Moreover, the fixed wireless industry has yet to define standards for the physical layer, modulation or for the way base station units and modems work together. As of now, one vendor's transceiver does not work with another vendor's modem. According to Allied Business Intelligence, there are about a dozen different NLOS solutions, and it is not clear which solution the standards bodies or leading carriers will adopt. Various vendor camps already are in an often-acrimonious debate over competing flavors, and patents, of orthogonal frequency division multiplexing. Generally there has been some progress, but we would like to see more.
Standards are on the way.
The IEEE 802.16 Working Group on BWA Standards is developing standards and recommended practices to support the development and deployment of BWA systems. The group recently recommended a practice for coexistence of fixed BWA systems and agreed to create a unified air interface document with a common, flexible medium access control platform supporting multiple physical layers. If progress in these standards meshes with the feedback that service providers are giving to vendors through their ongoing near LOS and NLOS field trials, fixed BWA providers may soon be relieved of at least some of the weight hindering their race to become legitimate broadband competitors. Published by Cahners Business Information Copyright 2001. All rights reserved.