WiMAX patent group formed to spur wireless consumer devices

To help get more consumer electronics (CE) devices out the door for WiMAX wireless broadband networks, Intel, Clearwire, and several other members of the WiMAX Forum today rolled out the Open Patent Alliance (OPA).

During a press conference, officials contended that the OPA will advance an "open and transparent" intellectual property rights (IPR) model that will make it simpler for both established players and small start-ups to build hardware and applications for WiMAX.

Ultimately, the consumer will benefit when more devices are available for WiMAX, said Sriram Viswanathan, managing director of Intel Capital and general manager of the WiMAX program office.

"At the end of the day, this is about choice. This is about low price," according to Viswanathan.

"We are big believers in the powers of the embedded device business model," said Barry West, CTO of Sprint-Nextel and president of Xohm, a WiMAX network now being operated by a combined Sprint-Clearwire holding company, funded by $3.2 billion in investments from Intel Capital, Google, Comcast, Time Warner, and Bright House Networks.

But to create enough choices for users on WiMAX networks, licensing needs to be "easy and predictable," according to West. "Today marks a significant step in that direction."

West contrasted the OPA against the "confusion out of the licensing which has been traditional" in cellular "walled gardens" and other telecom-oriented environments.

Old-style telecom patent licensing schemes can be especially perplexing to CE device makers, the CTO observed.

Aside from Intel and Clearwire, other founding members of OPA include Samsung, Alcatel-Lucent, and Cisco.

In the CE space, Philippe Keryer of Alcatel-Lucent today mentioned WiMAX-enabled DVRs (digital video recorders) as one type of device the OPA hopes to encourage.

Brett Galloway, senior VP of Cisco's Wireless Technology Group, cited "converged devices" that are able to run across both WiMAX wide area networks (WANs) and WiFi local area networks (LANs).

Scott Richardson, chief strategy officer at Clearwire, said he expects that each consumer will use multiple devices to access WiMAX, with some emanating from the PC arena, others from the cellular space, and others still on the horizon.

In mid-May, Sprint unveiled plans for a commercial launch of Xohm by the end of 2008 in the Baltimore-Washington, DC area, after about a year of testing with Samsung and other wireless vendors.

In a Q&A session during the press conference, the officials were asked whether WiMAX, the specification being followed by Xohm, is likely to converge with LTE, a competing standard adopted for use by Verizon Wireless and AT&T.

Viswanathan responded that although WiMAX is already "here," the availability of LTE is still about three years away.

It will be time to consider convergence between WiMAX and LTE "when there's something to converge with," he quipped.

Richardson replied that, although Clearwire expects to gain competitive advantage through the earlier availability of WiMAX, Clearwire "remains optimistic" about convergence between the two 4G wireless broadband networks at some point down the road.