some space for commercial operators to operate or they won’t be able to come in and adequately serve residential and business customers. The frequency space is the most critical area to do some advance planning if you really want a private entity to invest money to build out networks in your neck of the woods.” “On the interference issues, we’ve done an RF analysis in Philadelphia, and we have no show stoppers,” Philadelphia CIO Dianah Neff said. “There are three channels within the unlicensed portion of that, and we can accommodate 430 registered ISPs, some as small as a block, and some are commercial quietly mounting their own antennas on private sector. We don’t see why we can’t all compete in that space. It doesn’t mean we won’t have more people wanting to come in.” “One of the biggest challenges with a large city is that with unlicensed spectrum you can’t control the network, and there are many business and individuals who will have their own Wi-Fi networks up," said Jeff Levy, CEO and Founder of Biltmore Communications. “One thing that may be possible—at the local level or FCC type of involvement—is some regulation of this unlicensed spectrum to limit the types of uses that are appropriate so you don’t have 2.4 being used by microwave ovens and cordless phones and wireless access points. That’s heresy in some quarters, but that’s a very very real and difficult problem if you want to get to the end user.”
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