Taiwan inks WiMax pacts with Alcatel, Sprint, others
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The Taiwanese government added several companies to a&#160;growing list of WiMax wireless broadband technology partners&#160;on Monday, including Alcatel-Lucent, Motorola, Nokia Siemens Networks, and Sprint Nextel.Taipei has been putting together incentive packages for multinationals to entice them to build WiMax research and development centers in Taiwan, work on development projects with companies from the island, and to make the island a part of the standards-making process for the technology, which delivers high speed Internet service over the airwaves.Intel was an early champion of WiMax as a replacement for the Wi-Fi wireless networking standard uses for Internet access in coffee shops, airports and other places in much of the developed world. The chip giant has already signed a similar agreement with Taiwan, and is working with Taiwanese computer parts makers to ready the technology for inclusion in laptop PCs next year.&quot;We believe partnerships between Taiwan WiMax players and global leaders will speed up the development of WiMax technologies,&quot; said Steve Ruey-Long Chen, Taiwan&#39;s economics minister, in a speech at the 2007 WiMax Forum, which opened in Taipei on Monday.The agreements are memorandums of understanding, nonbinding pacts to work together to promote WiMax. Most signatories of such agreements have already pledged to invest in Taiwan or work with Taiwanese companies.&quot;Nokia Siemens Networks already has partnerships with Taiwanese companies. This memorandum of understanding provides the framework to extend those partnerships,&quot; said Marko Tiesmaki, head of business development in broadband wireless access at the company.Alcatel-Lucent has already pledged to establish a WiMax lab in Taiwan, said Patrick Plas, chief operating officer of the company&#39;s GSM/WiMax business. Its memorandum signifies its openness to working with Taiwan to promote WiMax technology, he said.The pacts are part of Taiwan&#39;s plan to become one of the largest producers of WiMax equipment in the world. The island is already positioning itself to be one of the fastest adopters of WiMax wireless broadband Internet connectivity outside of North America. Officials see the technology as a good way to spread broadband Internet access throughout the island, which includes remote mountain villages and sparsely populated outlying islands.Taiwan often signs such agreements with multinationals to stimulate technology development on the island. Such deals can encourage companies to build technology-specific R&amp;D centers on the island through the use of incentives such as tax-free status, research grants, rent-free space in science parks and more.Other companies have also signed memorandums of understanding with Taiwan, including Starent Networks, NEC, Nortel Networks, and German WiMax tester Rohde &amp; Schwarz.Last week, Taipei pledged to spend $1.22 billion to build out Taiwan&#39;s WiMax network over the next five years, including $1 billion for a fiber optic backbone running the length of the island and $220 million for WiMax base stations and other equipment.The island has been promoting its M Taiwan project, or Mobile Taiwan, to speed up Internet mobility and encourage companies on the island to invest more in building products for WiMax, 3G (third generation) mobile telecommunications and other wireless technologies. The government has granted WiMax licenses to six operators, and some of them plan to start offering services as early as next year.
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NTT DoCoMo, Vodafone and 24 other mobile phone firms and manufacturers join forces to develop the next generation of high-speed networks.
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(InfoWorld) - Industry associations from India and Taiwan have signed an agreement to work more closely in the future on semiconductor technology, including building better business ties and finding further areas for collaboration. The India Semiconductor Association and Taiwan Semiconductor Industry Association pledged in a memorandum of understanding signed Monday, to host more meetings, organize more events, seek out business opportunities, help companies from each place find partners, create an information database and more as time goes on. The agreement ties together one of the world's largest semiconductor producing economies, Taiwan, to one of the fastest growing markets in the world, India. India is also keen to build up its semiconductor prowess, officials said. Taiwan is home to the world's two largest contract chip makers, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. (TSMC) and United Microelectronics Corp. (UMC), as well as the biggest chip packaging and testing company, Advanced Semiconductor Engineering Inc. The island also boasts the second biggest chip design industry by revenue, behind only the U.S., and recent investment in computer memory chips has also transformed Taiwan into a DRAM powerhouse. The island makes nearly a fifth of the world's DRAM, and companies are fast moving into NAND flash memory. Some Taiwanese companies have already taken advantage of opportunities in India. MediaTek Inc., Taiwan's largest chip design firm and the biggest maker of chips for optical drives such as DVD players, has already set up a software development center in Noida, India. The center is key to one of MediaTek's top selling products, mobile phone chips. Not only does the Indian office create the user interface for MediaTek mobile phone products, but it is also a point from which the company can tap India's fast-growing mobile phone industry. MediaTek is already one of the top mobile phone chip makers in the China market. India boasts the fastest growing mobile phone market in the world, making it an important place for chip makers to set up shop. The nation added 8.06 million new subscribers in July, raising its total to 192.98 million, according to the according to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI). By comparison, the number of mobile phone subscribers in China rose to 508.56 million at the end of July, an addition of 6.9 million new users in the month, according to China's Ministry of Information Industry (MII). A number of chip companies from around the world have established research centers in India. Qualcomm Inc., the largest chip design house by revenue and a major U.S. mobile chip company, has also opened a software and chip development lab in India. The company uses it as a base for research and development as well as a place from which to promote its CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) technology, according to its Web site.
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A UN telecommunications agency has approved WiMax as a global standard for mobile devices, which will pave the way for widespread adoption of the platform as a method for next-generation cellular data transfer.
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Taipei plans to make wireless internet access available across citywide by the end of 2005, joining a small number of cities offering Wi-Fi networks.
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Chinese telecom equipment giant ZTE will use Intel's WiMax chips in its development plans.
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Almost a year after Sprint Nextel Corp. disclosed it would develop a mobile broadband network using WiMax technology, the wireless provider said yesterday it is teaming up with competing provider Clearwire Corp. to help build it.
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(InfoWorld) - Thirteen companies have applied to bid for the right to build WiMax high-speed wireless Internet networks in Taiwan, an effort one group hopes to derail out of health concerns. The agency responsible for vetting applications, the National Communications Commission, said nine companies will vie for licenses in northern Taiwan, while 10 companies are competing for licenses in the south. Taiwan plans to pass out three licenses in each zone, for a total of six WiMax licenses island-wide. One group is not happy to see the auction process proceeding. Earlier this month, the Taiwan Environmental Protection Union petitioned the government to halt the WiMax licensing process until further health studies can be made on the impact of electromagnetic waves from cell phone and WiMax base stations. Their concern centers on the belief that the waves can cause cancer, but the group says it cannot prove such a link. Taiwan is one of just a handful of places globally that has already started the process of offering WiMax licenses. It's part of the island's M Taiwan initiative, to establish WiMax as a way for people to access the Internet, even in the most remote areas of the island. Part of the idea is also to boost Taiwanese companies with domestic orders for WiMax gear, by promoting the technology. The island's three largest mobile phone service providers have all applied for WiMax licenses. Chunghwa Telecom Co. Ltd., the biggest phone company in Taiwan, applied to bid for licenses in both the north and south of Taiwan, as did Far Eastone Telecom Co. Ltd. and a subsidiary of Taiwan Mobile Co. Ltd. WiMax base stations can send broadband Internet signals to far greater distances than the Wi-Fi technology used to deliver wireless Internet access in coffee shops and airports. Although estimates vary on how far WiMax signals can go, in a densely populated place such as Taiwan, the distance should be between 2 kilometers (1.24 miles) and 4 km. Â
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InfoWorld - Alcatel-Lucent has invested in WiMax chip maker Sequans Communications, the latest show of support for the emerging long-range wireless networking technology.
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InfoWorld - A pair of Taiwanese companies signed a technology agreement to develop 3G (third generation telecommunications) and 3.5G smartphones around the Windows Mobile OS, adding to the growing pool of companies developing mobile phones around the Microsoft software.
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Small beginnings, big future Comment It became obvious this week that although Alcatel is starting small in WiMAX, compared to say the Sprint contract for Motorola, it is still actively looking to build a head of steam.â¦
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Wi-Fi hotspot owners BT Openzone, Singapore&#39;s StarHub, Malaysia&#39;s maxis, Japan&#39;s NTT Com, T-Mobile, Australia&#39;s Telstra and Telecom Italia have entered into a broad roaming agreement to allow each company&#39;s customers to access the others&#39; networks.
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The Taiwan government will sign a memorandum work on WiMax technology and product development with multinationals.
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Leading Japanese mobile phone carrier NTT DoCoMo Inc. said Friday it will tie up with broadband provider ACCA Networks to introduce ultra-fast mobile WiMAX technology.
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French telecoms equipment maker  Alcatel is nearing a deal with a Chinese peer on cooperating to  build third-generation (3G) mobile phone networks using a  Chinese technology standard, a senior executive said.
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Sprint Nextel yesterday announced a series of partnerships aimed at deploying a high-speed wireless network called WiMax, as it offered glimpses of the new technology at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
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Industry giants combine network divisions and promise to deliver better mobile Internet access using HSDPA and WiMax.