WiMAX is a Gain for Net Neutrality; Not a Global Play, says GSM Association Chairman
October 31, 2007
by Jeff Orr, Editor
Mobile Broadband News
During a recent interview with China’s InterFax at the ICT China Mobile Terminal Summit 2007 in Beijing, GSM Association Chairman Craig Ehrlich shared his views on the Mobile Broadband market, adoption of WiMAX as a 3G protocol, and the demise of CDMA.
Three billion mobile service customers are counted today utilizing GSM or CDMA derived protocols. Growth for the installed infrastructure is expected from the nearly 3 billion potential subscribers in the $15k-$20k annual income bracket. The 1 billion potential subscribers who have no income will likely remain out of reach for mobile operators and GSM technologies, notes Ehrlich.
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Mobile Broadband Highlights from Alcatel-Lucent Q3′2007 Financial Statement
October 31, 2007
Alcatel-Lucent today issued the results of their Q3′2007 report. For the third quarter 2007, revenue for the wireless business segment was Euro 1,276 million compared to Euro 1,674 million in the year-ago quarter, a 20% decrease at a constant Euro/USD exchange rate, or a 24% decrease at current rate.
Key highlights from their wireless carrier operations included:
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@Road Selects Sierra Wireless HSDPA for Mobile Resource Management
October 30, 2007
Sierra Wireless today announced that @Road, a Trimble Company and leading provider of end-to-end solutions for Mobile Resource Management (MRM), has selected the Sierra Wireless MC8775 embedded module for integration into @Road’s High-Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) solutions for MRM.
Designed for high-speed, high-capacity wireless data solutions supporting (3G) HSDPA wireless network standards, the Sierra Wireless MC8775 PCI Express Mini Card, which offers peak download data rates of 3.6 Mbps, is compatible with three HSDPA/UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications System) frequency bands (850, 1900, 2100 MHz) and four EDGE/GPRS bands (850, 900, 1800, and 1900 MHz) used worldwide - allowing seamless global roaming on the best available network.
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SkyCross Chosen by Intel to Provide WiMAX Antennas for Dana Point Express34 PC Card
October 30, 2007
SkyCross today announced that Intel has chosen internal SkyCross WiMAX antennas for the Dana Point Express34 PC card reference design. The SkyCross antenna technology is embedded into these new, narrower PC cards, enabling device manufacturers to create stylish designs that appeal to consumer electronics buyers. The solution implements a diversity configuration with ample isolation between the two antennas so each antenna delivers excellent performance.
The SkyCross 2.5 GHz antennas in the Dana Point design support WiMAX service in the United States, particularly for the Sprint Nextel network, as well as parts of Europe and Asia. The SkyCross antennas are very efficient, enabling a high percentage of electrical power supplied to the antenna to be converted into electromagnetic power. The antennas also offer better return loss with at least 90 percent of the electrical energy generated by the radio transferred into electromagnetic wave energy. These performance characteristics offer longer battery life and a highly satisfactory user experience, increasingly important attributes for new wireless technologies intended for mass markets.
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KT and Sumitomo Partner to Buy Control of Uzbekistan’s East Telecom and Super iMax Operators
October 30, 2007
Sumitomo Corp. said Tuesday it will launch high-speed wireless communications services in Uzbekistan in the second half of 2008. Sumitomo will offer the services based on WiMAX by acquiring two firms based in the Uzbek capital of Tashkent jointly with South Korea’s carrier KT Corp.
Specifically, KT will buy a stake of 51% in East Telecom and a 60% stake in Super iMax. Sumitomo will snap up a 34% stake in East Telecom and a 40% stake in Super iMax. Sumitomo and KT are expected to spend a total of 8 billion yen on the share acquisitions and purchases of new shares to be issued by the two local companies later. East Telecom and Super iMax will aim to achieve combined annual sales of 61 million dollars in 2012, according to Sumitomo.
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XRONet Samples Mobile WiMAX Chipset Touting Low Power Consumption and Small Footprint
October 29, 2007
XRONet corporation of Korea announced that it is sampling a chipset of Baseband MAC/PHY SoC (XRO7000) and RF Transceiver IC (XRO3000), targeting Mobile WiMAX Wave2/Wave1/WiBro terminals. XRO7000 and XRO3000 support all features of Mobile WiMAX Wave2 profile, and well exceed the performance requirements. With its unprecedented low power consumption and small form factor, the chipset is a perfect solution for handheld devices like smartphones, PDAs, mobile internet devices, UMPCs (Ultra mobile PCs), as well as USB dongles, PC cards, express cards, SDIO devices.
According to XRONet, the highly integrated Baseband and RF chipset raises the bar on the performance to power ratio of Mobile WiMAX chipset in the market. The chipset puts together all the features covering, Mobile WiMAX Wave2 as well as Wave1 and WiBro (the World’s first commercial Mobile WiMAX service in Korea) in a single chip baseband SoC and a single chip RF IC. XRONet’s hardwired 2×2 MIMO OFDMA engine provides spatial multiplexing doubling the data rate, and Space time coding, doubling the cell range. Its MIMO algorithm gives the ML (Maximum likelihood) performance, the theoretical limit of Spatial multiplexing at the fraction of power consumption of conventional ML algorithms. The chipset’s optional 2 Transmitters can boost the capacity of uplink as well. XRO7000’s unique distributed architecture with hardwired PHY and MAC engines, on-chip AD/DA, low power CPUs, and memories, and its dynamic power manager, minimize the chipset’s power consumption on the fly. XRO3000’s MIMO-optimized direct conversion RF architecture raises the performance limit in TX/RX EVM, noise figure, phase noise, linear TX power, and dynamic range.
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Huawei and NextWave Broadband to Cooperate on WiMAX Interoperability Testing
October 29, 2007
Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. recently teamed up with US-based NextWave Broadband Inc., an arm under the wing of NextWave Wireless Inc., to cooperate in a WIMAX testing and interoperability lab in Nevada.
Mobile WIMAX equipment is capable of mobility, voice over Internet protocol (VoIP), and streaming video media, among other applications.
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AT&T Pushes Mute Button on MediaFLO Mobile TV Service Until 2008
October 28, 2007
by Jeff Orr, Editor
Mobile Broadband News
Reuters is reporting that AT&T is delaying their commercial launch of MediaFLO USA’s technology and mobile TV network until early 2008. While the US mobile service carrier didn’t elaborate on the exact cause for the change in launch, a spokesperson told Reuters that AT&T continues to fine-tune the service.
Mobile TV services are currently dominated by consumer subscribers in Japan and South Korea. Mobile TV provides a way for consumers to tune-in to a variety of programming on a handheld device, similar to watching limited TV programming from home. Depending on the region and service offering, approximately 6-8 channels of predefined programming are offered to subscribers.
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Asia-Pacific Dominating Mobile TV Broadcasting, Says Analyst Berg Insight
October 26, 2007
According to a new report from the analyst firm Berg Insight, Asia-Pacific is leading the adoption of mobile TV broadcasting.
About 38 million viewers – almost 78 percent of the total mobile TV audience – was found in Japan and South Korea in mid-2007. These markets are several years ahead of Europe and North America where the development in most cases has been very slow.
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Examine Trends and Developments in North Asia’s Broadband and Internet Markets
October 25, 2007
Research and Markets has announced the addition of 2007 North Asian - Broadband and Internet Markets to their offering.
This annual report offers a wealth of information on the Broadband and Internet markets in China, Hong Kong, Japan, Macau, Mongolia, North Korea, South Korea and Taiwan.
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North America Interest in Mobility Beyond the Enterprise Growing, finds Infonetics Research
October 25, 2007
According to a new study by Infonetics Research, by 2011 overall 3G data service adoption across small, medium, and large organizations in North America will reach 17%, and adoption of mobile WiMAX will reach 11%.
The study, “User Plans for Wireless LANs and Mobility,” also shows that wireless LANs will be adopted by 73% of North American organizations by 2011, and wireless mesh by 11%.
“Mobility is increasingly viewed by user organizations as a fundamental part of their communications strategy and the wireless networks or services they use are an intrinsic part of the overall network,” said Richard Webb, wireless analyst at Infonetics Research, and lead author of the report. “Wireless is no longer seen as a separate overlaid and unmanaged wild frontier.”
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Nokia Introduces E51 Business Phone with HSDPA to US Market
October 25, 2007
Nokia introduced its 12mm-thick business phone ‘E51’ during CTIA 2007 in San Francisco, which offers key applications including e-mail, contacts, calendar and the home screen.
Supporting Wi-Fi connectivity, HSDPA and Quad-band GSM, the E51 is equipped with one touch keys for direct access to key features. Other features of it included a FM radio, music and multimedia players and 2M camera.
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Samsung Unveils BlackJack II Quad-Band US Handset at CTIA
October 25, 2007
Samsung’s 3G HSDPA phone ‘BlackJack II (model: i617)’ was unveiled during CTIA 2007 in San Francisco.
Running on Windows Mobile 6 Standard, the BlackJack II features 3G UMTS/HSDPA and Quad-band EDGE/GPRS technology, built-in GPS supporting TeleNav GPS Navigator, and AT&T Video Share service enabling users to share live video over the wireless phones while on a voice call.
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Nokia Presents N95 Smartphone with HSDPA at CTIA
October 25, 2007
Nokia presented its all-black designed smartphone ‘N95’ with 8GB of built-in storage during CTIA 2007 in San Francisco.
Adopting a luminous 2.8-inch QVGA display and 2-way slide keyboard, the 8GB N95 features 5M camera with Carl Zeiss optics, GPS function and HSDPA/Wi-Fi connection.
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SMART Alliance Launched by Navini, Beceem, Fujitsu, Runcom
October 24, 2007
In an effort to drive harmonized system performance and interoperability of Smart Antenna systems, Navini, Beceem, Fujitsu and Runcom announce the formation of the “SMart Antenna RF Test” Alliance (SMART). This alliance has been formed to promote the adoption and implementation of Beamforming (BF) and Beamformed MIMO (BF + MIMO) which are included in the 802.16e-2005 specification published by the IEEE and adopted by the WiMAX Forum for Mobile WiMAX certification under Wave 2. Smart Antenna systems are already deployed in commercial Mobile WiMAX networks today.
“The capacity and coverage benefits of combining Beamforming with MIMO are very compelling offering up to double the capacity with twice the coverage of non-beamformed systems,” said Sai Subramanian, Navini’s vice president of Product Management. “This Alliance ensures broad availability of CPE devices that have full capability of Beamforming and Beamformed MIMO.”
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