IEEE 802.20 - History

History

The 802.20 working group was proposed in response to products using technology originally develoepd by ArrayComm marketed under the iBurst brand name. The Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions adopted iBurst as ATIS-0700004-2005. The Mobile Broadband Wireless Access (MBWA) Working Group was approved by IEEE Standards Board on December 11, 2002 to prepare a formal specification for a packet-based air interface designed for Internet Protocol-based services. At its height, the group had 175 participants.

On June 8, 2006, the IEEE-SA Standards Board directed that all activities of the 802.20 Working Group be temporarily suspended until October 1, 2006. The decision came from complaints of a lack of transparency, and that the group's chair, Jerry Upton, was favoring Qualcomm. The unprecedented step came after other working groups had also been subject to related allegations of large companies undermining the standard process. Intel and Motorola had filed appeals, claiming they were not given time to prepare proposals. These claims were cited in a 2007 lawsuit filed by Broadcom against Qualcomm.

On September 15, 2006, the IEEE-SA Standards Board approved a plan to enable the working group to move towards completion and approval by reorganizing. The chair at the November 2006 meeting was Arnold Greenspan. On July 17, 2007, the IEEE 802 Executive Committee along with its 802.20 Oversight Committee approved a change to voting in the 802.20 working group. Instead of a vote per attending individual, each entity would have a single vote.

On June 12, 2008, the IEEE approved the base standard to be published. Additional supporting standards included IEEE 802.20.2-2010, a protocol conformance statement, 802.20.3-2010, minimum performance characteristics, an amendment 802.20a-2010 for a Management Information Base and some corrections, and amendment 802.20b-2010 to support bridging.

802.20 standard was put to hibernation on March 2011 due to lack of activity.

In 2004 another wireless standard group had been formed as IEEE 802.22, for wireless regional networks using unused television station frequencies. Trials such as those in Holland by T-Mobile International in 2004 were announced as "Pre-standard 802.20". These were based on an orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing technology known as FLASH-OFDM developed by Flarion (since 2006 owned by Qualcomm). However, other service providers soon adopted 802.16e (the mobile version of WiMAX).

In September 2008, the Association of Radio Industries and Businesses in Japan adopted the 802.20-2008 standard as ARIB STD-T97. Kyocera markets products supporting the standard under the iBurst name. As of March 2011, Kyocera claimed 15 operators offered service in 12 countries.