WiMAX just hype for now?
607271
&quot;These applications will not be large enough to sustain the multitude of silicon suppliers and equipment manufacturers who have expressed interest in developing products for WiMAX.
149978
Marconi is the latest big name to join the Wimax Forum, which is expected to certify its first long-range wireless broadband products next year.
54016
Sprint-Clearwire detente? There could be changes afoot in the world of WiMAX. One rumor-happy research firm is claiming that US WiMAX pioneer Clearwire may soon be purchased by Intel, while another is speculating that the company will soon resume its defunct WiMAX relationship with Sprint Nextel.â¦
179808
Embedded Wi-Fi products are taking off, and their popularity is likely to grow at an accelerating pace, according to In-Stat/MDR. The market for embedded Wi-Fi clients -- including mobile PCs
566173
(InfoWorld) - WiMax World 2007 opens in Chicago Tuesday with major service providers and network equipment vendors expected to offer demonstrations and a few details on plans for mobile WiMax deployments that will hit their stride next year. Sprint Nextel CTO Barry West will provide an update of Sprint's Xohm wireless network in a keynote Wednesday. In August, he said the service will be launched in Chicago and the Washington/Baltimore area by year's end and will reach 100 million users by the end of 2008. Motorola, meanwhile, is planning to demonstrate its coming mobile WiMax technology from a boat in the waters of Lake Michigan. Many of the WiMax plans are focused on major hardware devices being sold to carriers for backhauling wireless signals from outdoor mesh networks that have Wi-Fi connectivity. Sprint's Xohm will be open access, giving WiMax-certified devices like laptops and handhelds the ability to operate at speeds up to 4Mbps, perhaps five times faster than what carriers call third-generation wireless speeds, West said in August. However, one vendor, MobileAccess Networks in Vienna, Va., announced new WiMax hardware today that will work in remote wiring closets of businesses to deliver WiMax capabilities alongside Wi-Fi, cellular, and public safety networks. The MobileAccess WiMax module, to be shown at the trade show, will undergo WiMax certification from Sprint, said MobileAccess CEO Cathy Zatloukal in an interview. "We expect several existing customers will be interested in it," she said. The module will fit inside an existing MobileAccess MA-2000 Universal Wireless Network box now deployed in many businesses to aggregate multiple wireless signals for Wi-Fi, cellular, and public safety, she explained. The value of having a WiMax module to add-in is that it will work alongside existing infrastructure and provides a single cabling infrastructure to support it. One MobileAccess customer, Tommy Russo of Akridge Real Estate Services in Washington, said he plans to add the WiMax module to his MobileAccess hardware when it is available. "WiMax will give us bigger play and more robust service," said Russo, CTO at Akridge, which provides Wi-Fi and cellular services in a downtown building for hundreds of employees and customers. "As more devices use WiMax, which will happen, it enables more things to connect, everything from telephones to laptops with WiMax." Russo said he expects building management and lighting controls could run over WiMax. Someday, WiMax could even be used to merge Wi-Fi and ZigBee, a wireless standard for embedded control devices, he said. Russo said he has seen the MobileAccess module, but he has not tested it and is eager to start testing as soon as possible. His building has been using voice-over-Wi-Fi for about 18 months. The price for the module has not been announced, Zatloukal said. MobileAccess' module is so far unique, although placing WiMax alongside other wireless modes inside a building will be important to other vendors, said Craig Mathias, an analyst at The Farpoint Group in Ashland, Mass., and a Computerworld columnist. MobileAccess competes with LGC Wireless in San Jose and Interwireless in Universal City, Calif., he said. At WiMax World, there will be plenty of demonstrations, including the module by MobileAccess, Mathias said. "The WiMax market is here now, and we'll see a rollout of commercial services this year, so the show is a chance to get your hands on it, to see what it does and what it costs. The reality is coming quickly, and we'll see how successful it will be." Computerworld is an InfoWorld affiliate
651763
(InfoWorld) - It's been a year since a Mobile WiMax service was launched in Seoul and one of the world's most wired cities became one of the most wireless. The service is based on WiBro, a South Korean system that has become a part of the 802.16e Mobile WiMax standard. Whereas Mobile WiMax encompasses three frequency bands and several signal bandwidths, WiBro covers a subset of these and is limited to 2.3GHz and an 8.75MHz bandwidth per channel. To mark the launch of its WiBro service last year, KT Corp., the former state-run telecom carrier, took journalists on a trip around Seoul to try out the service in a WiMax-equipped bus. The reporters came away impressed, able to watch Internet video streaming while surfing the Web and video conferencing all while driving down the street. But what's the reality a year later? Last week I returned to Seoul to test the service again, this time outside the controlled environment of a promotional bus ride. Seoul is among the first cities in the world to have Mobile WiMax, so the results provide an indication of what the rest of the world can look forward to in the future. I accessed the service while on the subway, in a bus, and sitting in a coffee shop, and the results were as impressive as they were in last year's staged demonstration. This was especially true on the subway. Riding the number 2 line from Samseong Station to City Hall, the journey has both underground and overground sections. It connects the Teheran Valley high-tech district in the south, crosses the Han River and ends in the heart of Seoul's business and media district. Throughout the 30-minute journey I did not lose the signal once, although the speed did fluctuate somewhat. It would often drop when the train moved out of a station and increase again when it arrived at the next stop. Web and e-mail access worked so well that I decided to try something a little more demanding and accessed streaming video news clips from the Yahoo Japan portal. The clips are encoded at 300k bps (bits per second) and played without any problem, even while the train was in motion. Equally surprising was that my little experiment did not draw the attention of the passengers sitting next to me. In a country where most high-end cell phones have TV reception, watching streaming video on the train doesn't seem to impress anybody! I also accessed an FTP site in the U.S. from the train and started to download a 40M-byte video file. The software indicated a download speed of up to 660k bps in stations, and about 320k bps when the train was in motion. Access from a bus produced much the same results, and while surfing from a coffee shop I enjoyed a connection that hit those same top speeds and remained stable. Technically the WiBro service appears a success, at least if the results of my small trial are anything to go by, so it's a surprise that it has attracted less than 10,000 users in its first year of service. The service costs a flat fee of 16,000 won (US$17.60) per month for unlimited use during the current trial period, and KT even throws in a WiBro adapter, which plugs into laptops via the USB port. So what's holding people back? Until now a limited number of WiBro adapters has been available. said Yeom Woojong, a spokesman for KT in Seoul. But now more companies are offering them, he said, and KT expects to attract more subscribers as the year goes on. At the start of the year it set a target to have 200,000 WiBro users by the end of 2007, and it's sticking to that number, Yeom said. Â
624479
Sprint Nextel Corp., the nation's third-largest cellular provider, said Tuesday it will use an emerging technology called WiMax to build a new high-speed wireless network.
238810
Now that&#160;WiMax has been certified as a form of 3G mobile data infrastructure, Sprint Nextel is changing its tune about the WiMax network it plans to launch commercially in April.Last year when Sprint was shopping around for a &quot;4G&quot; technology, it had a lot to say about how 4G would do something 3G networks couldn&#39;t. WiMax won out as its 4G network of choice. But in a keynote address Thursday at CTIA Wireless I.T. &amp; Entertainment in San Francisco, an executive of Sprint&#39;s WiMax business, Xohm, sang a different tune.&quot;I think we spend entirely too much time talking about the Gs,&quot; said Atish Gude, senior vice president of mobile broadband operations at Sprint. Last week, the Radiocommunication Sector of the International Telecommunication Union certified WiMax as a 3G technology, providing a seal of approval many governments require for carriers to deploy it. Wider deployment generally means lower equipment prices, which helps service providers.That&#39;s not to say the carrier no longer wants to differentiate WiMax. In his presentation, Gude played up the wide band of spectrum Xohm will be able to use, which he said will cut down on delays for individual users the same way a multilane freeway can move faster than a two-lane highway even when the speed limit is the same. In the real world, a lot of people want to use the network at the same time, he said.But more important is the business model of the two networks, Gude said, characterizing the traditional cellular business as more closed and controlled, while Xohm&#39;s business will tap into the dynamics of the open Internet. The company is opening itself up to partners for application development as well as connected devices, he said. The best known of these deals, announced in July, was&#160;an agreement with Google to develop a variety of Internet-based services.Sprint hopes a wide range of devices, including cameras, media players, and in-car electronics, ultimately will connect to the WiMax network. Instead of Sprint stores, they will be sold in the most logical places for their device types, such as consumer electronics stores. The first devices to come for Xohm next year will be wireless cards for notebook PCs, which Gude expects to be sold in the computer departments of electronics stores.The company will also have open API for third parties to develop services to run on the network. As an example, Gude envisioned a video portal that users could navigate using the five buttons traditionally found on video players. Xohm will probably charge for some of what it offers to third parties, but its aim is not to stifle innovation, he said.Sprint isn&#39;t getting out of its cellular business now that it&#39;s starting Xohm -- which it expects to reach 100 million U.S. residents by the end of 2008 -- but seems to be looking at it in a different light now.&quot;We are a content distribution industry,&quot; Gude said. It&#39;s just that for most of cellular&#39;s history, all the content has been user-generated and consisted of talking.
332175
Mobile communications firm Motorola   MOT.N has high hopes for the mobile version of WiMAX   broadband, the company's technology head said in a newspaper   interview.
288513
Company preps single chip WiMax compliant part for use in wireless broadband gear.
572862
(InfoWorld) - Sprint Nextel's ambitious Xohm WiMax vision will be based on a radical change in the way users pay for the service compared with cellular plans. Users will sign up for wireless broadband for a day, a month, or a year without a contract tied to a specific device. Payment could be made via a credit card wirelessly. The pricing approach, described in broad strokes by Sprint chief technology officer Barry West Wednesday at WiMax World in Chicago, will be designed on the principle of "affordable" broadband and "around the needs of the individual," he said in an interview. That approach breaks down the concept now seen with cellular plans, in which users typically buy a two-year contract in part to subsidize the cost of a single mobile device that a user is locked into using. A Sprint spokesman explained that the proposed pricing will rely on subscriptions, but not contracts in the sense associated with typical cellular contracts. And the longer the subscription a customer buys, the cheaper the service will be, he said. West said Sprint will announce pricing early next year, but also said it will probably be based on tiers of service. The cost of devices, such as laptop cards able to transmit mobile WiMax, will approximate the cost of a 3G broadband laptop card today, he said. In response to a question from an audience member, West also said that Xohm will not be backed by what the industry calls service-level agreements, a kind of guarantee that a minimum bandwidth will be provided or the customer receives a refund. "We will give you a good experience, but not SLAs," West said. Several Sprint executives have described Xohm WiMax speeds that are expected to be 2Mbps to 4Mbps, although the technology is capable of 10Mbps. At a demonstration onboard a moving tour boat on the Chicago River Tuesday night using Motorola gear, mobile WiMax shared across 12 laptops and cell phones was clocked at 2.5Mbps downward. West noted that the demonstration was across only one channel, and that Sprint will be able to offer many channels to handle users at a single antenna site, offering plenty of bandwidth for many users. West, who calls himself a technology "pragmatist," said he does not envision any hidden technology bugaboos in the nationwide rollout of Xohm planned for next year. In the next three years, he has predicted 50 million devices, such as laptops and mobile phones, will be WiMax-certified. Getting the certification process for interoperability in order will be difficult, but he said that even if there are 100,000 different devices, it is conceivable all of them could be served from only 10 different chip sets. "That's not unmanageable," he said. By contrast, West said Xohm's biggest challenge will be servicing the needs of 210 million Internet users in the United States alone, and meeting their demands for access, applications, and services. In his keynote, West said some critics have already begun to question whether West's predictions for Xohm's growth are too ambitious. He said commercial rollouts are still on schedule for the second quarter of 2008, and work has begun on 10,000 base stations nationally, with 20,000 WiMax antennas. The initial rollout in Chicago and Baltimore/Washington in December is "pretty much on target," he added. As for competition, West said he doesn't see Verizon Wireless or AT&T.
191948
Sprint Nextel is looking for new ways to fund its WiMax network, according to the Wall Street Journal. Apparently, Sprint investors are concerned about the network's $3bn expense.
740073
Wavesat Inc., a developer of broadband wireless chips, said today it has delivered the first-ever WiMAX chip, the DM256. The company is planning to make the chips generally available early next month.
615298
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.
187294
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¦
394659
PC Magazine - WiMax proponents claim the ITU decision will hasten the deployment of the wireless technology.
593452
Europe appears to be fertile ground for new WiMax networks. Spain is the latest country to embrace the emerging high-end broadband wireless technology, following recent deployments in France, Ireland, and the U.K.