WiMax
WiMax

WiMax

Tokyo Citywide WiMAX Network

Two vendors, one American and the other Japanese, said they have plans to deploy a citywide WiMAX wireless broadband network in Tokyo. U.S. vendor Airspan and Japanese communications operator Yozan said they will start trials for the network in the second quarter of this year. They said that commercial rollout will begin in the fourth quarter, with a fuller-scale launch in December. Japanese telecom operator NTT said earlier in the week that it plans to deploy metro-scale Wi-Fi networks in a number of locations.

WiMAX Coming to Japan

Yozan Inc, a pager and PHS service provider, recently announced that it would start a fixed-rate public wireless LAN service partly based on the WiMAX wireless communication standard, in December 2005. Ahead of the service launch, Yozan is starting field tests in the Tokyo metropolitan area in June 2005. This is the first WiMAX service plan announced in Japan. The company plans to have developed 600 core basestations and 4,000 relay stations within Tokyo’s 23 wards by December 2005.

Wi-Fi & cellular subs to reach 55 mn by 2010

Worldwide demand for Wi-Fi and cellular converged services will reach 55 million by 2010. Western Europe, Japan and Korea will be key UMA markets and, as broadband penetration grows, China will quickly become a very attractive market. Wi-Fi and cellular convergence is about to hit the mainstream, with mobile operators planning to deploy UMA services over the next 12 months, according to a new report from Senza Fili Consulting, a consultancy focused on wireless data technologies and services.

Pacific Telecom Conference

Pack your Aloha shirts and sunglasses. We’re off to Honolulu (virtually), for the annual Pacific Telecommunications Council conference running 16-19 January. PTC promotes the development, understanding and beneficial use of telecom and information technology throughout the entire Pacific Hemisphere. Sessions and exhibitors include VoIP pioneer Jeff Pulver, a WiMax SuperSession and new satellite businesses.

New Year Gadget Shopping: Cell Phones that Look Like iPods

One of the best things about having a few days off over the holiday season in Tokyo is having time to wander casually through Akihabara and check out the latest gadgets. 2005 is shaping up as a showdown year for music-enabled portable devices and I couldn’t help but notice how DoCoMo’s new 3G handset, the SH901ic by Sharp, really does seem to have at least a slight style similarity to the iPod. As the network speed increases — and with flat-rate packet costs and improved handset technology — critical mass adoption by mainstream users buying even more data seems to be at hand. As competition increases, how will carriers, handset makers and content providers adapt their offerings over the coming year?

While it remains to be seen exactly what kind of applications and services will hit the streets, it has become increasingly clear that a race is on. Having both KDDI and Vodafone launch fixed-line access to content for mobile devices in Q42004 shows, at least in the mid-term, they are ramping up the business model to deliver larger-size files to end users. A little crystal-ball gazing for the coming year — and some very cool Akiba gadget photos — after the jump.

First True WiMax Chip

WaveSat this week began shipping a chip that it says is the first to comply fully with the IEEE 802.16-2004 wireless broadband standard, commonly known as WiMax. The DM256 chip is now shipping in sample quantities and is expected to be available in volume in January, according to Francois Draper, vice president of sales and marketing at WaveSat, in Montreal. The chip will become a component of systems costing around $250 to $300 that should begin shipping in the second quarter of next year, he says.

Wi-LAN Launches Mobilis at ITS World Congress 2004

Wi-LAN Inc., the global provider of market-leading broadband wireless communications products and technologies and the original charter member of the WiMAX Forum, today launched Mobilis, the first commercially available two-way broadband wireless product designed for a high-speed mobile environment, at the ITS World Congress 2004 in Nagoya, Japan. Wi-LAN is initially targeting Mobilis at the Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) market. ITS wireless applications include real-time video surveillance, streaming advertising, and hotspot Internet access for passengers.

WiMAX High-Speed Hype, for Now

At virtually every turn, Intel Corp. executives are heaping praise on an emerging long-range wireless technology known as WiMAX, which can blanket entire cities with high-speed Internet access. Market research firm iSuppli on Monday described a largely lackluster outlook for WiMAX, which it said is surrounded by hype and will likely fail to catch on beyond niche applications. Established broadband access providers see no reason to adopt yet another technology for delivering data at high speeds, the company said.