WiMAX Development in Asia October 13-19
October 17, 2008
- Taiwanese WiMAX licensee Tatung InfoComm has decided to spend NT$500 million purchasing WiMAX base stations from Alcatel-Lucent and core network equipment from Starent and Bridgewater, mainly for the construction of a commercial WiMAX network in Kaohsiung City, Taiwan's Economic Daily News reported.
Meanwhile, Tatung has completed the deployment of 15 Alcatel-Lucent base stations in Penghu County. The company expects to obtain the operation license in November and commence pilot service in Penghu County. Full-scale commercial services will be launched following the completion of network construction in Kaohsiung.
- It is reported that Taiwanese Smartphone maker HTC will unveil its first WiMAX-enabled mobile phone soon, also according to Economic Daily News. Codenamed HTC T8290, HTC's WiMAX phone will also support HSDPA, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth 2.0. It is projected that HTC will begin shipment of the HTC T8290 for Russian WiMAX operator Yota by Christmas 2008 at the earliest.
- Taiwan's III (Institute for Information Industry) and Malaysia's MIMOS (Malaysian Institute of Microelectronic Systems) have signed a memorandum of understanding for collaboration on WiMAX. As per the agreement, the III will provide 802.16j-based technologies to assist in the deployment of WiMAX network in the remote parts of Malaysia.
- At the 3G in China Global Summit 2008, which ran from October 15 to 16, China's MIIT (Ministry of Industry and Information Technology) outlawed the application of mobile WiMAX (802.16e) in China. The MIIT claimed that the 802.16e specification has not been approved as a national standard - though accepted as a 3G standard by the ITU (International Telecommunication Union) - and is therefore illegal in China at present. Nevertheless, 802.16d, or fixed WiMAX, operating in the 3.5GHz frequency band is allowed in urban wireless infrastructure.