Southeast Asia’s initial 4G operator, Packet One Networks, launched its WiMAX service in Malaysia in August 2008 and is now preparing to transition to LTE.
Packet 1 expects to start a transition to a full LTE network in 2013. Greenpacket, a leading developer of 4G systems, is testing a dual-mode 4G WiMAX/LTE remedy from Sequans for dual-mode WiMAX/LTE, and hopes to launch a total ecosystem of 4G networking solutions and devices by the end of 2011.
Gemtek’s new TD-LTE indoor CPE is based on Sequans’ SQN3000 series LTE chips, which support up to 100 Mbps throughput and 20 MHz channels. “We anticipate the new CPE to begin commercial deployment in the third quarter of 2011,” stated James Ting, GM, Broadband Wireless Organization Unit, Gemtek.
“As Southeast Asia’s leading 4G operator, initial for WiMAX and now for dual-mode WiMAX and LTE, P1 has 3 years of encounter operating an end-to-end 4G network,” said Michael Lai, P1 CEO.
Greenpacket is testing Sequans’ system-on-chip technologies to develop LTE reference styles, including a dual-mode WiMAX/LTE reference style for operator consumers primarily in Asia, CALA and Middle East, according to James Wang, Senior Vice President of at Greenpacket. “We intend to provide our solutions to early adopters of LTE such as P1 in support of its LTE/WiMAX coexistence method.”
Sequans’ recently announced their 4Sight program, to support mobile operators transition smoothly and price-successfully from WiMAX to LTE and allow harmonious WiMAX/LTE coexistence.
P1 was the 1st significant-scale commercial 4G WiMAX deployment in Southeast Asia, and the initial big-scale deployment of an 802.16e two.3GHz WiMAX network outside Korea. P1 is 1 of nine Malaysian organizations allocated 2.6GHz spectrum.
Packet 1, a subsidiary of Green Packet, has now sealed a technologies cooperation agreement with China Mobile to spearhead Time Division LTE (TD-LTE) in Malaysia and South-East Asia.
“The economies of scale brought by China Mobile, with its subscriber base of over 600 million will see rapid development of the entire TD-LTE ecosystem,” stated P1 chief executive officer Michael Lai at the signing ceremony this week. China Mobile is among the 1st operators to have adopted the TD-LTE technologies and it is one of the founders of the global TD-LTE Initiative (GTI).
Clearwire-USA is one of the 20 members of the Global TD-LTE Initiative. Other people consist of Aero2-Poland, Belltell-Philippines, Bharti Airtel-India, China Mobile-China, Datame-Finland, E-Plus – Germany, FarEastone-Taiwan, FITEL-Taiwan, Korea Telecom-Korea, Omantel-Oman, Nextwave-USA, P1-Malaysia, Smoltelecom-Russia, SoftBank-Japan, Tatung Infocomm-Taiwan, Vividwireless-Australia, Vodafone-UK, Voentelecom-Russia and Woosh-New Zealand.
Most WiMAX operators will migrate to LTE, but the pace and modalities of the shift will differ greatly depending on geography, service focus, spectrum availability, and funding, says Monica Paolini (PDF).
The fix is in. It’s circumstantial evidence that Clearwire and Sprint might go with the most recent shiny factor TD-LTE. Paired spectrum at two.6 GHz would be a real spectrum hog when moving to subsequent generation LTE-Advanced with 20MHz x 2 channels (utilizing FD-LTE). LTE Advanced consists of support for relay node which extends coverage by utilizing the LTE channel for selfbackhaul. Handy for satphone frequencies, too.
