De facto standardization
Years ago, when microwave links were predominantly TDM-based, they were considered to be just an ancillary part of the base station equipment. Therefore, the links were bundled by big vendors like Ericsson, Nokia Siemens Networks and NEC with the rest of the RAN equipment. But IP is bringing some kind of democracy to the telecom market, generating new business opportunities for smaller players that can beat the big players via the innovation path.
Setting aside the more recent 60-GHz and E-band solutions, if we look at the traditional 6-38 GHz bands, we will see most vendors offering almost the same top PHY features (256 QAM in 56-MHz channel), so technological competition is reduced to configuration options (all-indoor, all-outdoor or split mount) and TDM support implementation (pseudowires, native support or packet based scheduling). Functionality is so similar between vendors that many of them are already relying on commercial baseband chipsets to manufacture their products, the way that 3G and Wimax vendors do. Microwave vendors have reached a "de facto" standardization - which is positive, but not nearly enough.
On the other side we have operators with growing needs for transport capacity and cost optimization. They are forwarding these needs in the form of price pressure to microwave vendors. These vendors are beginning to get concerned about the direction of the market and wonder what their next move will be (apart from more marketing efforts).
WiMB is a move worth considering, not least because a potential interoperability process would be much easier than it is with mobile Wimax because the test cases are much fewer for a point-to-point, always-on, stationary technology. Would not WiMB be instrumental for operators and vendors to benefit from a really powerful ecosystem?
Esteban Monturus is a market analyst for Europe and backhaul at Maravedis