Intel and Korea Telecom are collaborating to accelerate the adoption of WiMax-like services in South Korea, reports the Wall St Journal
Intel Capital also announced an investment of USD 20 million in Wibro Infra (WIC), a joint venture with KT, Samsung and KBIC, which builds and operates Wibro infrastructure in Korea, to accelerate KT’s wireless broadband infrastructure.
The KT Chairman Lee reportedly believes WiBro is a “persuasive answer” to better handle wireless data traffic than LTE.
In April, KT signed a memorandum of understanding with Intel to collaborate on WiMAX technology. The deal called for Intel to produce a chipset just for Korea’s WiMAX flavor, called WiBro, which uses the 2.3 GHz band with 8.75MHz wide channels. It is otherwise similar to WiMAX (802.16e). WiBro could then allow international roaming with WiMAX compatibility.
SK Telecom, South Korea’s largest cellular operator, was also a WiMAX partner. But recently the mobile operator said it will provide commercial LTE services in Seoul in 2011 and plans to expand the service to 6 Metropolitan Cities in 2012 with nationwide LTE coverage by 2013. SK Telecom is also an investor in U.S.-based LightSquared, the 4G-LTE/satellite venture backed by Harbinger Capital Partners.
KT will expand the Wibro service this week into five new cities of Busan, Daegu, Gwangju, Daejeon and Ulsan and the expressways of Gyeongbu, Jungbu, Honam and Yeongdong, in addition to its current coverage in the metropolitan areas of Seoul, Inchon and Suwon,
By March 2011, KT aims to offer WiBro services to 82 cities, covering 85 percent of South Korea’s population.
Starting today, Korean customers will be able to purchase Intel-based laptops and netbooks from Samsung, LG and Acer. Subscribers will be able to use WCDMA (GSM), Wi-Fi and WIBRO/WiMAX starting today. KT is also migrating its Wibro network onto 10MHz Wimax channels that allow more interoperability and roaming with Wimax networks worldwide.
Korea Telecom (KT) has the largest portion of the South Korean local telephone and high-speed Internet business. KT had 7.264 million internet customers in August, up from 7.222 million million in July, but the number of Wibro subscribers has slipped to 344,000 from 345,000, while their Wi-Fi user base decreased to 278,000 from 280,000 a month.
KT’s IPTV subscribers totals 1.714 million, up from 1.640 million in July. KT’s PSTN subscriber base slipped to 17.041 million from 17.138 million, while the company’s VoIP subscriber base rose to 2.377 million in August from 2.294 million in July.
In other WiMAX news, Sprint Nextel has pulled three of its top execs, including CEO Dan Hesse, from Clearwire’s board of directors, the companies said today. They cited antitrust concerns as the motivator.
Unstrung is skeptical and speculates that Clearwire may be paving the way for new investors. It has been in talks with T-Mobile USA about securing an equity investment to use its WiMax spectrum for its own 4G service. T-Mobile calls WiMAX a ‘niche play’.
Meanwhile, Clear’s 4G WiMAX service was officially launched in Pittsburgh (820,000 people) and Minneapolis/St. Paul (2.1 million), this week.
Clear’s 4G service is currently available in 56 markets across the United States, serving 66 million people. By the end of 2010, CLEAR says their WiMAX service will also be available in major metropolitan areas such as New York City, Los Angeles, the San Francisco Bay Area, Denver, Miami, Cincinnati and Cleveland, with a market coverage around 120 million.
Clearwire and UQ Communications of Japan have launched international 4G roaming services. Clearwire had a similar roaming deal with Russian WiMAX provider Yota, but Yota is now moving to LTE.
The WiMAX Forum hopes that Clear, in the United States, UQ in Japan, KT in South Korea, VMAX in Taiwan and Packet One of Indonesia will hang in there and that India will come around.
When the Indian BWA spectrum auctions concluded earlier this June, it was assumed that WiMAX would be the technology of choice for the 2.3GHz TDD spectrum. The two state-owned telcos, BSNL and MTNL, made early commitments to the wireless standard. But the broadband wireless standard for 1.2 billion people is still largely undecided.
Related Dailywireless articles include; India’s Broadband Auction: It’s Done, Yota Dumps WiMAX, Clearwire: New Mobile Hotspots, Clear: No Limits, WiMAX Forum: Not Dead Yet, WiMAX Forum: In Trouble?, Sprint’s WiMAX Phone Launched, SK Telecom Buys 25% of Packet One, Compare “4G” Carriers in the U.S., LTE for Sprint? and MIMO: The Paper War
