iBurst may give WiMAX run for money

One of the themes that emerged from the LTE World Summit was that no one was looking at WiMAX as a competitor for LTE. LTE is being thought as 'Mobile Broadband' whereas WiMAX is being thought more of as 'Low-mobility/Fixed Broadband'. They would serve different needs and their market will hardly overlap. I have blogged about iBurst in the past and I think it may give some competition to WiMAX.

David Brunnen from Personal Broadband UK (cant find their website) gave an interesting perspective on iBurst and even though many people have not heard of it, it can still compete in the market. They have a big presence in Australia and last year won the spectrum for the whole of Ireland + Northern Ireland between 1785 - 1805MHz. Even though they have won the 20MHz band, they think that they can do with 5MHz or maximum of 10 MHz. They have also partnered with iBand and would probably allow roaming between them.

The main thing about iBurst is that it has very good spectral effeciency and an average throughput of around 600kbps. Data Rate of 1.061Mbps downlink/ 346Kbps uplink with System capacity 24.4Mbps downlink/ 7.9 Mbps uplink is supported. At the same time it offers high mobility with handovers at speed of over 100kmph. The cell radius is 1.5-3km in urban and 5-7km in rural area. Because of adaptive antennas, the same frequency can be reused and the interference can be reduced thereby increasing the cell capacity.

The biggest problem with iBurst is that there are very few players. Kyocera is the only base station supplier. On the devices side, Kyocera is the lead player but there are other new players like Dovado which has won some big contract with first US iBurst operator and Moovera (bought by Icomera) which also has some similar devices.

Last year Kyocera announed that iBurst has more than 140,000 subscribers. This year iBurst South Africa has been shortlisted for an award of "Best Operator in Developing Country". In last 6 months they have increased the subscriber numbers by 30%.

With the big players heavily invested in HSPA+/LTE and many others having a foot in WiMAX, it would be interesting to see how a possible iBurst success might be viewed. I would like to hear from people who have experienced this technology on what their feeling is about iBurst.

For more information on the iBurst technology, see Kyocera's iBurst Technology homepage.

Latest news on iBurst available from iBurst.org website.

Kyocera's iBurst-Based Technology Approved as New Standard for IEEE 802.20

17/06/08: Kyocera Corporation announced that Kyocera’s iBurst-based technology proposal (625k-MC mode) was approved as a new standard for IEEE 802.20 by the IEEE Standards Association at its headquarters, Piscataway, New Jersey, USA on June 12, 2008.

“Having been a draft standard since January 2006, Kyocera is gratified that iBurst has finally been approved as an 802.20 standard by the IEEE Standards Association,” said Mr. Masashi Yano, General Manager of the Corporate Communication System Equipment Division, Kyocera Corporation. “With this industry standard approval, we are expecting to expand the iBurst service area to more and more countries.”

Kyocera’s iBurst, or HC-SDMA, is a mobile broadband wireless access (MBWA) system that has been commercially rolled out in more than 10 countries and has been approved as a standard by American National Standards Institute (ANSI) and International Telecommunication Union Radiocommunication Sector ( ITU-R). iBurst has remarkably high capacity, essential for mobile broadband wireless access services, and distributes its high data rates to many mobile PC users. This is enabled by field-proven Adaptive Array Antenna (AAA) and Spatial Division Multiple Access (SDMA) technologies.

iBurst operators worldwide have formed the iBurst Association (iBA), a not-for-profit organization advocating the promotion and development of iBurst technology as a preferred MBWA solution.

IEEE 802.20 is also known as MobileFi and I have written a blog on it earlier this year.

MobileFi is more of a compitetor to WiMAX as compared to the 3G+ technologies.

WiMAX is targeted for mobile users moving at speeds of up to 60 mph inside a WiMAX region (laptop users moving across a corporate campus, for example). But 802.20 is focused more on highspeed mobile users traveling acrossan extended metropolitan area at speeds of up to 150 mph (a salesman traveling across a city or an executive traveling between nearby cities on a high-speed train, for example). WiMAX/802.16e also differs from 802.20 in that it supports substantially higher data rates (up to 71 Mbps) than 802.20 (up to 1 Mbps). Another thing is that the cell radius with 802.20 is 15km while with WiMAX is 50km.

Why iBurst? The maain Features of iBurst are:

1. High data rate: iBurst supports Data Rate of 1.061Mbps downlink/ 346Kbps uplink with System capacity 24.4Mbps downlink/ 7.9 Mbps uplink.

2. High Spectral Efficiency: iBurst supports more customers per base station. In 5 MHz Spectrum, 50X over-subscription as compared to 3G system

3. Wide Area coverage: Maximum coverage of iBurst is 12.75km. iBurst uses lower frequency, which is good for non-line-ofsight indoor penetration.

4. Mobility: iBurst supports Mobility of over 100km/h. iBurst also supports Handover between base stations.

5. Easy access to IP network: iBurst is packet based technology

6. VoIP compatibility: QoS is implemented to assure wireless VoIP quality. iBurst has achieved fixed phone level voice quality.

Links:

• Kyocera news section on iBurst technology.
• IEEE 802.20 introduction in PDF from IEEE.
• iBurst introduction from ITU-T in PDF.
• iBurst technical overview from Kyocera.