The GSM Association (GSMA), a trade association comprised of more than 800 mobile operators, called for Taiwan to quit developing WiMAX technology and focus on the development of LTE instead. This development only adds to the stress that WiMAX has been under lately. Both WiMAX and LTE allow for wireless high speed connectivity. WIMAX, which just celebrated its 10th year anniversary, has been under pressure recently as many carriers are making the switch to LTE. According to Chris Perera, GSMA director of spectrum policy and regulatory affairs for the Asia-Pacific region, “Although local demand will drive the WiMAX market, given the smaller market size in terms of lower demand, it is in Taiwan’s best interest to focus on the manufacturing of HSPA wireless networking and LTE equipment, rather than WiMAX equipment.”

Taiwan had their sights on becoming the largest exporter of WiMAX products, but confidence in the technology has been wavering ever since Intel shut down their 4G WiMAX Program office in Taiwan last year. Intel maintains that their office in Taiwan was always temporary and was created with the intention of getting WiMAX off the ground and into the market.

What effect this news will have on the WiMAX industry is questionable. Some believe that the future of WiMAX and LTE is that the two technologies will coexist and compliment each other. WiMAX is better suited for use in rural areas and has an enormous growth potential in developing countries. WiMAX can also play a major role by providing the backhaul connections for various wireless networks including LTE.

Telecommunications tycoon Sanjiv Ahuja has stepped down from his role as Chief Executive Officer of Augere; a wireless broadband business he founded in 2007. Augere aims to provide affordable broadband with WiMAX networks as a part of their Qubee brand for underprivileged communities. Augere currently supplies broadband to the likes of Bangladesh, Pakistan, the states of Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh in India, Uganda, Rwanda and Tanzania, and is pursuing additional spectrum across Africa and Aisa.

Filling Mr Ahuja’s shoes will be former Vodafone Ghana CEO David Venn, whose resume includes formerly standing as CEO of Zeltel Gambia. Mr Ahuja commented “I would like to welcome David to the Augere team and I am certain his extensive experience in telecommunications and emerging markets, along with his strong leadership will help Augere to move on to the next level.”

Mr Ahuja has relinquished his role in order to concentrate more fully on his other positions. He  will remain Executive Officer of Augere, but is primarily focussing his attention on his roles as Chairman and CEO of USA based LTE network LightSquared. Lightsquared controls 59 MHz of The United States’ spectrum and is committed to developing wholesale 4G LTE wireless broadband intergrated with satellite coverage across the U.S.A

Before establishing Augere in 2007, Sanjiv Ahuja was CEO at French telecom company Orange SA from 2004-7, before standing as Chairman of Orange UK until 2008. Under his leadership, Orange increased the number of countries in which it operated from 17 to 23, including 14 countries in Africa, and more than doubled its mobile customers from 48 million to over 100 million worldwide.

The main shareholders for Augere include Harbinger Capital, France Telecom, New Silk Route and Vedanta Opportunity Fund. Sanjiv Ahuja is also a principal shareholder.

Qubee was first launched in Pakistan in 2009, and soon spread to Bangladesh. Augere currently operates wireless networks serving more than 100,00 customers, beamed from more than 650 radio base stations.

Clearwire, the financially troubled WiMAX conglomerate shared grim news in a conference today, announcing that CEO Bill Morrow would be stepping down “for personal reasons.” He is also leaving the company’s board of directors. Morrow will be replaced in the interim by board chairman John Stanton. Other senior positions at Clearwire will be vacated as well, requiring a shake-up of executive talent at the company.

According to the press release, this changing of the guard should not impact the company’s talks with its partner Sprint. Sprint, Clearwire’s majority owner, has engaged the WiMAX company in a pricing dispute, the resolution of which as yet to be determined. Clearwire assured investors that “an agreement with Sprint is imminent.”

Clearwire has been hit recently with all sorts of issues. If the muddle with Sprint and exec shuffle aren’t enough, Clearwire is still in dire need of funding to complete its rollout of a national 4G WiMAX network. And they’re being sued. In a claim filed just a week ago, several Clearwire subscribers claim that the company has deliberately slowed their internet connections in order to ease congestion on its network. Such practices are not uncommon in the telecom world. Verizon also began ‘throttling’ its network this year, though they’ve been extremely transparent about how and when they manipulate the network and who’ll be affected. Comcast did settle a throttling case for $16 million in 2009, when they were sued for throttling the connections of a specific company.

The plaintiffs claim that Clearwire falsely advertises for high-speed internet that they won’t end up providing and penalizes those who wish to cancel their service by tagging them with an early termination fee. Furthermore, they claim that the WiMAX company is running a Ponzi-esque scheme wherein they attract subscriptions under the pretense of providing high-speed internet. In fact, say the plaintiffs, the company lacks the infrastructure necessary to power its network. By signing up customers, Clearwire hopes to drum up enough money to someday complete their network rollout and make good on these promises and advertisements.

Whether or not these claims will be vindicated, it seems pointless to say that the future looks bleak for the 4G company.

CEO Humm on the iPhone, their very own LTE network, and the new Vibrant 4G

At an investors meeting in New York, T-Mobile USA CEO Philipp Humm and Deutsche Telekom CEO Rene Obermann discussed the company’s future.  Trailing in 4th place behind Verizon, AT&T, and Sprint Nextel, T-Mobile’s sales growth has slowed in recent years and the competition is only getting tougher, with the ever-expanding iPhone and burgeoning of rival 4G networks.

To combat these new challenges and get the company back on its feet, Humm announced a series of bold strategies aiming to bolster sales growth by $3 billion in 2014.  In the short term, T-Mobile hopes to attract Americans about to join the smartphone craze, an estimated 150 million people.  With $10 data plans and $100 phones, the company will offer some of the nation’s most competitive smartphone packages.

T-Mobile missed the iPhone boat and it’s costing them.  Humm explained the company’s seen a 10% churn rate, or loss of business to rival providers, purely because of Apple’s tantalizing device.  Because of technological inequalities, offering the iPhone is just not in the cards for T-Mobile, at least not for a while.  Humm said the company will focus on Android devices, attempting to curb the flow of business to iPhone-friendly providers.

Speaking of Android, T-Mobile also announced that the long-awaited Samsung Vibrant update to Android 2.2 begins rollout January 21st.  Humm explained the holdup was purely technical and T-Mobile has to adjust to a clientele of smartphone owners who expect regular upgrades.  They also officially unveiled the Vibrant 4G, T-Mobile’s third HSPA+ smartphone and expected to reach speeds of up to 21Mbps, unmatched by the company’s current devices.  T-Mobile released no details or specs, but those will surely surface at the Mobile World Congress in mid-February.

To compete with the new 4G networks on the block, T-Mobile plans to soup up their capacity to 42Mbps on HSPA+ by the second half of this year, although it’s uncertain whether devices able to harness those speeds will be as readily available.   But in the long run, T-Mobile will need to switch to true 4G technology.  Although they brand their existing HSPA+ network as 4G, it’s not universally accepted as such.  Humm explained that they’re favoring LTE because the transition will be easier.

T-Mobile plans on selling non-essential assets, like cell towers, to raise capital for an LTE network.  The major hurdle will be finding spectrum.  For that, T-Mobile hopes to partner up with some other company and share the bandwidth.  Obermann made it clear that they were not looking for any large-scale acquisitions at this time.  Clearwire runs a WiMAX network, but it can concurrently sustain both WiMAX and LTE technology, so they’re definitely in the running.  T-Mobile will probably still use the HSPA+ network for voice and keep LTE for data-only, like Verizon’s model.

Will this be too little too late?  T-Mobile’s still playing catch-up and it looks like that strategy won’t change for a few years, at least.  If they’re aiming to pass the heavy hitters ahead of them, namely Verizon, AT&T, and Sprint Nextel, they’ll need some serious competitive advantage and that hasn’t surfaced, at least not yet.

Earlier this week, several WiMAX operators met in Taipei to discuss the development of global, or international, roaming on WiMAX networks.  The first-ever WiMAX Forum Global Operators Summit served as an opportunity for operators to draft cooperative agreements and move forward in achieving global roaming on 4G networks.

Just like for traditional cell phones, WiMAX roaming involves using another provider’s network when outside reach of your own.  Global roaming refers to borrowing such services when outside your home country.  Roaming is made possible through agreements between the various providers to share their services with each other’s subscribers.  For WiMAX service, this feature is still in its nascent stages.  Analysts project revenues from WiMAX global roaming to grow up to 86% within the next five years.

According to some reports, new IEEE 802.16m standards for WiMAX technology and equipment were hoped to have been set in Taipei.  Final approval, though, is not expected until March.

With many of the world’s manufacturers of WiMAX-related products based in Taiwan, the conference was also seen as an opportunity for local producers to meet with international service providers.  With the influx of so many representatives from around the world, officials in Taiwan’s Ministry for Economic Affairs hoped the summit would generate deals, agreements, and ultimately revenue for the Southeast Asian country.

Sanjiv S. Gupta is a Senior Technical Marketing Engineer at Intel Corp with focus on WiMAX enablement world wide – primarily in U.S., Latin America, India and the EU. He has been with Intel Corporation for twelve years and has been directly responsible for the marketing/integration of Intel’s graphics and wireless components into OEM PCs worldwide.  Sanjiv S. Gupta received a BSEE from the University of Colorado, Boulder and a MSEE from the University of Texas, Arlington in 1988 and 1995, respectively.  His experience in high technology spans more than twenty years with past roles as Senior Microwave Design engineer at Texas Instruments, Senior Product Engineer at Cirrus Logic, and Senior Technical Marketing Engineer at Brooktree Corp.

Julien Blin is the CEO and principal analyst at JBB Research, a research and consulting company specialized in the Wireless space. From a geographical standpoint, I focus on developed markets like North America and Western Europe as well as emerging markets like Africa, the Middle East, South America and China. I am also specialized in mobile OS, mobile devices, mobile browsers, 3G/4G mobile services and apps (e.g. M2M apps, mobile UGC, mobile web, LBS, advertising, etc.), and 4G network technologies (e.g. LTE, WiMAX). Mr Blin is an experienced former IDC Wireless Analyst covering the U.S. Mobile Entertainment space. During his time at IDC, Mr Blin was in charge of building key market forecasts such as the U.S. Wireless Messaging (SMS, MMS, IM) and Ringtone Forecasts. He was also responsible for IDC’s U.S. Mobile Data Services Qview, a service providing comprehensive analysis of the top 10 domestic wireless carriers from a data content and services point of view.

In 2008, Mr Blin held an Equity Research position at Wedbush Morgan Securities, a leading sell-side investment bank in Los Angeles, where he was covering public companies like Amdocs, Garmin, Openwave, Syniverse, TCS, and Nuance. Prior to IDC, he held research/consulting positions at Maravedis and Northern Sky Research. Mr Blin also held a position at Ovum Inc, and has experience in journalism. Perfectly bilingual French-English, Mr Blin has been quoted in leading industry publications and Web sites such as WSJ.com, Dow Jones, The New York Times, FORTUNE magazine, Business Week, Wireless Week, RCR Wireless Week, Telephony Online, FierceWireless, Telecomasia.net, Associated Press, InformationWeek, Red Herring, and Boston Globe. Mr Blin is currently licensed for series 7 and 87.

Randall Schwartz has been a key participant in the broadband wireless market for the last 12 years.  He is the founder of Wireless 20/20, a leading broadband wireless consulting group and the developer of the WiROI Business Case tool.  He brings 20 years of experience in wireless industries, as well as semiconductor.  The Wireless group has extensive experience in deploying broadband wireless systems in a wide variety of markets.  Schwartz has led development projects with over 30 operators around the world, helping clients by developing business cases, supporting technology selection, and build network deployment plans.  He has been a key contributor to the 802.16 standard from its inception, and has been a leading advocate and contributor of the WiMAX Forum.  Schwartz has led the development of strategy, market development and product development for both leading chipset vendors as well as equipment manufacturers in the broadband wireless market. He has extensive experience in working with wireless service providers to develop service strategies and business plans.  Schwartz has held engineering, marketing, business development and consulting positions with Arraycomm, Intel, BeamReach, Texas Instruments, AT&T Microelectronics, PA Consulting, and Trimble Navigation.  He holds both undergraduate and graduate engineering degrees from Dartmouth College.

Cecil Taylor is an independent consultant to companies in the telecom industry, including the utilities and health care vertical markets. His specialties include opportunity identification, strategic network architecture, requirements planning and definition, and project management. Cecil has 15 years of experience in the wireless telecom industry in a broad range of technical and business roles. Cecil can be reached at networkedgrid@gmail.com

Monica Paolini is the founder and president of Senza Fili Consulting. Senza Fili Consulting provides advisory support on wireless data technologies and services. We assist vendors in gaining a better understanding of the service provider and end user markets. We work alongside service providers in developing a wireless data strategy and in assessing the demand for wireless services. Independent advice, a strong quantitative approach, and an international perspective are the hallmarks of our work. At Senza Fili we have in-depth expertise in financial modeling, market research, business plan support, business development, RFPs and vendor selection support, due diligence, white paper preparation, and training. Our clients are international and span the entire value chain: they include fixed and mobile operators, ISPs, greenfield operators, vendors, solution providers, system integrators, investors, and industry associations.

Monica has a PhD in Cognitive Science from the University of California, San Diego, an MBA from the University of Oxford, and a BA/MA in Philosophy from the University of Bologna (Italy).