GCT Semiconductor: Mobile WiMAX Delayed, but Coming in 2009

Background:

GCT is a nine-year-old fabless semiconductor company that designs, develops and
markets components for the wireless communications industry.  The company
has considerable expertise in CMOS Radio Frequency (RF) and System On a Chip
(SOC) technologies.  They have been granted over 30 patents with
approximately 35 others filed and pending.  GCT has approximately 200
employees, including over 30 PhDs amongst approximately 150 engineers worldwide
(140 at their Seoul, Korea R and D center).

Mobile WiMAX terminal equipment is one of GCT’s three target markets (the other
two are mobile digital TV and 3G/CDMA RF).  GCT has several "strategic
investors," that provide them guidance, direction and open sales channels for
the company.  DoCoMo, SK-Telecom, Samsung, LG, UTStarcom, UMC are among
those strategic investors.  They also have financial investors that provide
capital.

Interview:

Last week, I met with the company at their San Jose, CA headquarters to get
their assessment of the mobile WiMAX market and ecosystem.  Alex Sum, VP of
Marketing and Business Development stated that, "Mobile WiMAX is delayed, not
dead.  Like many new emerging technologies, Mobile WiMAX is taking longer
to roll out than originally anticipated, but it’s definitely alive and beginning
to ramp." Alex cited WCDMA deployment in Japan as an example of a similarly
delayed wireless technology that eventually succeeded.  For that matter,
WiFi was also delayed till it hit competitive price points. 

Mr. Sum sees a worldwide Mobile WiMAX ecosystem emerging, with Korea (KT and SK
Telecom) leading and many other countries joining the race as more service
providers (SPs) deploy networks.  Other SPs GCT is working with include:
UQC (Japan), Clearwire, Packet-1 (Malaysia), Scartel (Russia), Tata and BSNL
(both from India).

Author’s Note: One factor that may have pushed back Mobile WiMAX
deployment and device availability is the long design cycle required for new
carrier class devices and equipment.  In this case, both WiMAX Forum and SP
certification are required prior to making the device(s) available on a given
network.  In fact, the WiMAX Forum(TM) must certify both the component and
the device that uses it.  Then comes SP testing and certification of the
device. 

Over many years of experience, we’ve come to fully appreciate that it takes much
longer than anticipated to roll out any new metro or wide area network
technology- especially broadband wireless that has been many years in the
making.

GCT envisions three stages of Mobile WiMAX devices:

1.  Dongles (external modems) for notebook PCs (which will soon have
integrated WiMAX adapters)
2.  WiMAX enabled MIDs (promoted in South Korea by KT and Intel)
3.  Smart phones (with 3G and WiMAX capabilities)

Where are the MIDs?

Yukyung introduced the first WiMAX enabled 2.3GHz MID in December 2008 for KT’s
WiBro network in South Korea (WiBro uses 8.75MHz channels, while WiMAX uses
either 5 or 10MHz channels).  Other MIDs are now also being sold for use on
that network.

Alex opined that an Android based WiMAX MID might be announced towards the end
of 2009. 

Authors Note:  That would be big news, as we’ve learned that most
WiMAX hand held devices in development use either Windows XP or mobile Linux
(Moblin) v2 OS’s.  We would not be surprised to see a Samsung multi-mode
smart phone (VoIP over WiMAX/WiFi) introduced later this year.  The
distinction between MIDs and smart phones has blurred to the point of
non-existence, since many MIDs will have voice capability while smart phones
will have broadband wireless access.

What Devices Might Use GCT WiMAX chips?

While Alex believes that Intel may be the dominant WiMAX chip company for
notebook PC’s, he sees plenty of other opportunities in WiMAX terminal equipment
(the company does not make components for WiMAX base stations).  Those
include: MIDs, WiMAX/WiFi and WiMAX/VoIP CPE, netbooks, and smart phones. 
The company sees mobile WiMAX happening in South Korea, Russia, Japan, Taiwan,
Malaysia, India (after the licenses are auctioned later this year), the U.S.,
and other countries.

GCT’s GDM 7215 is a single chip that supports mobile WiMAX (IEEE 802.16e) with
WiFi, all into one monolithic integrated circuit.  It is expected to be
designed into many of the different types of terminal equipment noted above, and
is the only chip in the industry that can support both WiMAX and WiFi on a
single chip.

GCT GDM7215, Integrated WiMAX/Wi-Fi Chip

Will WiMAX devices be able to operate on different networks in different
countries?

It all depends on the WiMAX chip used.  In answer to a question about
multi-frequency WiMAX devices, Alex stated that it’s an issue of cost vs
performance and flexibility.  He said that 90% of WiMAX chipsets used today
operated in a single frequency band.  That implies that a Mobile WiMAX
device, which uses such a chipset, would only be able to operate on the specific
WiMAX network(s) that support the corresponding frequency band.  This
limits the portability of a WiMAX device.  (Note: Wi-Fi is considered
portable since it usually works anywhere you turn it on.  This is because
Wi-Fi components support multiple versions of the 802.11 standard – operating at
multiple frequencies). 

GCT’s WiMAX products that are in production (and shipping to customers) include
integrated circuits that are broad enough to support both the 2.3 GHz and 2.5Ghz
bands in a single chip.  They are sampling chips (not yet in production)
that will support operation from 2.3 to 3.7 GHz.  If a such a multi
frequency (e,g, 2.3/ 2.5GHz, 3.5GHz,) WiMAX chip/ chip set were used in a Mobile
WiMAX device, together with a frequency sensing scheme implemented in the chip,
then true world-wide roaming/portability would be possible.  In that case,
the device would tune to the frequency supported by the WiMAX Base Station after
powering up.  With roaming agreements between WiMAX SPs, mobile WiMAX
devices would then be truly portable – much like GSM cell phones are today.

Will WiMAX ever be used in China?

While China has opted for three different types of mobile BWA technologies,
Mobile WiMAX is not among them: TD-SCDMA adopted by China Mobile, WCDMA adopted
by China Unicom, and CDMA2000 adopted by China Telecom.  But there is a new
possibility for broadband wireless Internet access at 700MHz.  That
spectrum currently is used by UHF broadcasters and belongs to SARF- a China
Government body.  However, the Chinese government has stated it wants to
use the spectrum for "internet purposes." Could that frequency be used for
Mobile WiMAX in China?

We are investigating that new potential market along with colleagues at IEEE
ComSoc-SCV and SVC Wireless.  GCT is also participating in this research
project.  We will report back to you once we have something substantial. 

Alan Weissberger