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- Bill Morrow, CEO of Clearwire, was among the keynote speakers.
CEOs, CTOs and other important figures of major corporations convened at the Wimax Analyst Event Show at Crowne Plaza in New York City on Sept. 15 2009 to present the latest developments in the wimax industry. Bill Morrow, CEO of Clearwire, explained that 4G technology will take wifi to the next level by substantially increasing downlink connection speed and allowing much larger data packets to be transmitted. Wimax will provide faster mobile access to multimedia and video with a lower bit error rate. Additionally, wimax works with wifi antenna which makes the technology easy and inexpensive to integrate into the current network. A 4G Phone is expected to hit the market in 2011. The phone will have dual mode capability, supporting both wimax and wifi. In addition, it will have a 1+ GHz Processor, rich visual 3D imaging, and a dual video camera. Morrow also introduced a “killer 4G application” that allows cloud computing while on the go. The technology is enabled via HTML 5 browser technology. While the application enriches the end users’ web experience, it demands true broadband connectivity which wimax provides.
Yegor Ivanov, Director of International Development at YOTA, said that the Russian company reached 100,000 subscribers in August 2009 and expects to reach 200,000 by the end of the year. Currently, YOTA gets an average of 2000 new subscribers daily. Since April 2009, 65 SKU’s from six vendors (Acer, Lenovo, MSI, Samsung, Asus, Toshiba) with data embedded chip sets were introduced to the Russian market. YOTA plans to provide service in 180 Russian cities by the end of 2009.
“Consumers will come to expect the four “any’s” – any device, any where, any time, and any content,” Mike Roudi, Group VP at Time Warner Cable, says. TWC sees 4G as an extra feature to broadband, a feature that will bring end users one step closer to meeting their many “any’s”.
Another keynote speaker representing the wimax industry was CEO of DigitalBridge Communications, Kelley Dunne. He announced that their network will be upgraded to IEEE 802.16e mobile within the next 60 days. They also support 40 MHz of spectrum even in their smallest markets. Multi-taskers will be happy. They soon will be able to skype, listen to Pandora radio and surf the web simultaneously on their mobile device.
After Dunne, Fumio Watanabe, CTO at UQ Communications came into the spotlight. UQ currently provides wimax service to Japanese users for 49 USD/month offering free wifi hot spot access for UQ wimax account holders. Concerning download speed, UQ wimax currently has max. 40 Mbps downlink, and max. 10 Mbps uplink. The company promotes open networks through MVNO. Watanabe expects most cities in Japan to switch to wimax soon, as it benefits Internet users with a connection that is faster than ADSL. Presently, UQ is working to upgrade its standard from Wimax Rel. 1.0 (Wave 2) IEEE 802.16e to Wimax Rel. 2.0 IEEE 802.16m.
Looking at another Asian market, Michael Lai, CEO of Packet 1 Networks, explained why Malaysia had great market growth potential. Currently, only 7.5% of Malaysian households have broadband. Yet, the Malaysian government is determined to raise that rate with a promotion of PC-to-BB access. In fact, they put BB penetration on the national agenda covered under the NBP (National Boradband Plan) that aims to achieve 50% BB household penetration by 2010. Being a leading communications company in Malaysia, P1 is key player in achieving that goal. P1 carries a USB wimax modem called ‘Wiggi’. It has IEEE 802.16e and download speed of up to 10Mbps. In order to make internet access more affordable to every Malaysian, P1 also offers a cheaper version to the Wiggi subscription (42USD/month). The less costly alternative comes with ‘Wiggi 69’, a modem that allows download speeds of up to 800Kbps at a cost of 20USD/month. With its 25,000 subscribers, P1 owns 32% of the Malaysian broadband market. Lai illustrated the situation with a William Gibson quote, “The future is here. It’s just not widely distributed yet.”
Even though end-users harvest most of the benefits that wimax brings, wimax also opens up great opportunities for businesses. Paget Alves, President Business Markets Group at Sprint listed several benefits to retailers who offer wimax service or wimax enabled devices. Besides the 4G halo effect, the churn benefits that 4G brings about include incentives for customers to renew their contract. For businesses, going wimax also translates into improved customer retention from multiple service offerings. Last but not least, going wimax should improve profitability as service providers can offload 3G CDMA traffic to a low cost/bit wimax network.
Two products stood out from the rest – the Moovbox M200 and LiveEdge. The award-winning Moovbox M200 from Icomera is the “first fully ruggedised in-vehicle mobile broadband gateway that leverages multiple carrier networks to deliver Ethernet, Wi-Fi and GPS on the move,” according to Icomera.com. Nomad Innovations presented its LiveEdge 2.0 wireless solution for live news coverage that operates on both nationwide 3G networks and wireless or wired broadband networks and would eliminate the need of bringing a news truck, thereby significantly lowering costs for broadcasters.
To sum up, the Wimax Analyst Event Show was a huge success with many key role players attending. Investors had the opportunity to learn about the industry directly from the experts and gain perspective about various companies involved in promoting wimax access.
Find exclusive interviews with Sanjiv Gulpta and Tim Sweeney (Intel), Paget Alves (Sprint) and Kelley Dunne (DigitalBridge) at GoingWimax Youtube channel.
