About a week ago, I reported that Airspan stock gained about 100% in 1 hour of trading reaching 0.25. It is now back to the “Normal” price of 0.15, supporting my idea that the stock was subject to speculation. Hope the guy who did it lost money.
Open Range Communications Secures $367 Million for WiMAX deployment
GigaOM reports additional $100 Million for Rural WiMAX Operator “Open Range Communications”. The previous $267 Millions came the U.S. Deparment, trying to bring Broadband to Rural America.
Everyone follow Clear, but I feel this story is more interesting, as for every “Clear” we will see 3 or 4 smaller operators, doing business from Fixed/Nomadic WiMAX. It is also encouraging to hear the amount of money invested to this company, both from the U.S. government and private investments.
Not sure which vendor will supply the Base-Stations and CPEs, but I believe they will use Fixed WiMAX for enhanced rural coverage, thus Motorola and Samsung are out of the picture.
Wibro turns into White Elephant
An interesting article on Wibro from the Korea Times: Wibro turns into White Elephant
Now, just two-and-a-half years into deployment, WiBro, which is short for “wireless broadband,” is looking more and more like a monumental letdown everyday
Wibro is a Mobile WiMAX predecessor, initiated by the Korean Government to boost Mobile WiMAX investment in Korea, and give a “headstart” to Korean vendors.
If the home-made WiBro goes international, it will bring new opportunities for Korean high-tech firms in royalty payments and equipment sales, and for this to happen, the local market for the service needs to get bigger.
According to the article, KT had only 180,000 customers, while SK Telecom only 11,000. And some more number:
Considering that KT and SK Telecom used 790 and 600 billion won, respectively, to build their WiBro networks and each needs to spend between 200 and 400 billion won more to expand coverage, a 300 billion won-plus market after seven years hardly qualifies as a consolation prize.
In a recent move, the Korean policymakers enabled operators to provide VoIP over WiBro, which is not likely to change the reality: WiBro has Failed
Fujitsu launches a WiMAX enabled Ultraportable
Fujitsu News from CES: Fujitsu launches a WiMAX enabled Lifebook P8020.
It was not announced on any of the American WiMAX networks (“Clear”), so my guess this product will target the UQ Communications Japanese market.
I don’t understand why Notebook manufacturers rush to produce WiMAX flavored products. As with WiFi it will take a while until the market is ready for it.
Betterplace in the Crunchies
Techcrunch held their annual Cruncies award last night.
The mostly Israeli Betterplace was nominated in two categories: “Most likely to make the world a better place” and “Best Clean Tech Startup”.
Unfortunately, Betterplace didn’t win any of the categories, the best they could get was a “runner up” for the “Best Clean Tech”. Not bad, but better luck next year.
By the waym the winners were:
Projectfrog – Builder of Green Buildings won the “Best Clean Tech”
Goodguide – Provide ratings for Save, health, Green products won the “Most likely to make the world a better place”. I voted for Kiva.
Nokia pulls N810 WiMAX
Some more bad news for Mobile WiMAX: Nokia will stop production of the WiMAX version of the N810. Sprint always used this device to demonstrate the future of Mobile WiMAX and that Nokia is comitted to more WiMAX products. I guess it is over now.
About a year ago I heard some statistics on KT WiBRO network in Korea, and the numbers were very clear: Most devices in the network were USB dongles! not Samsung and LG smart phones.
Portland deploys Mobile WiMAX
I have been quite busy this week, and didn’t have the time to blog on Portland Mobile WiMAX rollout.
Everyone else did, so I will stay at that.
Airspan up 100%
Airspan Network (NASDAQ: AIRN) stock has soared 100% from 0.12 to 0.25. Not associated with a press release or any other public news, this is a bit strange.It happened in the last hour of Yesterday’s trading day with about 1Million stocks exchanging hands.
Two options:
- Something good happened, and an Insider (or a friend of an Insider) purchased stocks.
- Stock Manipulation by a day trader.
Let’s see what happens today.
Disclaimer:I am no longer an Airspan employee, my views expressed in this Blog are mine and are not based on any Information I acquired while working at Airspan.
Alvarion Wins VMAX Telecom deal?
Alvarion released today that they have signed a contract with VMAX Telecom. According to the PR:
Alvarion to supply more than US$12 million worth of WiMAX equipment and services for the first phase of project.
First, congratulation to Alvarion, but I am a bit baffled as a quick search returned that VMAX Telecom selects Samsung for WiMAX rollout
The contract is for 200 base stations and related equipment and has a valuation of between TWD400 million and TWD500 million (USD12-15 million)
So, who gets these US$12 million?
Chicago Mobile WiMAX delayed
Chicago, Motorola City, was supposed to receive WiMAX in 2008, but…, it just didn’t happen.
The network already is in place, stretching from Gary to Rockford, but isn’t ready to go live.
What will qualify the network as ready to be live is not very clear, and currently it is expected:
It looks like late in 2009
There is further analysis why Baltimore happened before Chicago, but I have a feeling the main reason is not disclosed: Samsung Base Stations were deployed in Baltimore, while Motorola in Chicago.
A side note, the article also mentions Towerstream, a relatively small company with a very clear business plan, provide Broadband to businesses using probably “Fixed WiMAX” network. The company reports more than 100 customers in Chicago, and they recently claimed that has reached EBITDA profitability in this Chicago Market.