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.