Mobile WiMAX at World Congress
The WiMAX Forum today announced that 28 Mobile WiMAX products in the 2.3 GHz and 2.5 GHz frequency bands have been submitted for WiMAX Forum certification since WiMAX Forum labs began accepting applications from vendors in late 2007. The first Mobile WiMAX products are expected to achieve the WiMAX Forum Certified seal of approval in Q2 2008 and to reach the market later this year.
The organization also announced its official support for Mobile WiMAX certification in the 700 MHz band. Work on the technical specifications for 700 MHz WiMAX Forum certification is already underway in the association’s working groups. The published specifications will be unveiled as they are completed and they will support both TDD and FDD certification profiles.
“With more than 260 commercial WiMAX deployments rolled-out on a global basis, WiMAX technology is the only commercially available OFDMA-based wireless technology,” said Ron Resnick, president of the WiMAX Forum.
The WiMAX Forum media luncheon featured testimonials from global service providers, including Freedom4, Iberbanda, KDDI, Korea Telecom and SprintNextel and who each indicated the readiness of WiMAX technology with certified products and the optimization of WiMAX networks for broadband data services as key motivators in selecting WiMAX technology for their next generation services.
TelecomTV has video reports from Mobile World Congress 2008 (above).
Other WiMAX announcements at the big show in Barcelona:
- Redline Communications introduced a full suite of RedMAX 4C Mobile WiMAX products including Mobile WiMAX base stations and subscriber devices for the 2.5 GHz and 3.5 GHz bands. The expanded RedMAX 4C familyx includes Redline’s 2 x 2 MIMO antenna technology which is said to deliver equal performance to competitive 4 x 2 systems, providing greater coverage and a lower absolute cost to operators.
- Alcatel-Lucent announced Mobile WiMAX contracts with Worldmax in the Netherlands and Packet One in Malaysia as well as several additional operators yet to be publicly disclosed. Alcatel-Lucent’s commercial 16e deployments worldwide now total 22 - more than any other vendor claims the company.
- Intel, through its VC funding arm, said it will make a “substantial” investment in Freedom4 (right), a London-based WiMAX service provider.
- The U.S. Army is testing Mobile WiMAX. They took three Samsung base stations and mounted them into Humvees, connected to a satellite link as the backhaul. It is believed to be the first time a satellite link was used with WiMax. Military forces can set up a satellite dish and pop up a WiMax antenna next to it to form “a bubble of WiMax” around a particular area or a convoy, according to testers.
- Mitsumi is using Sequans chips for Mobile WiMAX modules in an SD card. The SD card includes all Mobile WiMAX functionality in a small 20X20 mm package.
- SEQUANS and Tecom LTD, a leading telecommunications equipment manufacturer of Taiwan, have introduced a comprehensive Tecom WiMAX product series including Mobile WiMAX Wave 2 base stations and subscriber stations using Sequans chip solutions as the main design platform.
- Max Telecom today announced it has completed the first phase of its WiMAX rollout in Bulgaria, using the Cisco Mobile WiMAX technology paired with its access and aggregation solutions. Max Telecom plans to expand coverage to 90 percent of Bulgaria’s population by the end of 2009.
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