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Expectations took a dive the other day on precisely when the first WiMAX radios will become commercially available.

Representatives of the WiMAX Forum have recently described a slippage in the schedule for conformance and interoperability testing of potential WiMAX equipment.

In particular, Aperto Networks' Marketing Director, Dean Chang, who also chairs the service provider working group at the WiMAX Forum, was quoted in an Information Week article as saying that "fully certified WiMAX equipment should appear around the end of the year, six months or so later than expected."

That revised timeline still depends on a number of factors, particularly on the readiness of the conformance specifications prior to testing. All WiMAX-certified gear will have to pass conformance testing as well as interoperability testing before commercial distribution.

One conformance specification, known as PICS, is complete but not yet approved by the WiMAX Forum. However, two other specs (TSS&TP and ATS) are scheduled for completion at the end of February 2005, according to Gordon Antonello, senior technical advisor at Wi-LAN Inc. and a WiMAX Forum board member.

While Chang cited delays by companies making the semiconductors for customer premises equipment as a factor in the delay, Antonello said that the WiMAX project itself entails a great deal of complexity in terms of the tests involved.

Testing will be conducted in the form of "waves," which are specific tests conducted over periods of two to three months' time, Antonello explained. He predicted that the first wave, with about 200 test cases or so, would occur in the middle of this year in the June-to-July timeframe.

Equipment slated for this round of WiMAX testing will be based on the 802.16-2004 specification for wireless metropolitan area network gear used as fixed links. Base stations and customer premises equipment will be tested. The interoperability portion of the tests will attempt to interconnect the vendor's equipment with at least two other vendors' radios, Antonello said. The equipment gets the WiMAX-certified stamp after passing this interoperability testing.

In a Webinar broadcast by Wi-LAN, Antonello said that the first WiMAX certification is targeted for the third quarter of 2005 and that "this is when you will see the first certified equipment hit the market."

That estimate is slightly more optimistic than the one postulated by Chang.

In the meantime, Antonello suggested that some service providers would run their own lab trials of potential WiMAX gear, apart from WiMAX Forum testing. He predicted that operators could run field trials as early as the fourth quarter of 2005 with general deployment in the first quarter of 2006.

-- Kurt Mackie
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