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Natcom will start a trial in Auckland, New Zealand, of WiMax service: The Airthernet service starts with trials in January offering 2 to 10 Mbps. Companies that sign up will receive free equipment and pay a low rate during this period.
Are they using equipment certified in WiMax’s first round of basic testing? Not clear.
Posted by Glennf at 10:14 AM | Comments (0)
Alvarion said that multiple operators will conduct a total of 11 pre-WiMax trials in Italy: A state ministry has appointed a testing group to monitor the trials performance with results due by the end of the year.
Posted by Glennf at 12:21 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Intel says it intends to test WiMax in Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines; South Korea already way ahead: Intel will start its trials by the end of 2005 with the intent to help providers roll out service within two to three years in the first three of those countries. South Korea is ahead of the pack with a commercial roll-out expected in the first half of 2006.
Posted by Glennf at 09:12 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Deutsche Telekom will try out Alvarion’s WiMax technology for 100 hard-to-reach customers: DT’s T-Com unit has an enormous DSL footprint (6.7 million broadband lines), and wants to reach those they can’t bring high-speed Internet over wire to. The trial seems awfully small given that it will last through March 2006—100 customers near Bonn, Germany.
Posted by Glennf at 06:16 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Pipex, a spectrum holder in the UK, is set to trial gear from Airspan: The trial should last six months and will test applications including voice over IP. I thought we were a little beyond the twisting of words but apparently not—the companies in their press release call this the “first 802.16-2004 compliant WiMax trial in the UK.” That’s a bit of a moot point seeing as there is no body that aims to assure the industry that equipment is 802.16-2004 compliant. Instead, statements like that only confuse readers into thinking that perhaps this is the first true WiMax compliant trial, but in fact that’s not true either seeing as certification hasn’t even started.
Posted by nancyg at 04:52 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Qwest and Time Warner are both conducting broadband wireless trials around Denver: There’s not a lot of news here, but it’s a nice roundup with specifics about where the trials have been taking place. It sounds like Qwest is still planning on a trial with 800 customers once certified gear becomes available.
Posted by nancyg at 04:16 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Alcatel is working with the electric company on a WiMax trial in the Alsace region of France: It sounds like just one WiMax base station is deployed, on equipment owned by the electric company and using the electric company’s fiber network for backhaul. The base station will supply connections to residents, businesses, a school, a library, and city hall. No mention of what spectrum is being used.
Posted by nancyg at 03:13 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Siemens said it will launch a handful of trials of broadband wireless networks in Italy: Siemens will use its SkyMax gear, which the vendor hopes will receive certification as WiMax gear. Siemens isn’t naming names so it’s unclear if the vendor is working with an actual operator. [link via DailyWireless]
Posted by nancyg at 04:26 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
On the heels of Nextel’s announcement of an IPWireless trial, Sprint says it will trial mobile WiMax with Motorola: Sprint said that WiMax is one of the technologies it is trialing in consideration of services to be deployed in the 2.5 GHz band. Sprint recently purchased Nextel, which in addition to the IPWireless trial, has also conducted a live market trial of Flarion’s gear.
While earlier today I wrote that WiMax is at a disadvantage in a competition for Sprint’s business because IPWireless and Flarion have products available today, I’ve re-thought that point. Realistically, Motorola and a slew of other vendors also have broadband wireless equipment, they just aren’t technically standard. But neither are IPWireless or Flarion. IPWireless is technically part of an official body of standards, but it’s not really comparable to something like WiMax that has a much larger ecosystem of companies supporting it. Sprint could bet on WiMax, using proprietary equipment to begin with based on hopes of migrating to standardized and lower-cost equipment as it becomes available.
Posted by nancyg at 03:49 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Nextel said it will launch a trial of IPWireless’ technology in the Washington, D.C. area: Nextel recently shut off its trial in North Carolina of Flarion’s technology. Nextel plans to use its 2.5 GHz spectrum for the IPWireless trial but it used a trial 1.9 GHz band for the Flarion network. Sprint, which recently bought Nextel, made some noises around the time of the merger about planning to deploy WiMax once the mobile version comes out. But since then the company seems to be softening the finality of that statement. Combined, the new Sprint Nextel have a significant portion of the 2.5 GHz licenses in the U.S., so they’re clearly looking for some way to leverage them. This is another instance where WiMax could loose out due to timing. Flarion and IPWireless both have equipment available today whereas the mobile WiMax standard isn’t even finalized yet.
Posted by nancyg at 09:40 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Qwest said that it plans to launch a WiMax trial in a small city near Denver: The company hasn’t decided where but expects the trial to start in the fourth quarter of this year. Qwest has already been testing out broadband wireless among employees in Denver and Rio Rancho, New Mexico.
Qwest joins AT&T and Bellsouth in recent announcements about WiMax trials. These big name operators lend a lot of credibility to WiMax, although none has yet announced any large scale commercial rollouts. Notice it’s the big wireline operators expressing interest, rather than the mobile operators. This means the wireline guys might actually start paying attention to the smaller towns that they’ve previously said weren’t worth building broadband out to. It also means that if they do build the networks they could eventually steal some niche market share from the cellular operators, if the landline operators ultimately migrate to mobile WiMax. [Link via Broadband Reports.]
Posted by nancyg at 04:54 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
AT&T said it will launch another broadband wireless trial in Atlanta: The company has been trialing a similar network in New Jersey. AT&T isn’t saying whose gear it is using, but says that the equipment is all of the variety being submitted to the WiMax Forum for WiMax certification. A spokesperson said he doesn’t expect there to be many changes between what is being used now and final certified gear.
Interestingly, AT&T is using loaner frequencies from the FCC for the networks because it doesn’t want to use unlicensed spectrum. AT&T doesn’t have any licensed spectrum that would be suitable for WiMax so this makes the trials a bit curious. The spectrum situation is so murky in the U.S. that it’d be hard to imagine AT&T getting its hands on any useful licensed spectrum in the near enough future to be able to build a WiMax network. Perhaps AT&T wants to run its own trials before partnering with another company that does have spectrum to offer services.
Posted by nancyg at 01:22 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
BellSouth plans to launch a broadband wireless service in Athens, Georgia: Navini will supply the network. The companies are calling this a “pre-WiMax” network. Navini has been offering a portable solution, including PCMCIA cards and small portable modems, for a while. Navini is working with the 802.16e committee and plans to be WiMax compliant but not until 802.16e. To me, that means it’s a bit of a stretch to call Navini’s current generation products “pre-WiMax.” Most people using the “pre-WiMax” term today are referring to products that are aiming to be compliant with the first generation fixed WiMax standard. Regardless, the fact that BellSouth chose Navini shows that both portability and standards-compliance are likely important issues for BellSouth.
Posted by nancyg at 02:25 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Telabria is launching a broadband wireless trial in Canterbury in the UK: The trial, which will be done with the University of Kent, will use gear from Alvarion and others and will test interoperability. The trial, which will use an R & D license from the regulator, will become commercial later this year, though it’s not clear what spectrum will be used for the commercial service. Part of the goal of the trial is also to test how networks behave using licensed and unlicensed spectrum.
Posted by nancyg at 04:25 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
AT&T’s CTO talks here about the company’s broadband wireless trial in New Jersey: The network will use an early version of Intel’s WiMax chip but will use the official Rosedale chip later in the year.
He sounds about as confused about where WiMax fits among other wireless technologies as just about everyone else in the industry. He draws a comparison to the cellular world, saying that 802.16 has the potential to be a worldwide standard where such a worldwide standard doesn’t exist in cellular because of both CDMA and GSM. While it’s true that 802.16 has the potential to position OFDM as a worldwide air interface standard, a very significant roadblock is the lack of a common frequency to deploy WiMax in around the globe. That means that global roaming, which wouldn’t happen until the next version of the standard is available anyway, is very far away.
He’s very wishy washy on the topic of WiMax competing against 3G and seems to contradict himself. But at this stage in the development of the next WiMax standard, it’s pretty hard to predict how the technology will be positioned in the market.
Posted by nancyg at 05:24 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Alvarion issued a press release about a trial O2 conducted in Ireland: I wrote about the trial in January (no permalink, scroll down to January 27 posts). While Pat O’Connell at O2 told me that the company was generally happy with the trial, just as Alvarion notes in the press release, he was also a bit more candid with me about the reality of WiMax. O’Connell was personally skeptical about how soon and how broadly we might see significant WiMax networks. He also offered me an anecdote about the WiMax antenna blowing off the mast—a very real hazard involved in the building of broadband wireless networks.
Posted by nancyg at 04:39 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
This announcement is quite difficult to decipher: But ADP Telecom is using equipment from Alcatel for a trial aimed at determining how WiMax might work instead of Wi-Fi as a wireless access solution with a broader coverage area in airports. The trial will allow potential users ranging from baggage handlers, car rental services, check-in desks, and passengers to access the network. ADP is particularly interested in the nomadic capabilities of WiMax.
On a side note, my favorite word in the press release is “complementarity.” I don’t think it’s a real word in English, but it ought to be.
Posted by nancyg at 04:32 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
AT&T said it will launch a broadband wireless trial in May in Middletown, New Jersey: This article doesn’t include which vendor or vendors AT&T has chosen for the trial but the equipment used will be from a vendor aiming for WiMax compliance. AT&T is looking into replacing data lines that AT&T currently leases from local phone companies to serve business customers.
Late last year AT&T said it pays $8.5 billion to other phone companies to access their networks. Building its own network using WiMax would be a one time hit that could save the company a bundle over time.
Posted by nancyg at 11:10 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Deutsche Telekom subsidiary T-Com will deploy a fixed broadband wireless network in the middle of the year: The first pilots will take place in Siegburg and Rheinbach. T-Com has already tested the WiMax-like technology in its lab and will be deploying the network as part of a €250 million investment in its network. The vendor has not been revealed, although speculation surrounds Alvarion.
Deutsche Telekom appears to be quite aggressive in trying out new technologies. In addition to this trial, it is trialing equipment from Flarion, in which it also invests, in the Netherlands. Deutsche Telekom also has licenses in the 450 MHz band in Germany and speculation has it that the operator may deploy Flarion’s equipment there. It’s quite a variety of networks for the operator and it’s not entirely clear how they all may ultimately work together.
Posted by nancyg at 05:27 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Irish Broadband says it will have broadband wireless networks live in all of its coverage area later this year: The operator currently serves several markets and was recently awarded licenses for seven additional areas throughout Ireland. This article notes that Irish Broadband’s collaboration with Intel on a network in Leixlip is Ireland’s first WiMax trial. While technically that’s impossible because WiMax gear isn’t available, it’s clear the trial uses equipment based on the standard. O2 has also conducted a trial in a remote town in Ireland aimed at testing WiMax.
I’m also a bit confused about one comment from an Irish Broadband spokesman about the ubiquity of WiMax which he says doesn’t require users to be tied to a connection in the wall. The initial WiMax networks will require an antenna at the user premise which is then hardwired to a user’s modem, connected to a PC via Ethernet. A Wi-Fi extension, of course, eliminates the wiring. But WiMax on its own, at least initially, will require users to be tied to the wall.
Posted by nancyg at 04:21 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack