Intel has signed a memorandum of understanding with both Korea Telecom (KT), Korea s biggest wired telephone and broadband operator, and SK Telecom, South Korea s biggest mobile carrier, to work with them on harmonizing the Korean WiBro standard with WiMax 802.16e. Intel will provide engineering support to ensure interoperability.
Intel will also cooperate with SK Telecom on developing SK s new music and video download service, MelOn. SK Telecom launched the MelOn mobile music download service last November and last month acquired a major stake in Korea s largest music label, YBM Seoul Records. SK Telecom expects to have a dual-band CDMA/WiBro handset available at the time of the commercial WiBro launch in Korea, early next year.
South Korea s wireless broadband project is expected to cost $784 million to $900 million and provide ubiquitous broadband wireless, nation-wide. The South Koreans have been working with their version of 802.16e (WiBro), using the 2.3 GHz band. In the U.S., satellite radio sits between the 2.3 GHz bands. The requirements to protect that service make it difficult to build systems in that band in the United States.
Intel’s WiMax basestation is using PicoChip in it’s Glenfield board. It has an Advanced Mezzanine Card (AMC) module which contains flash memory, FPGAs, an optical interface and an interface for Gigabit Ethernet.
The Glenfield board features the PicoChip PC102 array processor, running its PC8520 application software for the 802.16d WiMAX standard. It can be used standalone, or plugged into an advanced TCA card or a basestation. Intel s own network processor handles the MAC and control functions.
Rupert Baines, PicoChip s v-p of marketing says that once work is completed on software for the 802.16e version of WiMAX, which adds provision for mobility, it will be directly portable to the hardware.
We re working on [802.16e], it s very real, we ve got customers signed up on it, he said. But we haven t disclosed any details yet.
PicoChip also looks set to benefit from British Telecom’s 21st Century Network (21CN) project. In April Fujitsu Telecoms was awarded the contract to supply access technologies (DSL, WiMax and fiber) for 21CN. Airspan supplies WiMAX equipment to Fujitsu, and PicoChip also supplies chips to Fujitsu.
In January, Earthlink & SK Telecom formed a joint venture. SK Telecom, and EarthLink, the fourth largest ISP in the United States, have signed a joint venture agreement to form a wireless voice and data service in the United States. EarthLink and SK Telecom will each contribute $220 million to the 50-50 joint venture called SK-EarthLink over the next three years. EarthLink and SK Telecom said the joint venture could generate approximately 3 million net subscribers and revenue of around $2 billion by 2009.
Sky Dayton is the CEO of SK-EarthLink. He founded both Earthlink and Boingo Wireless. It will operate as a non-facilities-based nationwide mobile virtual network operator (MVNO). Earthlink wants to unwire your city, reports MuniWireless. It is one of the twelve bidders on the Philadelphia RFP.
SK-EarthLink might make a good cable-oriented MVNO, in competion with Sprint-Nextel. Cable could provide the backbone infrastructure. But where would they get licensed 2.6 GHz frequencies? Clearwire? Bell South? Unless they plan unlicensed 5.8Ghz cable antennas on every block, their WiMax options might be few.
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