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Packet One Networks (P1) expressed its committment to support the the Home Working Programme announced by the Works Minister Datuk Shaziman Abu Mansor in a media statement on 5 November and cutting through the web of hype an hullabaloo, it seems much more that just hot air.
While the statement did not elaborate on how it would assist the programme, we got a sneak preview of two devices especialy useful to home workers at its headquarters in Petaling Jaya the following afternoon (6 November).
One is a smaller and more compact version of its rather boxy and bulky desktop WiMAX modem, featuring what looks like a swivelling WiFi antenna, three RJ 45 LAN router ports, two RJ11 telephone ports and a wide area network (WAN) port in its base. P1 expects to launch this sometime next year.
Another dubbed “Pebble” is a small and compact portable device with rounded curves which can easily fit into a shirt pocket and serve as a WiFi router supporting up to five simultaneous users sharing its single WiMAX connection to the world beyond.
 This “Pebble's” functionality is similar to that of the third party applications JoikuSpot and Walkinghotspot, which turn a WiFi-enabled Symbian S60 smartphone into a portable WiFi hotspot which uses the the phone's 2.5G or 3G cellular data connection for Internet access.
JoikuSpot is available from http://gallery.mobile9.com/f/1010878 while a free trial of Walkinghotspot is available from http://www.walkinghotspot.com. Our sister publication Mobile World Magazine did a review of Walkinghotspot on an S60 phone a couple of years back and it worked as claimed.
Likewise, this “Pebble” would be ideal for providing an instant WiFi hot spot with WiMAX connectivity for teams of people on the go, in a car, bus, at a roadside coffee shop, anywhere else in the field or for setting up an instant office at exhibitions, sporting events and so on. P1 expects to launch “Pebble” in the first quarter of next year.
 P1 did not reveal how much it would charge for these equipment and services but it would be of great help for home workers if it dropped its monthly subscription (how about RM19 per month?) and increase the monthly fair use limit (to say 100GB).
However, its entry-level Home Lite package priced at RM49 for 400 Kb/s an a 5GB monthly limit is one of the lowest in the market, while its Office Standard package offering 1.2Mbps unlimited access for RM159 per month is rather steep.
In comparison Jaring Flite fixed wireless broadband charges RM40 per month for 384Kb/s unlimited access, while on promotion now is 1Mb/s for RM69 per month, though Jaring's coverage is limited mostly to areas within the Klang Valley on the west coast of Peninsular Malaysia, and Jaring will have to cease operation in the licensed 2.5GHz spectrum if the Malaysian Communication and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) does not renew or extend permission to use this spectrum.
During his tenure, the former Minister of Energy, Water and Communications, Tun Dr. Lim Keng Yaik instructed the MCMC to clear the 2.5G band of operators, including Jaring and this move will affect its considerable number of subscribers, unless alternative spectrum is provided. Perhaps 2.5GH operators like Jaring should appeal to the new minister.
A recognised WiMAX leader
One of the four 2.3GHz WiMAX spectrum licensees, P1 launched its WiMAX service in August last year and within just over a year, it's come to be recognised not only as Malaysia's and South East Asia's first 2.3GHz WiMAX wireless broadband service provider but also world leader in WiMAX and in deployment of fourth-generation (4G) wireless technology.
The company has acquired over 100,000 subscribers in ist first 13 months of operation, its network currently covers around 35% or about eight million of the population of Peninsular Malaysia and it hopes to expand into the East Malaysian states of Sabah and Sarawak by the second quarter 2010.
Its share of new fixed broadband subscribers grew from 32% in the first quarter of 2009 to 39% in the second quarter and it expects to cover 45% of the whole country by the end of 2010 and 65% by the end of 2012.
“These achievements have resulted in P1 being regarded regionally and internationally as a leader and reference in 4G deployment and moreover, we've received visitors from Cambodia, Bangladesh, the Philippines, Vietnam, India, Indonesia, Chile, Iran, Saudi Arabia and others,” said P1 chief executive officer, Michael Lai.
Its desktop and portable WiMAX modems are also used by operators Globe and Liberty in the Philippines; Wateen, MobiLink, Augere and Wi-tribe in Pakistan; MENA Telecom in Bahrain; UK Broadband; OneMax in the Carribean; Vtel and Globe Mobile in Taiwan.
It recently acquired a WiMAX liicense in Singapore and is evaluating its target market in that city state, which is already well supplied by nationwide fixed terrestrial broadband, according to Lai; which leads us to believe that P1 will go after nomadic and mobile users – considering that Singapore's
In the works are international roaming agreements with Yota in Russia, UQ WiMAX, Tatung Infocomm, VMax, Vee and Global Mobile Corp.
P1's Michael Lai regularly promotes Mobile WiMAX at international conferences and also to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), especially in relation to WiMAX's adoption as one the technologies in its IMT-Advanced family. WiMAX was earlier adopted into the ITU's IMT-2000 family of 3G technologies, along with five other 3G technologies, such as WCDMA, CDMA2000 and others.
A WiMAX Forum board member?
P1 is on the executive management committee of the Wireless Operators Alliance – the voce of WiMAX operators and it actively participates in several working groups of the WiMAX Forum, www.wimaxforum.org, founded to enable interoperability between fixed and mobile WiMAX equipment from different vendors and their certification, and it's pinnacle achievement would if it were selected to sit on the WiMAX Forum's board.
"We’ve received word that we have been recommended by our peers within the 4G world to be on the board of WiMAX Forum and for such a young company, this is indeed an achievement by itself,” said its chief executive officer Michael Lai at a media briefing at its headquarters dubbed Packet Hub the following afternoon.
The WiMAX Forum board will have to deliberate the recommendation based on its contribution to the 4G world and judging by it's achievements so far, Lai is confident it will be selected to sit on the board
Problems of WiMAX
Michael Lai admits that one of the problems with WiMAX which P1 has to overcome its its penetration through walls of buildings, as from its experience, its WiMAX signals can penetrate through one wall, though there were problems with reception if there are several walls between the base station and the modem, such as in apartment buildings.
Telecommunication consultants and experts have said that the limitation is not so much the signals from the base station which can have powerful transmitters but the power of transmissions from the end-user's modem back to the base station, as this is limited not only by its size and the need to conserve battery power in the case of mobile phones but also by the exposure level of end users to electromagnetic waves.
Experts have also pointed out that while there is no evidence of danger of mobile phone and other such non-ionising radiation to public health, still it would be prudent not to use your phone at the limit of the cell coverage, since this is when the phone is transmitting at maximum power to be able to communicate back to the base station. and it's the phone, not the base station that users are holding to their ear.
To solve such signal strength problems, operators like P1 may have to provide outdoor modems with a connection to an indoor access point, as is done with fixed WiMAX.
One of the wishes of the WiMAX and 3G communities is that they be allowed to operate their services in the 700MHz band. Remember how people praise the ATUR phone for its ability to work, even in the jungle. Well ATUR based on first-generation NMT technology used the 450MHz band in Malaysia, hence its very long range, while 800MHz TDMA and CDMA cellular systems in North America also had long range and could work in the countryside.
Another problem with WiMAX in general is its limited range from the base station, typically 1.5 km without repeaters. One of the reasons is that the higher the frequency, the faster its signal strength drops off with distance through the air and the less its ability to penetrate through walls and other obstacles.
This is a known problem with WiFi which operates at 2.4 GHz and also with 2.1GHz used by 3G and 1,800 MHz used by GSM. Also, according to the experts, is the limted effective range of the 64-QAM (Quadrature Amplitude Modulation) which WiMAX uses to achieve its high data througput.
64-QAM represents a unique set of six bits per symbol and it has a constellation of 64 symbols, each corresponding to different amplitudes and angular phase shifts, while 3G currently uses 16-QAM with, where each of the 16 symbols represents four bits, hence is spectrally less efficient.
However, an expert explained that more symbols means that they are closer together and when received, their positions usually are shifted from their original position and at some distance, this shift is too much, resulting in the receiver confusing one set of six bits as the adjacent one, resulting in errors.
The solution is for both the transmiter and receiver to switch down to 16-QAM, hence a lower data througput or in the extreme, down to basic phase-shift keying with even a lower data rate.
So, 64-QAM works best when close to the base station, hence its limitation, though the competing 3G technology know as 3G Long Term Evolution (LTE) also uses 64-QAM and replaces the current use of Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) technology in the air-interface with Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA) technology used by WiMAX and the faster variants of WiFi.
For example, when P1 installed a base station in the commercial area of Sections 20 and 21 in Petaling Jaya late last year, its coverage in a diagramme inadvertantly shown to us by one of its field promoters only reached half-way down Jalan 20/7, a distance of about 1.5 km.
In field trials, we found that speeds were as claimed whilst within the indicated coverage but we lost connection a short distance beyond the coverage boundary and while P1 has since extended coverage of Section 20 and to the adjacent Section 14, still, some small parts of Section 14 remain uncovered.
Results of our road test of P1 WiMAX conducted in December 2008 are available here:-
http://commtechasia.net/comm-mainmenu-28/features-mainmenu-38/532-so-how-does-p1s-wimax-speeds-measure-up.html
However, we did not achieve as impressive speeds four months later when we tested P1's WiMAX-USB modem dubbed Wiggy in April 2009.
http://www.mobileworld.com.my/v2/index.php/20090409934/Consumer/News/A_look_at_pricing_and_speed_of_the_P1_Wiggy.html
This relatively short range of WiMAX in urban areas means that to achieve a wide coverage, operators will have to install more base stations to cover a given area and a radio engineer we spoke to at the Asia Pacific Emergency Services Workshop earlier in the week estimates that the WiMAX operators could be looking at a 10 years before they begin to realise a return on investment.
However, Michael Lai is confident that P1 expects its EBITDA (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation) to break even by 2011 and while this will be a considerable achievement for P1 – a pure play WiMAX operator - a positive EBITDA does not necessarily mean that it's profitable.
Whatever, P1 has rolled out its network significantly and unlike the other three 2.3GHz WiMAX spectrum licensees, it was not fined by the MCMC in late October for failing to make good use of its licence, which all four received at the same time.
“Spectrum is a national asset and those who receive it are duty bound to roll out a network sufficiently and provide service to the public and not to sit on it,” said Lai.
Also at the Asia Pacific Emergency Services Workshop, a participant who'd had experience of one of the other WiMAX licensees told this writer that its management subscribes to a mentality that WiMAX rollout will not bring a quick return on investment, unlike their other businesses, so they are hesitant to deploy but after it was fined, it got pretty active, as we shall soon see whether it's just theatrics or genuine.
Anyway, brickheads shouldn't be in the telecom business, should they?.
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