It isn’t new that 3G (or UMTS) is not working fine. But some companies either are not aware of this or they just want to lie to us. This is the conclusion that I came to after reading the results of the analysis of a recent estudy by Nokia carried out in a blog about “the brilliant present times of the 3G”.
Alvarion’s leadership in the wimax race is quite ahead at the moment. And what’s more, the fact that there isn’t any standardized device makes it harder for its competitors to win. One of the companies that’s trying the hardest is Alcatel, that is currently coming to agreements with operators in France, Korea, Austria, Norway, and Poland.
The Wimax Forum, with headquarters in Málaga, has given its first hardware certificates, which means that these devices are now compatible with others that also use the wimax standard. The analysed products belong to Aperto Networks, Redline Communications, Sequans and Wavesat. The certified standard is the fixed wimax standard, but many makers are waiting for the mobile one, which is technically known as 802.16e.
Le Monde, one of the most prestigious French papers, dedicates an extensive article to the analysis of the wimax phenomenon. According to the article, this technology overcomes wi-fi’s problems of signal, confidentiality and speed.
La Mongie, the winter resort, is going to be the first one in the Pyrenees to have Internet connection. A parabolic aerial and a wi-fi network, whose installation will count on European funds through the Twister project, will make this happen.
The news has been announced by the vice-president of the Basque Government, Idoia Zenarruzabeitia. The Basque Country has now 989 wimax users, which means that the spread of broadband Internet in the rural areas has reached the figure of 5% (10 points bellow the figure in the cities). To make this possible, 100 wimax aerials have been installed in the Basque mountains.
Fon, the wi-fi operator managed by Martín Varsavsky, has just received an 18 million euros investment from Silicon Valley. Companies as big as Google, Skype or eBay, together with venture capital funds, have invested 18 million euros in Fon to help it to spread internationally. Varsavsky himself writes about it in his blog.
Apart from being one of the poorest countries in the world, India is one of the nations where the use of the Internet is less spread. The Government has tried several solutions to change this reality but it hasn’t managed either to spread the use of PCs or to liberalize the sector.
“We are at the end of the beginning of wimax”. Sean Maloney, chief director of Intel opened his speech in San José with this sentence. The chip manufacturer’s chief executive believes that things are going even faster that what was expected one year ago. And this speed has been reached thanks to Korea and Taiwan, where commercial offers have already been put forward.
This will be the year of the broadband thanks to wi-fi and wimax. That is what Iber-X, the Spanish communications stock market, claims in its yearly report. It also compares ADSL with cable, to conclude that 79% of broadband connections use ADSL.