Wimax Watcher

GlobeTel Wireless has entered into an agreement with LLC Internafta (”Internafta”) of Moscow, Russia, whereby Internafta will pay to GlobeTel Wireless a series of four construction payments totaling US$600 million for the installation of an array of proprietary networks to be installed in Russia’s 30 largest cities, starting with Moscow and St. Petersburg. GlobeTel Wireless will both manage the completed network and will retain an ongoing 50% shareholding in the operations of the network, allowing the Company to enjoy the significant benefits of the recurring revenue stream. GlobeTel plans to roll out the network in 3 stages, comprising 10 cities each, over the next 27 months.

Over the past six months, GlobeTel has had a number of key meetings with officials at various levels of the Russian Government, including senior members of the Russian Parliament (the “Duma”) and various branches of the Russian telecommunications and technology establishment. In early October, following months of preliminary discussions, GlobeTel CEO Timothy Huff - along with GlobeTel Wireless President, Uli Altvater and Sanswire President Bob Jones - demonstrated a working version of the HotZone 4010 equipment that will form the backbone of the new 30-city network. At that demonstration, the HotZone 4010 system successfully provided internet and DECT phone connectivity inside the Duma Building, quickly establishing its capabilities and ease of use. Largely upon the strength of that presentation, GlobeTel immediately entered in substantive negotiations with a group of prominent Russian investors for the implementation of the network which has resulted in today’s agreement.

“It is beyond exciting to be able to bring this level of connectivity to Russia,” said GlobeTel CEO Tim Huff. “Russia will, quickly and at a relatively modest cost, have a wireless infrastructure that will rival any in the industrialized world. This presents an amazing opportunity for us, for Russia and for our Russian partners. The Russian Internet market is severely limited by a lack of infrastructure and by the high cost to individual users of obtaining high speed internet access, even in those relatively rare cases where it is available. The GlobeTel Wireless network will provide city-wide high speed, wireless connectivity with the ability to provide voice-over IP telephony along with residential and business-based DECt service. DECt technology, particularly in conjunction with low-cost VoIP service, is the key to delivering highly affordable wireless telephone and broadband access to areas with limited or high cost service.”

“Completely apart from the obvious economic rewards associated with an investment in this exciting new communications technology, we are most proud of the social, educational and community benefits that we are able to facilitate as part of the dramatic quality-of-life attributes which are rapidly emerging throughout the Russian Federation,” stated Maxim Chernizov, one of the Founding Principals of Internafta. “This initial step with GlobeTel - along with other very significant technology breakthroughs to follow - will prove to be significant for all of us in the relatively near-term,” he continued.

Uli Altvater, President of GlobeTel Wireless stated: “This is a very large undertaking that will utilize the skills or more than 1,000 people in Russia, Europe and the United States. This transaction will catapult GlobeTel to a position as one of the top two suppliers and operators of wireless networks in the world.”

The Korean government and communications industry have invested significant amounts of resources and effort into WiBro since 2002 in order to ensure the industry’s continued development and to overcome the fact Korea lacks core patents in other communications fields. More aggressive than any other nation in the promotion of metropolitan area networking, Korea is emerging as the leading global testbed for WiBro, and by extension, WiMAX. However, competing technologies as well as the characteristics of the nation’s domestic market may pose a challenge to WiBro development. At the same time, Korean players are working hard to strike a balance between control of core patents and the added exposure and development momentum that cooperation with international heavyweights provides.

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irspan has delivered WiMAX base station and customer premises equipment to Cetecom, the WiMAX Forum Certification Laboratory, which opened earlier this month in Malaga in Spain for the interoperability testing of WiMAX products.

The Airspan products to be tested by Cetecom were announced in March this year, when the Company unveiled its AS.MAX portfolio of products. Specifically, the test products include the high-performance, carrier-class MacroMAX base station, which is based on the SDR (Software Defined Radio) technology from PicoChip, and the outdoor ProST and the indoor, self-installable EasyST, which are based on Intel’s ProWireless 5116 silicon.

The opening of Cetecom is a significant milestone for the WiMAX industry. Airspan’s delivery of test products to the laboratory demonstrates our leadership position in the early development of 802.16-2004 based products. Our WiMAX base stations and CPEs, which have been shipped to a number of customers for early trials, have already successfully passed key tests that form the basis of the Cetecom certification process.

Airspan will be in the first wave of certification for becoming WiMAX Forum Certified, and will be the pathfinder for WiMAX products that fully meet the 802.16-2004 specification. We started the first phase of private interoperability testing earlier this year, and we will continue to work towards full completion through the WiMAX certification lab. The certification of our products by the WiMAX Forum will be followed by a speedy deployment of Airspan products in key markets.

More details on Airspan’s class leading WiMAX products can be found at http://www.airspan.com.

“Despite a challenging quarter, BreezeMAX revenue continued to grow in line with our original expectations and we achieved several important goals,” said Zvi Slonimsky, CEO of Alvarion. “We continued to expand the number of WiMAX trials and evaluations and believe we are engaged in more WiMAX activity than any other vendor. In addition to expanded trials, in Q2 we began to see additional orders for commercial deployments of the BreezeMAX platform in several regions of the world. This is significant beyond the immediate contribution to revenue because these deployments will afford us valuable field experience that will help us maintain our market lead.”

“We are on track with a number of new product introductions. In April, Alvarion was the first vendor to demonstrate a working outdoor CPE based on the Intel chip. Later in the quarter, we also demonstrated our indoor self-install CPE, also based on the Intel chip, at several industry events. We also announced the expansion of the BreezeMAX platform to include 2.3 GHz and 2.5 GHz bands for North America. In addition, we introduced enhancements to some of our non-WiMAX products including the MPOTS extension of our multi-service solution, significantly improving the price per line for carriers.”

“The integration of the interWAVE business is progressing according to plan, and we are continuing to expand our pipeline of new opportunities. As these opportunities move through the normal sales cycle, we expect to see better traction and higher revenues during the second half of the year for this business.”

Commenting on the quarter, Mr. Slonimsky said, “We have always expected a relatively slow first half of 2005, due to the transition of our wireless DSL products to a WiMAX standard-based platform. Our original guidance, particularly for Q2, assumed some displacement of proprietary products and longer sales cycles as customers considered moving to BreezeMAX. After a detailed analysis of actual Q2 results, we confirmed that the reasons for the revenue delays in our non-WiMAX products were indeed customer-specific, but we also identified an underlying hesitation on the part of customers for our TDM voice-oriented products. This was something we had not anticipated.”

“Looking ahead to the second half of the year,” Slonimsky continued, “We continue to expect growth from our wireless DSL solutions, both our current advanced products for the unlicensed bands and WiMAX-ready products in the licensed bands. However, our revised outlook assumes that this growth will be less robust than we originally expected due to longer-than-expected sales cycles and potential further delays in allocating licensed spectrum in certain key regions. Our second half expectations are also tempered by the likely continuation of weakness in TDM voice-oriented solutions as customers evaluate potential WiMAX alternatives. We continue to expect improving business momentum in our cellular mobile business in the second half of the year but, as was the case in Q2, we may not recognize revenue in the same quarter as we ship the equipment. Finally, for some of the same reasons just cited, we have excluded from our guidance any substantial revenue from a major customer that accounted for a significant amount of our revenue in 2004. We continue to believe that there is a good possibility of further orders from this customer in the second half and, therefore, we believe there is some potential upside to our revised outlook.”

Wavesat, a leading developer of WiMAX silicon, completed the first of a series of technical courses and workshops on WiMAX / IEEE 802.16 technology, operation, planning and deployment. Over 25 customers and partners from 10 countries gathered in Montreal last week for a four-day, hands-on, WiMAX training covering the entire PHY, MAC and RF architectures for both subscriber and base stations.

This training provides in-depth insight on the IEEE 802.16-2004 standard as well as actual system configuration and testing using Wavesat’s Development Platform and Agilent’s VSA. It presents a practical approach to rapidly developing and deploying WiMAX solutions.

This training is ideally designed for hardware and software engineers planning to develop WiMAX equipment based on Wavesat’s DM256 but is also suited for technical people wanting an in-depth coverage of IEEE 802.16-2004 network technology, benefits, operation, planning and deployment. Wavesat’s WiMAX Technical Training is given by the company’s application engineering staff and consists of a series of hands-on workshops using Wavesat’s Development Platform including the DM256 configuration and testing.

The next session is scheduled for October 3-6, 2005 in Montreal, Canada. More information is available at wavesat.com.

The impending use of intelligent antennas for WiFi, cellular and broadband wireless platforms suggest the strong but small intelligent antenna industry is ready to take off, according to a new study.

IA developments within the WiMAX segment continue briskly behind the scenes and IA-enabled base stations are positioned to become a fixture within WiMAX infrastructure for capacity and coverage reasons. However, IA is not a guarantee for success of WiMAX, according to the study

The report provides global forecasts for annual intelligent antenna deployments, unit shipments, and revenues within the mobile wireless, 802.20, 802,16, WiFi, and point-to-point radio segments through the end of the decade. It analyzes previous missteps and successes of the technology and the impact of the technology in the future

The study evaluates the technolog’ s impact upon existing mobile markets, the emerging WiMAX Standard, WiFi, point-to-point radio, and the developing 802.20 Standard.

Read the study »

ADAPTIX recently demonstrated fixed and mobile OFDMA-TDD pre-WiMAX systems at the WiMAX Forum Members General and Working Group Face-to-Face event July 11 - 15, in Vancouver, B.C. ADAPTIX’s demonstration provided a preview of the mobile version of WiMAX with fixed and mobile configurations delivering rich multimedia content to various devices.

ADAPTIX is demonstrating mobile WiMAX capabilities in its GMC Yukon Denali, where it simultaneously receives mobile Voice over IP calls, streaming video content such as feature-length movies and the transfer of large files, at throughput of up to 2.5 Mbps traveling at vehicular speeds through the coverage area. The technology is based on the forthcoming 802.16e wireless standard, expected to be ratified by the WiMAX Forum and Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) later this year.

“Mobile WiMAX is attracting huge interest,” said Andy Fuertes, senior analyst, Visant Strategies. “While most companies are focused on fixed WiMAX systems, ADAPTIX is also doing some very compelling work in the mobile environment and showcasing some of the compelling applications which will help drive this technology forward.”

ADAPTIX reached an agreement in May to supply OFDMA/TDD channel cards to LG Electronics for upcoming WiBro deployments in South Korea. WiBro is a mobile wireless broadband platform similar to 802.16e. ADAPTIX also has deployments in China, Australia, and Canada, as well as yet-to-be announced trials worldwide.

About the Technology

The ADAPTIX technology portfolio positions the company as a leader in the development of mobile WiMAX using its flexible Software Defined Radio (SDR) platform. The ADAPTIX solution leverages its unprecedented low-cost, spectrally efficient, frequency agile software technology to allow service providers to deliver high-value, high-profit applications at multi-megabit speeds to their individual subscribers.

ADAPTIX’s Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA) technology is the basis for the company’s intelligent radio access network system. The ADAPTIX solution offers service providers and carriers a lower total cost of ownership for an infrastructure solution that meets the growing market requirements for powerful and efficient wireless technology. The solution is designed to give wireless network operators the capability to market mobile, nomadic, and fixed services at true broadband speeds with extremely efficient control over the use of their radio spectrum and network resources.

Research and Markets has announced the addition of WiMax: The Hype and Hope to their offering.

This publication examines WiMax from a business viability perspective, with a focus on the anticipated technology usage and services. The report provides a subscriber and revenue forecast and case studies for WiMax service providers including Clearwire, Speakeasy Networks, AIIRMESH Communications, Nextweb, and Towerstream.

With WiMax at the top of everyone’s agenda, there is a need for research that separates the hype from the hope of this technology that is sometimes referred to as to as “WiFi on steroids”. This report takes a critical view of the prospects for WiMax, which some believe is a technology in search of a business model. With the potential for greater bandwidth, coverage, and mobility, WiMax represents a lot more than WiFi or 3G, but also a lot less. This publication dispels the myths of WiMax and puts its business prospects into perspective. It is must-have research for anyone building a business case for investment into broadband wireless and/or projects involving WiMax.

The report author, Zaga Novakovic, is an expert in the area of public access broadband wireless services. She is also author of Public Access WLAN Forecasts 2005-2009, Public Access WLAN Case Studies 2005, and Public Access WLAN Usability 2004. As researcher and analyst for broadband wireless, Zaga brings a unique perspective to the business prospects for WiMax in both the public and enterprise sectors.

Key questions answered and myths dispelled in this report include:

- Will WiMax be the death of 3G, 4G and other cellular technologies?
- Will WiMax compete with or be complementary to DSL and cable?
- Will the wide-area coverage purported by WiMax be the death of WiFi hot spots?
- Who is offering WiMax services? What is their business plan? Will they be successful?
- What are the real business opportunities for WiMax? Who will make money and how?
- What is the business outlook for WiMax? What is the subscriber and revenue forecast for WiMax?
- What will be the service drivers for WiMax? VoIP over WiMax? TV signal transmission? Public access broadband? Back-haul?

For more information visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/c21161

Wavesat, a leading developer of WiMAX silicon, announces that Taiwan-based Z-Com has chosen Wavesat’s Evolutive WiMAX portfolio to develop an 802.16-2004 Compliant CPE. Z-Com plans to launch its first WiMAX high-quality and low cost CPE product as early as Q4, 2005 in Taiwan and China.

Raymond Ou, Director of R&D for Z-Com, explained: “We picked Wavesat’s WiMAX solution for its small package size and its high level of integration with RF and MAC. Their comprehensive Reference Kit offers us the fastest time to market. We look forward to a long term partnership with Wavesat.”

Wavesat’s Evolutive 802.16/WiMAX portfolio is optimized to facilitate the transition of existing systems, both Base Station and Subscriber Unit, to become WiMAX compliant, with an easy evolution towards Mobility.

Wavesat’s WiMAX Reference Kit is a tool kit intended to serve as a development platform to guide and support efforts in designing WiMAX compliant wireless systems using the Evolutive(TM) WiMAX DM256 integrated circuit. The Kit implements the IEEE 802.16-2004 Physical and MAC layer protocols as well as ETSI HIPERMAN. It facilitates experimentation, evaluation, and investigation with various modes of operation of the DM256 as well as offering several implementation examples to reduce design development efforts. It helps system designers bring products to market faster, assisting in the proliferation of WiMAX for both licensed and unlicensed networks.

ADAPTIX demonstrated fixed and mobile OFDMA-TDD pre-WiMAX systems at the WiMAX Forum Members General and Working Group Face-to-Face event July 11 - 15, in Vancouver, B.C. ADAPTIX’s demonstration provided a preview of the mobile version of WiMAX with fixed and mobile configurations delivering rich multimedia content to various devices.

ADAPTIX is demonstrating mobile WiMAX capabilities in its GMC Yukon Denali, where it simultaneously receives mobile Voice over IP calls, streaming video content such as feature-length movies and the transfer of large files, at throughput of up to 2.5 Mbps traveling at vehicular speeds through the coverage area. The technology is based on the forthcoming 802.16e wireless standard, expected to be ratified by the WiMAX Forum and Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) later this year.

“Mobile WiMAX is attracting huge interest,” said Andy Fuertes, senior analyst, Visant Strategies. “While most companies are focused on fixed WiMAX systems, ADAPTIX is also doing some very compelling work in the mobile environment and showcasing some of the compelling applications which will help drive this technology forward.”

ADAPTIX reached an agreement in May to supply OFDMA/TDD channel cards to LG Electronics for upcoming WiBro deployments in South Korea. WiBro is a mobile wireless broadband platform similar to 802.16e. ADAPTIX also has deployments in China, Australia, and Canada, as well as yet-to-be announced trials worldwide.