Could an Aussie WiMAX 'disaster' have been prevented?

Although an Australian WiMAX operator publicly branded his experience a "disaster" at a WiMAX conference in Thailand, its hardware partner, Airspan, is blaming the WiMAX problems on the operator's unwillingness to invest enough money or to bring in outside expertise.

Buzz Broadband CEO Garth Freeman stunned an international WiMAX conference in Thailand this week with complaints about network delays and jitter on VoIP and other Internet applications, along with poor wireless coverage range for the 3.5 GHz WiMAX link both indoors and in non-line-of-sight outdoor transmissions.

But Airspan, the Australian ISP's partner in WiMAX, maintains that it could have avoided the coverage range problems by choosing more costly macro-cell devices instead of cheaper micro-cell units, and that quality of service (QoS) issues could have been resolved if Buzz had accepted Airspan's invitation to pay for an independent QoS analysis.

In an interview today with BetaNews, Airspan CMO Declan Byrne acknowledged that wireless links in the 500 to 700 MHz spectrum can also provide a much wider range of coverage than those in the 3.5 GHz band.

But Byrne told BetaNews that, while Airspan plans to provide 500 to 700 MHz WiMAX when a "standard" WiMAX profile becomes available for that range, at the moment, Airspan only offers "proprietary" wireless networking technology in that lower frequency range. Generally speaking, the 700 MHz band is seen as offering advantages in terms of wider coverage range and greater ability to penetrate tree coverage and other obstacles, although services running in the higher bands can carry much more data.

The WiMAX Forum is currently working on a 700 MHz profile for the WiMAX standard, according to Robert Sypuda, a senior analyst at Maravedis, a Montreal-based market research and analysis firm focusin on the telecom industry.

Outside of the 3.5 GHz and 500 to 700 MHz bands, Airspan also sells WiMAX and proprietary wireless technologies in a variety of other frequencies.

As detailed in the Austalian publication Commsday, Buzz Broadband's Freeman told conference-goers in Thailand this week that indoor performance of Buzz's WiMAX 3.5 GHz network degraded past 400 meters, and that non-line-of-sight outdoor performance was "non-existent" past two kilometers.

But according to Byrne, Buzz used Airspan's MicroMaxd, POST, and EasyST, the same equipment which is installed in many of Airspan's roughly 100 other WiMAX deployments.

"With regard to range, although Airspan offers both micro-cell and macro-cell base station solutions, Buzz Broadband opted to go with the less expensive micro-cell base stations in order to reduce cost. This was a well understand tradeoff of cost vs. range," according to Airspan's CMO.

In terms of QoS, Byrne cited "significant under-provisioning issues" in the core network connecting Airspan's WiMAX equipment to the Internet.

"Very early in the relationship, Airspan technical services determined that Buzz' backhaul network was considerably under-dimensioned (again to save cost) and lacked sufficient QoS, and that these factors were the direct cause of the VoIP quality issues in the network," Byrne said in a statement. "Airspan even went to far as to offer to fund a third-party analysis to help Buzz understand these issues. Both Airspan's help and third-party assistance were refused by Mr. Freeman."

For his part, Freeman said that Buzz has now abandoned its WiMAX network, which served about 200 customers, in favor of technology that includes TD-CDMA 1.9 GHz -- used by operators such as Woosh Wireless of New Zealand -- along with a solution called wireless DOCSIS, which extends the capabilities of an HFC plant through wireless mesh.

Meanwhile, earlier this month, Airspan announced the Isle of Wight as its latest WiMAX customer.

"At Airspan, we pride ourselves on our customer service and our excellent products," according to Byrne. "WiMAX has proven to be enormously successful from a technical standpoint, and Buzz' allegations, even when so easily dismissed, are a distraction to the WiMAX industry and ultimately a disservice to the millions of satisfied wireless access customers worldwide."