Japanese Carrier Plans WiMax Network

A new Japanese telecommunications carrier plans to launch a national wireless network by the end of 2006 that will offer voice and data services using the emerging WiMax network technology combined with city-based WLANs (wireless LANs), a company backing the carrier said on Wednesday.  The WiMax network will consist of about 200,000 access points (Must be a typo! - Ed.) each with a range of up to 3 kilometers. They will offer connection speeds of around 75 Mbps (bits per second) and cover 80 percent of Japan’s population by the end of 2007, according to Kaori Ogawa, a spokeswoman for Heisei Denden, a Tokyo-based communications carrier. 

The service will be run by Japan Wireless, a company set up last September by Heisei Denden and Dream Technologies, a software developer in Tokyo. Japan Wireless expects to receive regulatory approval for the service later this year, Ogawa said. Continue >>