Category: 802.16-2005 (16e)

May 30, 2006

Pakistan to Use Motorola WiMax Technology

By Glenn Fleishman

The largest planned 802.16-2005 (formerly 16e) development will cover 193 sites in Pakistan by September: Wateen Telecom will increase sites that rely on the mobility part of this WiMax standard to 600 by June 2007. The carrier will handle voice, broadband, and private IP services over the network. The early nature of this project is emphasized in this article, which notes that the general manager of Wateen said to Motorola at the end of a presentation at Wimax World Europe last week outlining the scope of the project, “Please don’t let me down.”

Posted by Glennf at 11:09 AM | Comments (0)

May 26, 2006

Telecoms Firm Create WiBro/WiMax Convergence Group

By Glenn Fleishman

The WiMax Community (WMC) will try to harmonize WiBro, 802.16-2005: The latter standard includes fixed, nomadic, and mobile WiMax, like WiBro’s key focus (but not sole ability) appears to be mobility. WiBro equipment is already available, and there’s service in South Korea. It has quite a lot in common with mobile aspects of WiMax, and thus there’s been interest in having one standard, not two.

Twenty-two telecom firms from 16 countries have signed a memo to create the group within six months, including Covad in the U.S. The firms seem to include both competitive and incumbent providers, such as PCCW in Hong Kong (an early U.S. Wi-Fi service investor, by the way) and NTT Broadband in Japan.

I’ve exchanged some email with the PR person representing Covad, and they expect more information to be forthcoming.

Posted by Glennf at 10:58 AM | Comments (0)

April 30, 2006

Qualcomm Licenses Patent It Says Covers WiMax

By Glenn Fleishman

Qualcomm has signed with Soma the first licensing deal for its portfolio of what it claims are patents covering WiMax technology: My good friend and colleague Nancy Gohring writes for IDG News Service that Qualcomm acquired these patents as part of its purchase of Flarion Technologies. Flarion has pursued broadband wireless via a standard developing in 802.20 (mobile broadband wireless access), while WiMax emerged out of the 802.16 working group (broadband wireless access). Mobility was inserted into WiMax via 802.16e (now 802.16-2005), which covers fixed, nomadic/portable, and mobile broadband.

Qualcomm wouldn’t comment for the story, but analysts expect this unnecessary public announcement was a shot across the bow to signal their intent. Alvarion says in this report that they and other industry leaders believe Qualcomm’s patents aren’t relevant to WiMax.

Posted by Glennf at 05:40 PM | Comments (0)

April 12, 2006

Samsung's 802.16e Rolled Out in Michigan

By Glenn Fleishman

Unstrung reports on what they term one of the most significant WiMax installations to date: The report says that Muskegon County will have WiMax-based broadband wireless service from Arialink Wireless. The company is financing part of the operation; state and federal grants are also involved. The base service is 3 Mbps for $18.99 per month, and the company will use Samsung’s early 802.16e equipment. The 802.16e standard incorporates fixed, nomadic (portable but fixed in use), and mobile WiMax, although there’s still a lot of work to be done to create a certified, interoperable version for general release.

The broadband firm will install base station on 16 towers along with 110 microcells on buildings and utility poles and use the 2.5 GHz band, which is largely owned by Sprint Nextel and Clearwire.

The article does contain the extraordinary statement: “Unlike other networks that vendors have called “pre-WiMax,” says Schreiber, the Muskegon system will be fully compliant with the new 802.16e standard.”

Pre-WiMax or WiMax-ready has typically referred to the 802.16-2004 standard (incorporating 802.16 through 802.16d) rather than 802.16e. And many of the 802.16-2004 compliant systems, including some that are now fully certified in the first wave of WiMax Forum testing, claimed full compliance with 802.16-2004.

Posted by Glennf at 01:07 PM | Comments (3)