On August 21, telecom operators, global WiMax technology operators and policy makers alike will assemble at the sixth annual WiMax India conference at Le Meridien New Delhi.
According to conference organizer Bharat Exhibitions, this year’s conference will focus on the delivery of next generation broadband services using WiMAX, 802.16x and similar proprietary standards.
Topics of discussion include:
business models
business opportunities and threats
costs and financing
crucial issues of standards & interoperability
how WiMAX can compliment other telecommunications offerings
international success stories & lessons learnt from large-scale WiMAX deployments
network optimization & frequency planning
spectrum and licensing
strategies for capturing the mobile market
using WiMAX as a means of delivering broadband services to the bush
“WiMAX India 2009 will help in strategising a strong vision for WiMAX technology as it is an ideal stage between the key influencers and decision makers under one roof. This year’s event will also develop innovative marketing tools for boosting the penetration of WiMAX usage in smaller cities and rural areas,” said Shashi Dharan, mananging director of Bharat Exhibitions.
This is the India’s only WiMax event even though it has the fastest growing telecom industry with subscribers expected to reach 14 million by 2013 with annual growth rates of 130%.
Yesterday Sprint Nextel announced that it will add 17 markets to its WiMax launch plans.
By year’s end Sprint will extend WiMax service to the following cities:
Hawaii: Maui
Idaho: Boise
North Carolina: Charlotte, Greensboro, Raleigh
Oregon: Salem
Texas: Abilene, Amarillo, Austin, Corpus Christi, Killleen-Temple, Lubbock, Midland-Odessa, San Antonio, Waco, Wichita Falls
Washington: Bellingham
Currently Sprint’s WiMax service is only available in Baltimore, but rollouts in Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas-Forth Worth, Honolulu, Las Vegas, Portland, Philadelphia and Seattle are scheduled for this year.
By 2010 Sprint plans to bring WiMax to Boston, Houston, New York, San Francsico and Washington, D.C..… Read the rest
Comcast Corp. said its margins on its WiMAX service should exceed 40 percent once the pricing for it goes to $69.95 per month.
Comcast, an MVNO on the Clearwire Corp.WiMAX network, offers WiMAX in Atlanta and Portland, Ore. now, and will launch in Chicago, Philadelphia and Seattle later in the year. It’s also reselling Sprint-Nextel Corp. 3G service and bundling the two.
Comcast COO Stephen Burke told analysts during the company’s earnings call. “And the combination product of the two has a very healthy margin. We were just talking about 40 percent margins. The margin is in excess of 40 percent, the combination once it resets to $69.95.”
The data-only 4G High-Speed 2Go product (accessible via laptop card) is being sold promotionally for $49.95 per month for a year. The cableco also has an offer that adds in Sprint’s nationwide 3G data-only service.
Clearwire confirmed it will launch its Clear mobile WiMAX service in San Francisco sometime in 2010, according to a GigaOM interview with Clearwire CEO Bill Morrow. No specific launch date was announced.
So far, Clearwire has launched its Clear service in Portland, Ore., Atlanta and Las Vegas, and is going to convert Sprint’s former Xohm market in Baltimore to a Clear market as well. Clearwire plans to launch its mobile WiMAX service in Chicago, Dallas and Philadelphia later this year, and will convert existing pre-WiMAX markets in Seattle, Honolulu and Charlotte to mobile WiMAX.
he company also recently announced it will launch mobile WiMAX in a handful of smaller markets, mainly in Texas, where it had previously offered pre-WiMAX service.
Networks solutions provider Harris Stratex Networks announced this week it has inked a deal with India-based telecom service provider ICOMM to provide an end-to-end mobile WiMax network for its subsidiary, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL). Through the partnership, Harris Stratex will extend BSNL’s public wireless network to enterprise and retail customers in urban areas across the southern Indian state of Kerala.
Although Harris Stratex has traditionally been known as an IP mobile backhaul vendor, the company – under the guidance of CEO Harald Braun – has been trying to make a name for itself as an end-to-end supplier. In the US, where it includes AT&T, Verizon Wireless and Sprint amongst its customers, this strategy means a new focus on the tier two and three operators, alongside its continued focus on developing markets. After its recent acquisition of Telsima Corp, about 30% of Harris Stratex’s business is currently with major operators in Africa. In South Asia, it has WiMax network deals with regional heavyweights, Reliance Communications and Tata Communications.
Under today’s agreement with BSNL, Harris Stratex will supply its StarMax WiMax base stations, certified on IEEE 802.16e, along with solutions for access service network gateway, home agent, authentication, authorization and accounting, and a network management system. ICOMM will provide the customer premises equipment and subscriber units, deployment and project management services. According to the companies, BSNL’s, the world’s seventh-largest telco, rollout will be one of the biggest mobile WiMax deployments in the world. BSNL’s goal is to reach 20 million broadband subscribers by 2010.
The network will encompass the Almería, Granada, Jaén and Málaga regions where maximum data transfer speeds will reach up to 20 Mbps.
Nostracom also plans to team up with Aperto and technology developer Selesta Networks over the next couple of months for a WiMax testing and research centre. The interoperability between WiMax equipment and products available on the market will be tested, in addition to Aperto’s base stations.
The three companies hope this will test and demonstrate the benefits of WiMax in addition to making improvements in WiMax technology.… Read the rest
On Tuesday, Clearwire Corp. signed a three-year deal with Chinese telecom vendor Huawei. This deal allows Huawei to supply radio access network equipment to Clearwire’s deployment of its wireless network.
This partnership allows Huawei to make some major headway in the North American WiMax market. Clearwire is the first U.S. national service provider to utilize Huawei’s WiMax equipment. Prior to this, Huawei was only able to do business with minor companies because of agreements the larger companies have with traditional vendors like Ericsson.
“We view this as a major milestone in our overall strategy in North America,” said John Chen, Huawei marketing and product management executive.
This deal allows Clearwire to deploy WiMax at a lower cost with each of the 20,000 base stations to be deployed costing $150,000, thus expanding the company’s reach from 4 markets to 80 by the end of 2010.… Read the rest
The US wireless data market grew 7% Q/Q and 30% Y/Y to exceed $10.6B in mobile data service revenues and thus exceeded $10B for the second straight quarter. As we mentioned in our Q1 2009 research note, given the strong growth in data revenues shown by the top carriers and the increase in service revenues overall, the worst is over for the US mobile industry. In summary, the recession has been all but a tiny blip in its growth trend and the US mobile market has weathered the downward spiral in economy better than its counterparts in other developed nations. Of course, recession doesn’t treat all players equally, so, some have had a negative impact and will need more resources and effective strategies to claw back to the their previous market position.
The US subscription penetration was approximately 90.4% at the end of Q209. The current rate of net-adds (subscription) is approximately 3 every second (compared to a net gain in population of one person every 10 seconds). While the flailing economy hit certain segments of the wireless ecosystem hard esp. the infrastructure and handset segments, consumers haven’t really pulled back on the mobile data overall spending. Additionally, the CAPEX spending will stay strong in 2009 given the activity around 3G/4G deployments and trials. As expected, there was an increase of prepaid subscribers which dropped the overall revenues for some of the carriers.
As we mentioned in our last two research notes that this time around, the fate of the US mobile industry is more closely tied to the overall economy compared to the previous recessions. As the consumer sentiment improved over the last 3-4 months along with better than expected Q1-2 2009 earnings from corporations, the mobile industry is back on track. While the structural flaws in various industry segments remain, and the economy is a crisis away from the double dip, the outlook for the remainder of 2009 remains bright and we are expecting the overall data revenues to now increase by 32% compared to 2008 with a record-setting Q4.
“WiMAX India 2009 will help in strategising a strong vision for WiMAX technology as it is an ideal stage between the key influencers and decision makers under one roof. This year’s event will also develop innovative marketing tools for boosting the penetration of WiMAX usage in smaller cities and rural areas,” said Shashi Dharan, mananging director of Bharat Exhibitions.
Networks solutions provider Harris Stratex Networks 
Fixed and mobile WiMax 
On Tuesday, 
