Taiwan incumbent Chunghwa Telecom is partnering with Nokia Siemens Networks to build a Wimax network in Kaosiung, Taiwan's second largest city, to provide mobile broadband services during the World Games 2009.
Mike Wang, head of Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau at NSN, told a media conference at Broadband World Forum Asia yesterday that the company will provide a turnkey solution, include its Wimax-based Flexi base station ass well as network integration, network performance tuning and operation maintenance. NSN is also the sole supplier of W-CDMA/HSPA for Chunghwa Telecom.
The object of this project, said Wang, is to provide mobile services for the transportation, tourism, medical/civil services and distance education sectors in Kaohsiung, the host city of the World Games 2009.
The Kaohsiung city government, Chunghwa Telecom and NSN conducted on Wednesday a joint demonstration of the Wimax network at the Love Pier in Kaohsiung, he noted.
The network covers 20 km from the Kaohsiung airport to the World Games Stadium, and Chunghwa Telecom will provide such application as browsing and surveillance services during the World Games from July 16-26, 2009.
Taiwan, one of pioneering markets in Wimax deployment, issued six Wimax licenses last July with some of the licensees started building the Wimax network this year.
In addition to Taiwan, Wang said he also see tremendous potential for Wimax in markets like Hong Kong, where the technology can provides market entry for greenfield operators or pure fixed-line operators to provide high-speed data services.
"Wimax has certain advantages over LTE. LTE will be mature in the year 2010 or 2011. And Wimax is pretty much ready now. So Wimax is a good choice for them while LTE most likely will be an evolution for incumbent 2G and 3G mobile operators," he said.
According to the Wimax Forum, there will be over 133 million Wimax subscribers worldwide in 2012, of which nearly 50%, or 60 million will be in Asia Pacific, followed by North American (22.6 million) and Europe (21 million).