Airspan and Fujitsu were selected as mobile WiMAX equipment providers to UQ Communications, a mobile WiMAX operator in Japan. UQ Communications is jointly owned by KDDI, Intel, East Japan Railway Company, Kyocera, Daiwa Securities and the Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi.
Airspan’s high power mobile WiMAX base station, the MacroMAXe (right), will bring advanced all-IP services to its customers in Japan, said Eric Stonestrom, Airspan’s President and Chief Executive Officer. Airspan has an OEM arrangement with Fujitsu on the device.
Airspan products also include “self install” and professionally installed customer premise equipment.
KDDI, Japan’s number two cellular carrier, will receive one of two WiMax licenses to be awarded by the Japanese government.
The KDDI group, called Wireless Broadband Planning, and one led by rival carrier Willcom was recommended by Japan’s Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications recently to win the licenses, reports Reuters.
Intel owns a 17.65 percent stake in KDDI’s Wireless Broadband Planning group. The stake is matched by East Japan Railway and Kyocera, and all three sit behind leading shareholder KDDI, which has a 32.26 percent stake.
The WiMax services will operate in the 2.5GHz band and will be capable of providing data service at up to 20Mbps to terminals travelling at up to 100 kilometers per hour, according to the Japanese government.
Japan’s cell phone carriers have been testing WiMax for some time. It will likely mean that cellphone leader NTT DoCoMo and third-ranked Softbank probably will have to lease networks from KDDI or Willcom if they are to offer competing services.
KDDI, Japan’s number two cellular carrier, had 29 million subscriptions to its CDMA2000 cell phone service at the end of November this year. Willcom, which uses the PHS (Personal Handyphone System) technology to offer a data-centric service, had 4.6 million subscriptions.
In other WiMAX news:
- The Italian auction of 35 WiMAX licenses at 3.5GHz generated a record of €136.3 million (US$205.8 million) for the Italian government. Italy’s licenses run for 15 years and are renewable, but cannot be sold without Communications Ministry approval.
- WiMax auctions in France and Germany recently raised €125.8 million and €56.1 million, respectively.
- Tata Communications plans an investment of 500 million dollars in their three-year WiMAX plan. They are targeting 40 cities and 300 towns in India. Tata Group’s telecommunication subsidiaries include VSNL and VSNL International.
- Alvarion and Iberbanda, Spain’s leading WiMAX carrier and subsidiary of Telefonica, today announced the deployment of Alvarion’s BreezeMAX system at 3.5GHz in Navarra, a community in northeast Spain.
