The WiMAX Forum announced a few key note speakers at WiMAX Forum Congress 2010 from 16-17th of June in Amsterdam. Kuldeep Goyal, CMD, BSNL will address the audience on June 16. He will highlight the future of wireless broadband in India.

BSNL owns some spectrum space in India and launched commercial services last month. His address is entitled “India Empowered: BSNL’s Broadband Ambitions and Strategies for Addressing the Digital Divide with WiMAX“. Many in the wireless world will look to the current spectrum auction in India as the potential volume of opportunity being significant enough to make a difference for all WiMAX industry players.

Yota Director of Business Development Anton Koplakov will speak at the event. It will be the first time the general public will hear from Yota after their recent announcement of changing to LTE from WiMAX on the 2.5Ghz frequencies. Koplakov will speak on June 17.

Intel, Samsung, Alvarion, Huawei, ZTE, Tellabs, Motorola, Ciena, MACH and Bridgewater Systems sponsor the event. Goyal and Koplakov will join Barry West from Clearwire and Dr. Fumio Watanbe from UQ Communications and 35 plus operators speaking during the event. It’s a great opportunity to mingle and meet WiMAX industry insiders.

Yota’s decision to change over to LTE has industrialists asking why they’ve decided to do it so soon? Clearwire has also hinted at changing over to the technology. Insiders will debate whether to change over, along with exploring other applications for the technology.

GoingWiMAX.com had the pleasure of interviewing Kelvin Lee, Senior General Manager of Green Packet Berhad. He highlighted Greenpacket’s latest home WiMAX modems along with his take on the future of the WiMAX industry.

1. How do the latest modems differ from the ones Greenpacket released at the WiMAX Forum Congress Americas in December 09?
The EX series is a part of our cost-effective range of WiMAX modems that specifically caters to the residential market segment which according to 4GCounts, accounts for 68% of WiMAX subscribers.

This is why the EX series is engineered to fulfill the fundamental broadband need of home users by offering one LAN and one VoIP port. Single users do not need to pay for what they do not use. However, they are still empowered with a choice of connecting a router to the modem if they need more ports.

There is also cosmetic difference between the EX series and the DX and UH series that we launched last December.
The benefits of our new cost-effective range also extend to Operators as they now have an option to lower their subscriber acquisition cost and the flexibility to expand their service offerings for diverse market segments.

It has to be highlighted that being cost-effective does not mean that the performance of the new modems is compromised in any way. The cost-effective range is still fully geared towards the delivery of high quality wireless broadband through the little attention to detail we put in that makes a huge difference. For example, WiMAX Forum specifies a level of receiver sensitivity and Greenpacket’s EX modems surpasses that mark by 7.5dBm.

2. What market segment are you targeting with the release of these new modems?

The EX range is targeted at Operators requiring basic modems as the cost for it is effective in reducing their OPEX for mass WiMAX rollout. This includes the pre-paid market segment for residential use. The EX range would also allow Operators to create packages that are price sensitive or create a wider range of packages to suit different connectivity needs of their customers.

3. Can you highlight the new features and capabilities of your latest modem?

Featuring data and voice ports, the EX series deliver superior indoor performance. This is possible via a high gain antenna which improves the reception of WiMAX signals, multi-directional omni antenna which allows flexibility of device placement and, Switched Transmit Diversity Technology which selects the best antenna to use to boost the uplink signal strength performance during transmission.
There is also an option for an external antenna.

4. In January, you set the objective of increasing shipments by at least three times the amount than in 2009. Where are you on that?

As a business unit of a public listed company, we are not allowed to disclose our shipment numbers before the Group’s quarterly financial announcement. Green Packet Group will be announcing the first quarter financial results in mid May and we shall keep you informed on the results and numbers.

5. Which region of the world (United States, Central America, APAC, Africa, Europe…) is your business growing the fastest? Can you give us a background on this international presence?

Greenpacket has been successfully growing our business and customer base in Asia-Pacific and the Middle East region. This year however, we are gaining strong traction in the US and European markets.

Currently, we have eight offices worldwide including R&D centres, device development centers and regional sales offices. Our regional sales offices are located in Bahrain, Singapore, Malaysia, Australia and Thailand to service our customers in the respective regions. However, we have doubled our sales force in the USA, Central and Latin America (CALA), and Europe.

6. What’s Greenpacket’s vision for the future of WiMAX?

WiMAX is a sunrise industry with a rapidly growing global traction. The WiMAX industry now is huge with increased population coverage and more devices developing to support the technology. The WiMAX Forum is now tracking 599 WiMAX deployments in 147 countries; there are new deployments every month. Population covered by WiMAX technology has also increased to 621 million by end 2009 and is further anticipated to grow to 800 million by end 2010.

We see WiMAX as an excellent ‘saviour technology’ in view of increasing network congestion due to increasing data traffic.  WiMAX can be a latter (receiving) network for legacy telcos to support data offloading.

Many industry analysts have compared WiMAX and LTE which they see as a direct competition to WiMAX. However, WiMAX however is about four years ahead of LTE, giving it a window during which consumer and market expectations are changing. We do believe that some Telcos will choose to wait until LTE is available and only then invest in costly network upgrades, which will in time bring them to parity with WIMAX enabled networks. Others will choose a hybrid model, leveraging the superior functionality and the immediate availability of WIMAX to supplement their current network to offer a broader range of products and services to its customers and alleviate current network congestion.

Those that choose a hybrid model will have first-mover advantage over the other legacy players, giving them the necessary edge in a highly competitive environment.

Greenpacket also sees WIMAX as a driver of converged technologies leading to a different communications business model encompassing an entirely new range of end-user devices and services. WiMAX allows a limitless range of devices to be permanently connected.

While the application of this to mobile phones, PDAs and PCs is perhaps more familiar, the opportunity goes way beyond that. Image a world where your camera or even your car is permanently online, or where cargo, products and equipment are permanently connected to a network. That’s beauty and future of WiMAX!

The WiMAX Forum appointed Frank Farjood as their new Chief Operating Officer. Oksana Davis became the Corporate Secretary and was appointed to General Counsel. These two individuals will be located in the new San Diego office.

Farjood will  be the day-to-day manager for the WiMAX Forum, overseeing the operational, tactical and strategic objectives for the WiMAX Forum. Farjood served as the vice president of global professional services at Nortel Networks. He spent 13 years with Lucent Technologies managing wireless system deployments.

“We are fortunate to have Frank as our COO,” said Ronald Resnick, President and Chairman of the WiMAX Forum. “Frank’s background in the telecom and wireless industry, coupled with his disciplined approach to execution makes him a perfect fit for the Forum.”

Davis will advise the Board of Directors on legal and corporate matters. Davis practiced law with Procopio, Cory, Hargreaves & Savitch LLP, specializing in business, technology and corporate matters.

It’s an infusion of new blood into the WiMAX Forum. Both appointed officers have plenty of experience in the wireless sector. The WiMAX Forum will continue to expand and oversea the deployment of WiMAX networks worldwide, along with certifying the latest WiMAX-enabled devices.

The WiMAX Forum Congress Asia is upon the WiMAX world. Top industry insiders, along with media members, will gather in Taipei, Taiwan from April 12-14 to discuss a variety of WiMAX topics that matter to the Asia Pacific region.

Taiwan became an important WiMAX market in the last few months. Far EastTone, Tatung Infocomm and VMAX all have networks, mostly focused in Taipei and Hsinchu City. It’s the technology corridor in the country. Representatives from BSNL and other operators, including Tata Communications will discuss how WiMAX will be adopted in that country.

54 speakers will talk on a variety of topics, representing 24 operators from 15 countries. Attendees will be able to chat and connect with over 1,400 WiMAX professionals. Speakers will discuss the money-making WiMAX business model, how WiMAX can expand in the Asia Pacific region and spectrum and licensing can stimulate broadband, extending to stimulate the economy of an entire country. This is a concern for most operators world wide. The increase in smart phones means operators have to use more spectrum space for data usage.

Announcements will be coming from some of the top companies. Beceem Communications, the chip set maker already made two announcements about partnering for a new USB modem platform and market-ready USB device. There’s going to be announcements from other top WiMAX players, including GreenPacket and maybe a few other surprises. You’ll have to look for daily updates from GoingWiMAX.com to see what’s the news coming from WiMAX Forum Congress Asia 2010.

Events like this and other events held by the WiMAX Forum give industrialists and regular enthusiasts to meet the people that make the decisions that affect high speed wireless broadband. This one is for those in the Asia Pacific region. The APAC region is probably the fastest growing market for WiMAX. There’s several markets in Australia, New Zealand, India and Taiwan. The WiMAX Forum hosts events all over the world over the course of a year. The WiMAX Forum Global Congress is happening in June in Amsterdam.

The WiMAX Forum began an initiative to speed up WiMAX features based on it’s initial release. Certified products expected to use these enhancements should be in market towards the end of 2010.

WiMAX providers give users and owners a large amount of data, with some networks delivering over 10 GBs per month to the normal user. The WiMAX Forum understands the operator’s need for more advanced technologies as network use expands and the need for more data space grows.

“With the global demand for 4G wireless broadband services experiencing explosive growth, WiMAX service providers need faster networks with greater capacity and efficiency, and the WiMAX community has responded,” said Ron Resnick, president and chairman of the WiMAX Forum. “There is no country where this demand is as pronounced as it is in India, where there is less than three percent broadband penetration. WiMAX can address this demand as well as the growing needs around the globe, plus we’re committed to taking performance to the next level in an unmatched timeframe.”

The improvements include additional MIMO antennae on base stations, higher order of modulation on uplink, downlink beamforming and improved fractional frequency reuse. This will increase the reuse 1 deployments while ensuring multi-vendor interoperability. The features should double peak data rates and increase average and cell edge end user performance by up to 50 percent.

WiMAX Forum is also working on the IEEE Standard 802.16m later this year. It’s WiMAX 2.0, which means that the next version of WiMAX could be seen by the end of 2010. They are also preparing certification standards for WiMAX 2.0 products, with release by late 2011.

It’s good to stay ahead of the data crunch that some operators may face with the increase in subscribers. The WiMAX Forum does a great job of leading the industry by standardizing requirements for the technology. They continue to help foster and grow both the network market, along with certifying products and devices.

Two laboratories are set up in Taiwan to certify products where the devices still must be sent to an OIOT lab for end-to-end interoperability testing before selling to WiMAX operators.

The only OIOT lab set up and approved by the WiMAX Forum was for Clearwire. Taiwan device makers account for 90 percent of the global CPE market, making $282.47 million worth of WiMAX CPE products in 2009. Shipping is expected to grow 86.8 percent in 2010. The OIOT will decrease expenses for device makers by decreasing shipping costs.

Photo Courtesy of Arthur Chapman via Flickr

Huawei is continuing expansion of its share in the Asia Pacific WiMax market alongside deployment of WiMax networks within the region.

The company allegedly signed a contract with KT Telecom for the supply of $182 million US dollars worth of WiMax equipment. In the past, KT generally made procurements from Samsung for its WiMax rollouts.

Huawei will also supply 700 WiMax base stations to India-based service provider BSNL and plans to complete its WiMax network before the end of March.

According to data recently released by WiMAX Forum, the number of WiMax networks deployed in Asia has reached 100, covering over 237 million people.

The WiMax Forum has approved Runcom’s Pico and Base Station product. It completed the WiMax Forum Wave-2 Certification process.

The base station is heavy duty and able to withstand outdoor conditions. It is upgradeable and can go from 2×2 MIMO to 4×4. It can also upgrade to support LTE, multi-frequency band support, and up to 20MHz bandwidth.

The WiMax Forum released its latest forecast for the number of people covered and the number of networks worldwide. It stated that WiMax service providers cover more than 620 million people in 147 countries and are on track to surpass 800 million people by the end of 2010. The WiMax Forum expects this to increase to over one billion people by the end of 2011.

“WiMAX networks continue to expand at a very healthy pace despite challenges from the slowly recovering global economy,” said Ron Resnick, president and chairman of the WiMAX Forum. “These new deployment numbers and population statistics demonstrate that the WiMAX ecosystem has strong momentum for the start of the New Year and will continue to meet the global market demand for high-speed broadband access in developed and emerging regions.”

The Asia Pacific region leads with a coverage area of over 237 million people served across more than 100 WiMax networks. Central and Latin America reached 113 million people with 209 deployments. Africa and the Middle East cover more than 108 million people with 153 deployments and Europe covers 115 million people with 153 deployments.

North American WiMax coverage has increased to 47 million people covered over 51 networks. This has been primarily executed by Clearwire, which has 27 networks in major markets like Philadelphia, Las Vegas, Chicago and Honolulu. It offers Clear, a wireless broadband connection that can be used anywhere within the network.

“Clearwire plans to continue rolling out our 4G network to additional markets in 2010 with the launch of service in several large metro areas, including New York, Houston and the San Francisco Bay area – ultimately reaching up to 120 million people by the end of 2010,” said Ali Tabassi, senior vice president of global ecosystem and standards for Clearwire Corporation and WiMAX Forum Board member. “The expansion of our footprint will help meet the pent up demand for true mobile broadband in the U.S. and allow us to continue to serve as a global resource for best practices in 4G network development around the world.”

WiMax continues to grow in Europe thanks to an increase in available spectrum space in 2009. Ireland is a perfect of this growth and gained access to 3.4/3.6 mHz spectrum in the third quarter of 2009 and began building a national network. Imagine launched commercial services last month and will offer nomadic WiMax services through dual mode WiMax/HSPA dongles and embedded laptops. The company expects to have 60 percent of the population of the Emerald Island covered by the end of 2010.

The increases in coverage footprints by the end of 2009 are proof that the 800 million people reached by the end of 2010 will be met or surpassed because of the launches of WiMax in India and network deployment in the Philippines and Indonesia.

The WiMax Forum released details of the third annual WiMax Forum Congress Asia conference and exhibition. For the first time, the event will take place in Taiwan from April 13-14, 2010.

The event will illustrate the unique, local ecosystem and feature operators, device manufacturers, regulators and industry thought leaders from around the world. The agenda will include a variety of speakers from more than than 20 operatros, 17 analysts and insight from WiMax industry leaders. Sessions include WiMax business models and retail strategies, operational challenges, spectrum space and regulation, vertical market opportunities like WiMax 2.0 and ways in which WiMax can develop in the Asia Pacific region.

Before each conference day, there will be breakfast briefings with analysts. The WiMax Forum will host its third annual Analyst Summit April 12. The 2,000 plus attendees will be treated to over 60 influential speakers, with 2 pre-conference workshops and WiMax Forum certified training courses and free educational seminars.

The event will host 50+ sponsors and exhibitors showcasing and demonstrating the latest WiMax solutions and devices, often on the expo floor.

Photo Courtesy of Fishtail@Taipei via Flickr