By Timothy Sanders

Introduction
It is often underappreciated in the broadband wireless industry how important ancillary companies are to the WiMAX ecosystem. Certainly chip companies, radio vendors, system integrators and service providers are all essential. But the knowledge of how to interlace these disparate participants is just as important to the success of WiMAX as any other contribution.

Adlane Fellah the Founder and CEO of Maravedis, Inc. set out over two years ago to provide an integral part of the WiMAX ecosystem that no one had thought to build. Namely a comprehensive database of worldwide license holders and the technical requirements and specifications of licensed spectrum on a country by country basis.

Already an industry analyst of note, Mr. Fellah had been tracking WiMAX on that basis and performing private market research for firms long before WiMAX impinged upon the global broadband wireless consciousness. The story of how this unique series of databases came about and their ultimate value to the industry is a fascinating glimpse into the fragmentation our industry has suffered and a testimonial to just how important information is.

Genesis of a Good Idea
As mentioned before this idea began several years ago. On his own Mr. Fellah built a database to track the holders of broadband wireless access (BWA) useful spectrum for about twenty countries. His vision was of a fully searchable, sortable database delivered in a simple Excel format. However, due to the difficulties which we will describe in more detail below, the project stalled with the amount of effort required.

However, Fellah successfully attracted an industry leading company that saw his vision and clearly understood the need as well. So with sponsorship Fellah has grown this database to cover fifty-three of the most important countries of the world.

"Without our sponsor involved it would have been very difficult to pull this research off," said Fellah. "We're excited to be able to offer this full suite of information to customers worldwide."

So what do these two databases consist of?

A Dual Approach
Fellah realized early on that a first task would be to identify and profile the holders of licensed spectrum. This was easy in some countries but much more difficult in others. Interestingly the US is among the more difficult especially in the 2.5 GHz band. But More on that later.

To begin with Fellah chose to include coverage for the 2.3 GHz, 2.5 GHz and the 3.5 GHz ranges (including the 3.4 to 3.6 GHz or 3.6 to 3.8 GHz as used in some countries)  along with some 700 MHz.

He collated information including the country, spectrum range licensed, license holder, length of license, incept data and the geographic scope of each holders spectrum. In a few countries and spectrum ranges this is very simple. In fact a single license holder may control a whole country's entire license. This is however, very rare.

Realizing that International standards and rules for the use of spectrum do vary Fellah quickly understood that a technical database describing the particulars of each country's details was essential for the industry to understand its opportunities. For example, in some countries, 3.5 GHz may actually fall between 3.5 and 3.6 GHz, in others it is 3.6 to 3.8 GHz. Guard band, channel and block sizes can vary as can uplink and downlink spectrum ranges and their spacing. Power allotments vary as do the allocated modulation requirements such as time division duplex (TDD) or frequency division duplex (FDD). For example, many European 3.5 GHz licenses don't permit mobility.

"The regulatory environments in North America and in several other countries  are neutral for broadband spectrum," added Fellah. "By this we mean that it doesn't favor 3G technology."

Vendors, in particular, need access to this information to develop WiMAX products that suit their respective markets and to expand to new markets where their gear is already well optimized. The technical database serves all of the previously mentioned stakeholders. However, engineers, R&D experts and others will find it particularly helpful. Finding this information was previously a brutal proposition.

The Needs of the Many
Certainly most countries keep at least initial track of who owns spectrum licenses. There are also details published on the technical specifications. However, the two are only rarely connected. Also too finding that information can be easier said than done. Some countries facilitate the information readily plus, keep it updated and easily searchable. That is by far the exception to the rule. But perhaps we are getting a bit ahead of ourselves. A good question to ask is why did the industry need comprehensive multi-country license and technical databases in the first place.

Numerous stakeholders in every country need information on broadband wireless license holders. For the WiMAX standard to become ubiquitous however, easy access to information is very crucial. For investors, regulators, service providers and vendors to maximize their strategic plans a global snapshot conveys an overview of information that is crucial to strategic planning and massive deployments.

Investors are amongst the first people interested in knowing who holds spectrum and the rules that govern it. Identifying and moving early with opportunities is often the crucial razor stroke that separates successful investments from mediocre ones. Regulators need current information on what various countries are doing with their spectrum and the global trends applying to various bands. After all, in most countries facilitating industry and broadband adoption is a major public policy win if achievable.

Service providers need to identify potential competitors. More importantly they need to find opportunities. Identifying markets that fit a service provider's model and chosen technology solutions turn on early clear information and disruptive acquisitions of spectrum. Obviously vendors are looking for customers that fit their product lines. However, numerous other stakeholders need information of this type as well, ranging from municipal governments eager to launch citywide services to non-profits and consultants hoping to assist those processes.

The needs are real, unfortunately so are the impediments to finding this information.

Difficulties
Despite speaking five languages fluently, Fellah quickly found language wasn't even the first barrier to successfully collating information.

"Just getting people to respond to your request for information is a major impediment," explained Fellah. "We had to go back again and again in many cases to get what we needed."

Also, while being multi-lingual helped, language barriers in concert with disinterest from government agencies nearly derailed collating information from some countries.

"I can talk to a lot of the world, but I don't speak Russian for example," said Fellah. "Virtually none of the Russian regulatory body website was in English."

This caused numerous difficulties.

"The language barrier coupled with little responsiveness from this group forced us to finally hire and pay a local Russian consultant to collate the information," said Fellah. "Even with a local native speaking contractor it still took six months to gather the data."

Disinterest and language confusion are just part of the difficulties in gathering information. Sometimes the very nature of a fluid democracy can hinder the process.

"In the US the 2.5 GHz spectrum is very fragmented," explained Fellah. "Many shell companies were used to buy spectrum to protect market positioning secrets."

Fellah added that the FCC has not been able to keep good track of the transfer of licenses. Also, for the Educational Broadband Radio (EBR) portion, the license holders frequently lease their spectrum to multiple corporate customers for commercial purposes. There are other countries where similar practices abound. There are few laws requiring complete disclosure of lease holders for example.

So Fellah chose to focus on profiling the actual license holder to at least give firms a starting point for information.

Staying Current and Valuable
As you might imagine all of this work resulted in a very massive set of twin databases that would be very expensive to customers. So Fellah chose to vend his product on a region by region basis as well as in the complete set.

He sells the product to include six months of updates (done quarterly). He plans some major upgrades soon. Fellah believes these are cornerstones of his products value---expanded coverage and current information.

"We plan to expand our databases to cover Africa and the Middle East," Fellah explained.
 

Tim Sanders is founder of TheFinalMile, Inc., a fixed wireless consulting group. His experience came from running a multistate Wireless ISP. He can be reached at tim@thefinalmile.net  or 828-253-0702.