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WiBro stands for Wireless Broadband. It is a wireless broadband internet technology being developed by the Korean telecommucation industry. WiBro is an emerging broadband technology intended to let people use wireless devices such as cell phones to watch several TV broadcasts and surf the Internet simultaneously. Korean companies including Samsung have been at the forefront of developing the specification, also known as Digital Multimedia Broadcasting.

In February 2002, the Korean government allocated 100MHz of electromagnetic spectrum in the 2.3GHz band, and in late 2004 WiBro Phase 1 was standardized by the TTA (Telecommunications Technology Association) of Korea.

WiBro base stations will offer an aggregate data throughput of 30 to 50 Mbit/s and cover a radius of 1-5 km allowing for the use of portable internet usage within the range of a base station. The technology will also offer Quality of Service. The inclusion of QoS allows for WiBro to stream video content and other loss-sensitive data in a reliable manner. In contrast to WiMax, an American Wireless technology, WiBro uses licensed radio spectrum. From one point of view this is a stronger advantage for the technology; the spectrum it uses is licensed and correspondingly protected from un-licensed use, negating any potential interference from other sources using the same spectrum. These all appear to be (and may be) the stronger advantages over the WiMax standard, but the propietary nature of WiBro and its use of licensed spectrum that may not be available across the globe may keep it from becoming an international standard. While WiBro is quite exacting in its requirements from spectrum use to equipment design, WiMAX leaves much of this up to the equipment provider while providing enough detail to ensure interoperability between designs.

In the News

SK Telecom and Hanaro Telecom have announced a partnership to roll out WiBro nationwide in Korea, excluding Seoul and six provincial cities, where independent networks will be rolled out.

In November 2004, Intel and LG Electronics executives agreed to ensure compatibility between WiBro and WiMAX technology.

In September 2005, Samsung Electronics signed a deal with Sprint Nextel Corporation to provide equipment for a WiBro trial. Samsung Electronics, which has already provided WiBro test equipment to KDDI, is now supplying such gears to Sprint. Samsung Electronics is now talking with KDDI to supply EV-DO Revision A gears worth 800 billion won (approximately 800 million dollars).

In Korea, the Electronics and Telecommunication Research Institute (ETRI), Samsung Electronics and POS Data are upgrading speed of WiBro from the present 30Mbps to 50Mbps by the end of this year, while developing the next version to evolve into interactive communication service with speeds of 100Mbps.

In December 08, 2005, the standard for the broadband wireless technology known as mobile WiMax has been approved. Mobile WiMax networks will allow customers to wirelessly access the Internet anywhere they may be in a city. The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), a international standardization body, ratified the 802.16e standard, also called mobile WiMax, according to Roger Marks, chair of the 802.16 working group in the IEEE. He posted news of the development to the 802.16e newsgroup.

Wibro and WiMax

Competing standards include WiMax which is supported by by one of the technology's leading proponents, Intel. Part of the WiBro development work includes making WiBro compatible with WiMax, another emerging wireless specification. WiMax is designed for use over a number of miles, rather than the much shorter distances associated with the more established Wi-Fi and Bluetooth standards. In November 2004, Intel and LG Electronics executives agreed to ensure compatibility between WiBro and WiMAX technology.

WiBro is a WiMAX-like system developed in South Korea to provide better data handling than 3G cellular networks can provide before 4G networks arrive. There are movements to integrate WiBro into WiMax, but the WiBro experiment is really about demonstrating demand for mobile, data-centric broadband networks alongside 3G. The advantage WiBro - and, by extension, WiMAX - offers over 3G is a more data-centric focus. It's also cheaper. Mobile phone networks will be willing to roll out higher speed 3G network upgrades based on the HSDPA (High Speed Data Packet Access) quickly, and even if they do, there remains the bandwidth limitations inherent in the technology's cellular architecture. The system needs to cater not only for voice users but multiple data users, all sharing the available bandwidth. If too many users attach themselves to a given cell, their bandwith will fall.

That said, WiMAX is not going to trample all over 3G, or vice versa. 3G clearly isn't going to go away, and even if it becomes the dominant high-speed data network, there's still a big opportunity for WiMAX in metropolitan areas

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