Intel strikes deal to boost WiMAX in Korea
Forms alliance with KT aims to bring broader choice of embedded devices to WiBro users
Published: 29 March, 2010
READ MORE: South Korea | Intel | Korea Telecom | Laptop | WiBro
Intel continues to add to its broad web of alliances to boost WiMAX technology worldwide and exploit its headstart over LTE in mobile broadband. The latest is with the original mobile WiMAX carrier, Korea's KT, which has signed a memorandum of understanding with Intel to collaborate on WiMAX technology.
Under the terms of the deal Intel will produce a chipset specifically for Korea's WiMAX bands. The country is coming into line with the global WiMAX community after starting with its own variant of the 802.16e standard, WiBro, which had an 8.75MHz channel profile, rather than the more common 10MHz. New licenses in the Korea's 2.3GHz band will adopt the international plan, and the existing WiBro operators, KT and SKT, plan to move towards that too, but in the meantime, the Intel deal should broaden the range, and lower the price, of devices for their networks, and offer more notebooks and netbooks with WiBro embedded.
Commenting on the plan, Kim Il-young, VP of KT's corporate center, said: "This will help boost the local WiBro industry and exports of the technology overseas."
WiBro is now three years old and the world's first commercial Mobile WiMAX offering, but has seen uptake 97% short of targets set by the Korean regulator KCC. This agency recognized last year that WiBro needed to be identical to vanilla Mobile WiMAX to improve roaming and allow Korean carriers to participate in the growing international ecosystem. The standard itself has already evolved to support full 802.16e, and the new channel plan will be the final barrier.
A KT executive told Rethink that the different channel size had been a significant barrier to gaining economies of scale in devices, and supporting roaming, development or procurement partnerships with international providers - which are increasingly important for enhancing the business models of WiMAX operators in other countries, notably Clearwire's alliances with Yota, UQ and other companies with 10MHz allocations. KT will use 10MHz channels in all its future network expansions and over time it will replace its current 8.75MHz equipment, which is concentrated in capital Seoul, with kit supporting 10MHz channels.
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