The big WiMAX World Europe conference is May 29-31, in Vienna, Austria, with some vendors making announcements this week at InterOp in Las Vegas.
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Samsung’s WiMax entry into the U.S. business market was announced Tuesday at the Interop trade show in Las Vegas. Samsung’s WiMAX, which will be used by Sprint in some of its cities, is planning a series of all-in-one networking devices for Small and Medium size Businesses (SMBs).
The Ubigate iBG Series products all combine data networking, voice, and security features, and in the third quarter, Samsung will introduce WiMax modules. It will partner with Avaya and Meru Networks on joint product development and distribution, and with Microsoft for network-access standards.
The Ubigate iBG Series enables a simple, complete network infrastructure by converging routing, switching and security into a single, easy-to-manage platform. Mobile WiMAX requires licensed frequencies but fixed WiMAX can use unlicensed 5.8 GHz connections.
Samsung has recently launched Samsung Ubigate iBG Series in South Korea’s Busan City. To establish leadership for the marine city, Busan City has launched the UCity project for four sectors; U-Port, U-Traffic, U-Convention and U-Health.
- Alvarion is contributing to the M-Taiwan project with its commercially available 802.16e-based 4Motion Mobile WiMAX solution and plans to deploy its 802.16e-based gear in TaiChung, the third largest city in Taiwan.
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Nortel and Toshiba will jointly develop mobile WiMAX base stations for Japanese and global markets. The base stations, based on Nortel’s WiMAX gear and Toshiba’s amplifier and miniaturization technology, promise to be small and power efficient. Toshiba will develop the base station radio module, while Nortel will develop the digital module.
“Japan is an important market for Nortel“, said Peter MacKinnon, general manager, Nortel WiMAX. Nortel and Toshiba already have completed a trial run of its WiMax technology in northern Japan, from late 2006 to March 2007. Toshiba’s wireless efforts have been mostly in Japan, while Nortel has ran WiMAX trials in various countries, including the US, Australia, Taiwan and Russia.
- Fujitsu Microelectronics announced the delivery schedule for the company’s first mobile baseband chip . Fujitsu says their MB86K21 802.16e System-on-Chip (SoC) will provide speed and performance improvements at low power consumption in a very compact form factor. Samples of the Wave 2 chip will be available in August 2007. It is designed for PC cards and other media-rich mobile applications and has achieved an 18.6Mbps transfer rate in sample installations and lab demonstrations.
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Intel appears to be pushing ahead with efforts to seed the WiMax market in China, reports EE Times, striking a deal with a provincial government in central China that may spread to several other provinces.
The city of Wuhan, in Hubei Province, said it will serve as a test bed for government services that run over a broadband wireless network. According to the city government, Intel will help set up the network while local wireless service provider Airway Communication will deploy WiMax base stations using 802.16e.
- India’s Reliance will extend its WiMax service from Pune and Bangalore, says a Times News Network. Other cities that may get WiMAX service including Hyderabad, Chennai, Chandigarh, Delhi, and Mumbai, after taking stock of customer response in the first two cities.
- The third Mobile WiMAX Plugfest was held last week in Sophia Antipolis, France. Some 32 WiMAX equipment and test equipment manufacturers performed interoperability tests of Mobile WiMAX equipment. The actual testing was conducted between May 13 and 19. Many vendors are announcing successful results.
- Redline Communications announced the public debut of its RedMAX 4C Mobile WiMAX platform, based on 802.16e-2005 standards for mobile WiMAX. Both the base station and customer premise equipment, were among those tested at the recent WiMAX Forum Plugfest in France, which tested handover and MIMO antennas.
Operating in the 2.5 GHz and 3.5 GHz spectrum bands, RedMAX 4C is designed to conform to the requirements for 802.16e Certification Wave 2 with a modular, standardized (micro) base station and indoor and outdoor fixed and portable end-user devices. RedMAX 4C supports hundreds of active subscribers with the OBSAI (Open Base Station Architecture Initiative) and software-defined radio architecture to protects the carrier investment and extends the product lifecycle.
