T he Korea Times reports that the U.S. military is interested in Samsung’s WiBro technology, and are negotiating a $3 billion deal with the company. The mobile WiMax technology is already being implemented by the South Korean military as part of its ‘Ubiquitous Defense’ project.
Samsung didn’t elaborate the issue, but it is believed that the U.S. military is considering adopting the Korea-led technology for its next-generation tactical communication tool, a local daily reported citing a Samsung insider.
“When the deal is signed, personal and military communication equipments of the U.S. military will be fully reorganized to be based on the wireless Internet network,” an unidentified Samsung official was quoted by Hankook economic daily.
The official also reportedly said that the size of the deal will match Samsung’s $3-billion contract with Sprint. Sprint is working with vendors Samsung and Motorola for their rollout and could add Nortel to the short list.
The U.S. military budget is $441.6 billion this year, larger than the military budgets of the next twenty largest spending nations combined.
Speaking of WiBro, Korea Telecom gave industry heavyweights a WiBro Experience Bus ride around Seoul. Passengers could use PDAs and laptops equipped with PCMCIA WiBro cards to experience WiBro service. No external antenna required.
Steven Schroedl, founder of VeriLAN, told DailyWireless editor Sam Churchill the bus connection was good. Where it still needs work, apparently, is moving around on foot.
The connection worked well from the bus tour and when holding still inside the hotel where the WiMAX meeting was being held, but when I was walking around the hotel floors the connection was not solid on the client card in the laptop. I was very impressed that the service worked inside on a PC card, but I was equally impressed that cell phone coverage worked when on elevators 6 floors under the hotel.
Monica Paolini of Senza Fili Consulting reports:
It was quite impressive. I was able to use Skype from the 19th floor of the hotel, when the coverage that KT promised was up to the fourth floor. Within the coverage area, rates ranged from 500 kbps to 2 Mbps in the downlink, and 250 kbps to 500 kbps in the uplink (this is was based on very informal testing and comparing notes with other users). The network used the first generation WiBRO, which uses Mobile WiMAX (based on IEEE 802.16e-2005) in SISO mode. The introduction of MIMO in the second generation of WiBRO will significantly increase throughput and coverage.
WiBRO is the first large-scale Mobile WiMAX network to be commercially deployed and this is being done ahead of certification of Mobile WiMAX products, expected to start in early 2007.
