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Will HSDPA and WiMax Peacefully Coexist?

8th November , 2004

US : Mobile telephony and WiMAX vendors may soon find themselves locked in competition for the same customers, according to new analysis by ABI Research.

The cellular industry untethered fixed-line voice communications by making it wireless and mobile. Later as data became a significant portion of the communications, cellular designers modified their architectures and kept migrating up the data speed path. In the GSM world we moved from the typical 40Kbps of GPRS to the 130Kbps of EDGE, the 384Kbps of UMTS, and now the upcoming 3Mbps of HSDPA, which finally makes cellular a de-facto mobile broadband for voice and data.

From another angle, a suite of industry players wish to untether fixed-line data communications such as DSL and cable and make them wireless; the standard they have formulated is WiMax. They will also be able to do voice communications through Voice-over-IP. And the next extension of the standard will make it mobile. The result? WiMax also equals mobile broadband for voice and data.

Will these two worlds collide?

"It's only a matter of time," says Alan Varghese, ABI Research's principal analyst of semiconductor research. "HSDPA is an easy software upgrade from existing UMTS architecture, and cellular operators will be well on their way in 2005. WiMax will need brand new networks and infrastructure, so the upfront costs and timelines may be more; but once deployed, WiMAX will offer very high bit rates and the possibility for new entrants to compete either using licensed or unlicensed spectrum."

So the battle lines are drawn, pitting these two quite different technologies in a battle for the same pool of users.

ABI Research's study, "HSDPA - Mobile Broadband" discusses all these issues in detail. In addition it examines the drivers for HSDPA, the deployment schedules of operators, and the timelines and volumes for HSDPA Infrastructure, PC Cards, Handsets, and ICs.

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