It was a busy day for WiMAX press releases. Here are a few:
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Alvarion announced today that its 802.16e BreezeMAX® 2300 and 2500 base stations have received USDA Rural Development acceptance and “Buy American” status from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Rural Utilities Service. RUS acceptance is required for operators requesting federal funds from the Rural Broadband Access Loan program. From 2001 through 2007, RUS has provided almost $6.5 billion in telecom grants, loans and loan guarantees for rural development.
- DragonWave today announced that Sprint has selected DragonWave’s IP backhaul solutions for its XOHM-branded WiMAX mobile-broadband services in North America. DragonWave’s Horizon Compact and Horizon Duo products will be deployed initially in the Baltimore/Washington and Chicago markets.
- Clearwire CEO Ben Wolff said this week, in an interview with Unstrung, that he is already in talks about possible European alliances. He would not elaborate on the potential partners, though BSkyB, Rupert Murdoch’s would like to add terrestrial wireless to its satellite systems. Murdoch would bring the financial and commercial weight to acquire new spectrum – even, potentially, mobile broadband licenses in 2.5-2.69GHz, which will be auctioned in most countries over the next few years.
- On-Communications said it had decided WiMax was the best technology for providing wireless connectivity to business customers in the UK. Rollouts of the mobile variant of WiMax are dependent on the results of an Ofcom spectrum auction due later this year.
- Verizon’s senior vice president of technology told Unstrung, they looked at WiMax as a supplement to a DSL deployment — “but it wasn’t going to ever be the main horse you wanted to ride, especially as we’ve seen greater and greater bandwidth requirements materialize in the consumer marketplace… our horse is LTE,” he added. Check out their video.
- Huawei Technologies of China announced a pair of mobile WiMAX wins this week, one to Mobilink of Pakistan and one to Asiaspace of Malaysia. Huawei claims 19 overseas commercial WiMAX contracts.
- ChinaTel announced today that it has completed the installation of the first phase of an Internet wireless network in Beijing. The wireless network is live and provides Internet access services across approximately 100 square kilometers of metropolitan Beijing. The proposed network, being constructed by the Trussnet subsidiary of ChinaTel Group, is a WiMAX and Mesh Wi-Fi network. Wireless broadband services will be provided on the 3.5 GHz radio frequency spectrum that the Chinese government has granted use to Chinacomm for its WiMAX broadband services.
According to WiMAXCounts.com, by the end of Q1 2008:
- 65% of Operators are already commercial, 14% are trialing, 9% are planning their launch, 10% have idle spectrum and 2% have returned/lost spectrum.
- The split by subscriber type among WiMAXCounts operators was 65% residential and 35% business.
- The 3.3-3.8 GHz band is the most widely deployed, with 63% of WiMAXCounts operators deploying their WiMAX networks in this band in Q1 2008, compared to 70% of the Operators deploying in this band during Q4 2007.
- Q1 2008 BWA/WiMAX service revenue among WiMAXCounts operators totaled US$ 366 million, as compared to $US 303.65 million during the previous quarter, an increase of 20%.
- Q1 2008 recorded ARPU was US$ 48 and US$ 146 for residential and business subscribers.
- Motorola remains the leader in equipment deployed for both BWA/WiMAX CPEs and Base Stations
Latin and Central America recorded 35 WiMax deployments across 14 countries and 261,000 subscribers at the end of 1Q08, reports market analyst Maravedis. Globally, the WiMax subscriber base increased by 260,246 in the first quarter of 2008, reaching a total of 1.99mn subscribers, the consultancy said.
Clearwire USA remains the top operator in terms of number of subscribers, with an estimated 443,000 subscribers, an increase of 12.5% compared to the 394,000 subscribers reported in 4Q07, although their systems are using fixed technology.
Clearwire will offer Mobile WiMAX services in the Portland, Oregon, region later this year using as many as 300 radios mounted on cell towers.
DigitalBridge Communications became the first Mobile WiMAX provider in the United States, last month, with their service in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Their BridgeMAXX mobility service plan offers 3Mbps download for less than $40 per month.
