Mobile WiMAX

Maravedis Releases Latest Findings on 4G Chip Market

Michael Licata on March 10, 2010

Maravedis released its studies on the WiMAX chip market in 2009. They found that companies shipped 5 million mobile WiMAX chipsets in 2009.

“However despite the surge of mobile WiMAX device and chipset shipments, notably in Q4 09, the total WiMAX equipment market remained flat last year at US$1.36 billion,” said Maravedis Research Director Adlane Fellah. “The overall picture is mixed. Shipments of base stations decreased in 2009 and were impacted more deeply by the economic downturn, whereas device shipments, especially mobile WIMAX devices, grew at a rate of 147% Year-over-Year compared to 2008, correlating to the addition of 3.5 million WIMAX subscribers during the year,” he continued.

Beceem, Sequans and GCT were responsible for nearly 90 percent of the total chipset market. 48 percent of units shipped in 2009 were WiMAX modems while USB dongles and PC cards made up 43 percent of the chipset market.

The study also found that a lot of the chip makers are preparing for LTE. Many builders have tested chips and Sequans and Beceem will be testing LTE chips some time during 2010.… Read the rest

Intel Release WiMAX 2.0 Findings

Michael Licata on March 9, 2010 | 3 comments

An Intel executive stated that standards for WiMAX 2.0 will be finalized by the end of 2010. Deployment will be widespread by 2012 with standard, 802.16m providing faster download and upload speeds.

Intel research found that users will have 170 Mbps download speeds and 90 Mbps upload speeds. The research also stated that the technology can be used at traveling speeds of up to 217 miles per hour. Current operators use 802.16e, mobile WiMAX that’s compatible with laptops, USB dongles and other mobile devices.

Internationally, Taiwan, the Philippines, and India are being seen as good testing grounds for WiMAX launch because of the large population bases in each country. India has the highest subscriber rate in mobile phones. Yota leads the revolution in Russia, breaking even only after a few months. Clearwire, backed by Sprint, leads the way with 27 markets in the U.S., and is looking to add the Houston, Boston, New York and Washington D.C. markets in 2010.

Photo Courtesy of Josh Bancroft via Flickr… Read the rest

Fixed WiMax Subscribers Surpassed by Mobile WiMax

Elizabeth Dickey on February 16, 2010 | 1 comment

According to the 10th issue of the 4GCounts Quarterly Report From Maravedis, at the end of the third quarter of 2009, the number of mobile WiMax (802.16e-2005) subscribers surpassed the number of fixed WiMax (802.16-2004) subscribers worldwide for the very first time.

Co-author of the report and 4GCounts team leader Cintia Garza said, “77% of CPEs installed in Q3 2009 were indoor CPEs with over 3.6 million units, followed by USB dongles (595,000 units or 13%) and PCMCIA cards (240,000 units or 5%).”

For LTE, the second half of 2009 showed progress and growth in new LTE operator commitments and in terms of device certifications scheme and chipset development.

“Although dual mode devices including GSM, EVDO, and LTE are not yet commercially available, the first engineering samples of dual-mode chipsets were shipped in early 2009. Devices will become available in the second half of 2010 for dongles/embedded applications, but not until 2011 for the handsets and lower power devices such as MiFi WiFi routers,” commented Esteban Monturus, 4G analyst for Europe.

Key Findings from the Report Included:

-The average residential and business ARPU generated among operators during Q3 2009 across all regions was US$41 and US$121 respectively.

-BWA/WiMax base station sectors installed as of Q3 2009 totaled 201,355 – an increase of 25% from 160,882 the previous quarter.

-85% of WiMax operators offer unlimited data usage compared to 41% of 3G operators. That proportion will gradually decrease as operators look for new ways to manage data consumption.… Read the rest

Yota and Samsung Partner to Complete WiMax Build Out in Russia

Michael Licata on February 8, 2010

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Samsung and Yota have signed another contract that will help build out a complete WiMax network across Russia. Samsung will supply over 5,000 base stations and Access Control Routers beginning in March 2010. Yota will expand its mobile WiMax network to 15 cities including Sochi, the host of the 2015 Winter Olympic Games.
Yota selected Samsung as its sole Mobile WiMax equipment vendor in 2008. Since then, Samsung has supplied Yota with over 4,500 Mobile WiMax macro and pico cellular base stations for commercial Mobile WiMax services in Russia.

Yota has 300,000 mobile WiMax users in Moscow, St. Petersburg and Ufa and has already provided service to over 50,000 subscribers in Kransnodor and Sochi.

Yota has already teamed with Samsung in the past – the two companies partnered to launch a network in Nicaragua and later broke even in their first five months of rolling out service in Russia.

Photo Courtesy of yeowatzup via Flickr… Read the rest

Cisco Helps Set Up WiMax at BSU

Michael Licata on January 22, 2010

Cisco has installed a mobile WiMax network at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana. The network is part of Cisco Mobility Community and is currently being tested by students, Cisco engineers, and third party vendors.

The development of mobile WiMax includes installation of a Cisco Wimax antenna, a field testing and a student usability study. These studies will help to demonstrate how WiMax can serve a local community as well as showing how to manage a WiMax network on a University campus.… Read the rest

National Instruments Announces New Testing for WiMax devices

Michael Licata on December 28, 2009 | 4 comments

National Instruments introduces new testing for WiMax mobile devices. It uses modular RF instrumentation for automated testing which reduces test time by up to 300 percent and provides better accuracy and more flexibility.

The suite provides more flexibility with the same equipment used for testing Mobile WiMAX devices. It is the same technology that tests hardware that complies with other standards such as Fixed WiMAX, wireless local area network (WLAN), GPS, and GSM/EDGE/WCDMA cell standards.

“The NI Measurement Suite for Mobile WiMAX reflects the continued investment from National Instruments to provide test solutions for engineers developing next-generation wireless technology devices,” said Eric Starkloff, vice president of test marketing at National Instruments. “With this new solution, we now can provide engineers the ability to significantly reduce their test cost by providing R&D-grade instrumentation that performs measurements three to five times faster than traditional solutions.”

The measurement suite is based on PXI Express instrumentation with error vector magnitude (EVM), power and spectral measurements three to five times faster than traditional instruments used for measuring mobile WiMax. With a typical residual EVM accuracy of -46 dB at 3.5 GHz (-10 dBm), this test system can perform more highly accurate measurements than alternative production test-grade instruments.

The Measurement Suite for Mobile WiMAX supports channel bandwidths from 1.25 to 28 MHz and fast Fourier transform (FFT) sizes 128, 256, 1024 and 2048, and all Mobile WiMAX modulation types with both convolution coding and turbo convolution coding. The Measurement Suite for Mobile WiMAX also can generate or analyze signals with up to eight zones and 16 bursts. Combined with the NI PXIe-5663E RF vector signal analyzer and NI PXIe-5673 RF vector signal generator, the measurement suite also provides continuous frequency coverage from 85 MHz to 6.6 GHz.… Read the rest

Agreement Could Bring About Smartphone for WiMax Use

Michael Licata on December 3, 2009 | 2 comments

ECS_Logo

Users may soon have another way to access WiMax. AD2, Beecem and ECS have formed an agreement to make Android-based smartphones for WiMAX use.The phone will be voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) and it will run the Android operating system from Google.

Each member of the agreement brings a different element to design and construction of the phone. It will use mCUE converged communications clite from D2. It will be embedded with VPort VoIP engine powering the ECS 371 mobile device. This is all based on Texas Instrument’s OMAP-3430 processor paired with Beceem’s BCSM 250 WiMax modem

“With the industry actively working toward the creation and delivery of a WiMAX infrastructure, manufacturers will need to develop mobile devices that take advantage of the greater bandwidth, range and other benefits of this technology,” said Doug Makishima, chief operating officer at D2 Technologies. “Together with Beceem and ECS, we’ve shown how a complete ecosystem dedicated to mobile VoIP over WiMAX can help device manufacturers and unified communications/VoIP providers get new products to market more quickly, efficiently and effectively.”

Google was an early investor in WiMax 4G technology and these companies see the importance of getting VoIP into their Android-operating system into smartphones and other mobile devices.… Read the rest

Airspan Demonstrates Mobile WiMax at WiMax Forum

Michael Licata on December 3, 2009

Airspan_Sling_logo

Airspan Networks will demonstrate its Mobile WiMax solution at the WiMax Forum Congress Americas show December 2-3 in Ft. Lauderdale, FL. It will run the operation on service provided by Sling Broadband.

The presentation will show how the AirSpan’s WiMax based on the mobile WiMax platform are easy, mobile and flexible. Base station technologies aren’t the only thing beings shown off at the WiMax Forum. It will include selections of customer premises equipment (CPE), like the MiMax USB, the world’s only quad-band CPE device and the ProST outdoor unit.

“This demonstration follows our recent announcement of FCC certification allowing operators to use Airspan equipment in the U.S. 3.65 GHz upper ‘unrestricted’ 25 MHz,” stated Declan Byrne, Chief Marketing Officer for Airspan. “We see the 3.65 GHz band as a key band in the U.S. market. Operators now have flexibility in deploying fixed and mobile WiMAX equipment on the lightly licensed band and we look forward to demonstrating our solution’s capabilities at the show.”

The joint demonstration is designed to showcase mobile-based WiMAX products for key mobility features from Airspan like Multiple Input Multiple Output, an intelligent antenna technology that delivers higher capacity and spectral efficiency. Airspan provides Fixed and Mobile WiMAX capability operating on the 700 MHz all the way up to the 5.4/8 GHz frequency bands.… Read the rest

Dallas Time Warner Cable Customers to Get WiMax in December!

Kathleen Regalado (Kathleen@goingwimax.com) on November 24, 2009 | 1 comment

timewarnercable-clearwire logos

Time Warner Cable who is reselling Clearwire Mobile WiMax service and bundling it with the company’s existing broadband, TV and VoIP services said in October that they’d be launching their service starting December 1st in Raleigh, Durham, Cary, Chapel Hill, Charlotte and Greensboro. TWC is now indicating that they’ll also be launching the service in Dallas starting December 1. Pricing for the “up to 6 Mbps” service ranges from $39.95 a month to $79.95 a month depending on the bundle option chosen.

The bundle options are:
Road Runner Mobile 4G National Elite: gives customers unlimited access to both Time Warner Cable`s 4G Mobile Network and Sprint’s 3G EVDO network for $79.95 if you’re a Roadrunner Standard or Turbo customers.

Road Runner Mobile 4G Elite: gives customers unlimited access to the Time Warner Cable 4G Mobile Network for $49.95 if you’re already a Roadrunner Standard or Turbo customer.

Road Runner Mobile 4G Choice: gives customers access to the Time Warner Cable 4G Mobile Network for $39.95 if you’re already bundling at least two Time Warner Cable services. The tier also caps usage at 2GB per month.

Users get additional discounts if they’re triple play customers. According to Time Warner Cable, they’ll be expanding the service into Honolulu and Maui later this year, and into San Antonio and Austin in early 2010.… Read the rest

Joining Forces

Estie Neff on November 12, 2009

text-partnership VocalTec and Runcom Join Forces for Integrated WiMAX VoIP Solution – Nov 12, 2009 (TMCnet)
VocalTec Communications Ltd., a provider of carrier-class multimedia and voice-over-IP solutions, and the end-2-end WiMAX system solutions provider Runcom Technologies, have integrated their WiMAX VoIP solution at an upcoming conference. Both the companies would be joining forces for the provisioning of this joint offering, which will help service providers to benefit from enhanced voice services in the emerging telecom markets.

SP AusNet Leases Austar ‘WiMAX’ Spectrum for Smart Metering – Nov 12, 2009 (iTWire)
Austar is to lease a portion of its 2.3GHz spectrum licences in regional Victoria to SP AusNet, which will build a mobile WiMAX network to provide communications with smart electricity meters it plans to rollout to 680,000 consumers in the next three years.

Clearwire: 555,000 Subscribers – Nov 12, 2009 (DSLReports.com)
According to Clearwire’s latest quarterly earnings, the company now serves about 555,000 subscribers. About 173,000 of those are using Clearwire’s new Clear Mobile WiMax service. The remainder are still using the old Clearwire fixed service, for which our user reviews have always been rather lackluster.

Sony India Ready to Launch WiMax-enabled Laptops – Nov 11, 2009 (Business Standard)
Electronics major Sony India is ready with WiMAX-enabled offerings for the domestic market, but will wait for the Union government to complete the wireless broadband spectrum allocation process before launching the products.

Global WiMax Users Expected To Grow 87% Annually Between 2010 and 2012 – Nov 11, 2009 (Wimax News)
According to Companies and Markets’ report “Global WiMax Market Analysis”, WiMax has tremendous potential to offer global standardized broadband wireless platform. Many countries across the globe will adopt WiMax to facilitate rapid economic development.

Motorola Exec Sees Room for WiMax and LTE to Thrive – Nov 11, 2009 (Computerworld)
Motorola is working aggressively to sell equipment to provision both WiMax and LTE wireless technologies when carriers commit to one or the other, said Bruce Brda, general manager of wireless networks for the equipment maker. Despite debate over whether WiMax or LTE technology would win out as the basis for faster 4G wireless networks, Motorola Inc. is now convinced that both protocols will flourish.

Samsung: WiMax Could Be as Big as CDMA – Nov 11, 2009 (TelephonyOnline)
Just as the smaller CDMA ecosystems rewarded the vendors that stuck with the technology, Samsung is counting on its early lead in WiMax to pay dividends.… Read the rest

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