The WiMax market appears to be heating up in Europe, reports Unstrung, with a number of RFPs being issued by WiMax license owners in Germany and France.
At the Institution of Engineering and Technology’s WiMax London conference yesterday, Markku Hollstrom of Nokia Siemens, said his company is talking with operators in Germany and France and that he expects German WiMax operators to choose their vendors by the end of this year.
Germany auctioned the 3.5GHz broadband wireless access licenses in December last year, and there were five winners: Clearwire Europe, Deutsche Breitband Dienste, and Inquam Broadband Holdings — a joint venture between NextWave Broadband, BFD Mobile Radio Partners, and Omnia Ltd. — each with national coverage. Regional licenses were awarded to Televersa Online and MGM Productions Group.
T-Mobile was interested in bidding for a 3.5GHz license, but changed its mind just weeks before the auction, says Unstrung. Europe is expected to be a challenging market for mobile WiMax in licensed spectrum because of the strong competition among mobile operators.
Some equipment suppliers say German operators may be getting ahead of the game, particularly for mobile WiMax (802.16e) deployments. Anthony Fulgoni, sales manager at Proxim Wireless said, “It will be at least the second half of next year before mobile WiMax is shipped on the back of an RFP.”
Still, 3.5 GHz isn’t really a Mobile WiMAX play; it’s more likely to be used for fixed applications. The 2.5GHz band is the target for Mobile WiMAX.
3G operators in Europe feel they’ve essentially “prepaid” for the 2.5 GHz spectrum when they bought 2.1 GHz spectrum for 3G, says Telephony. 3G operators are lobbying hard to ensure that winners of the 2.5 GHz licenses will be able to deploy only 3G or IMT-2000 technologies.
According to TeleGeography Research, more than 200 operators worldwide plan to deploy WiMAX this year, up from 36 at the end of 2006 and just ten in 2005. It calls 2007 “the year WiMAX finally comes of age.”
Like GSM, WiMAX operates on various frequencies around the world, depending on the spectrum that is made available. Spectrum bands used include 2.3 GHz, 2.5 GHz, 3.3 Ghz and 3.5 GHz, although lower frequencies work the best.
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