Took a well deserved day off Yesterday (Friday, 27th).
As always, you can access my Flickr page for more photos, but here is a sample:
Playing for Change in Daiwa Securities Ad
I have been following Playing For Change on twitter and their website as I was quite taken by the music and the ideas.
I know Playing for Change also has a business/financial side, but I was quite shocked to see Daiwa Securities Ads using Playing For Change Video and music.
UQ WiMAX is Failing
Finally, some figures on WiMAX adoption in Japan are available.
Number of subscribers: 21,700. That’s an average of about 7000 users per month since the official launch date. Quite sad, isn’t it?
The article continues to review the technology, laptops supporting the technology and the competition (Emobile), which came out with the 100 Yen Notebook campaign a few months before the official WiMAX launch.
UQ WiMAX did create a lot of hype around the WiMAX technology and the speed it supports, signed multiple MVNOs, but that was not enough to attract customers.
Yours truly decided not to use UQ WiMAX services, as my house was not covered , coverage around Tokyo is growing, but still cannot beat Emobile service.
UQ still plans to continue to deploy WiMAX around Japan, which means more investment in infrastructure and Base Stations. These are obviously bad news for KDDI and Intel (biggest investors in UQ) as well as for Mobile wiMAX technology.
Alvarion's BreezeMax Extreme
My initial intention was to praise Alvarion for their BreezeMAX Extreme line, how “D” like basestations and CPE with Mobile WiMAX (“E”) technology makes sense.
But, as I was going through Alvarion website and datasheets, I got irritated by some mis-information and inaccuracies. So, I still think Alvarion are doing a great job with the Exterme line and their License exempt offering, but the following post will focus on the “fails” rather than successes.
Sequans Press Release clearly states:
Sequans provides a comprehensive Mobile WiMAX product line that includes the award-winning SQN2130 base station ASIC and the SQN1130 mobile station system-on-chip, both of which are WiMAX Forum Certified™. Sequans’ solutions feature superior receiver sensitivity along with Sequans’ patent-pending technology, mimoMAX™, which combines a maximum likelihood decoder on the downlink with two transmitters on the uplink. The latter enables uplink MIMO for greatly improved link budget and cell coverage
Key Points: CPE as well as Base Station, WiMAX Forum Certified, mimoMAX for uplink MiMO
Now, let’s try to find the information on Alvarion website.
CPE – Alvarion’s BreezeMAX Extreme page does not mention a CPE. End User Devices Page does not mention a license exempt CPE.
WiMAX Forum Certified – it is not. A simple search in WiMAX Forum Certified products page shows only BreezeMAX Macro base station. Where is the Extreme?
Uplink MiMo – BreezeMAX Extreme datasheet clearly states that MiMo matrix B is not available yet, not to mention uplink MiMo.
I am sure Alvarion’s (under NDA) customers receive all the information, but why does the website launch/publish only partial information which confuses rather than educate?
(And again, I would like to say that I think the Extreme line will be quite successful as it addresses real customer needs).