Mobile World Congress 2009: Service Providers Featured at WiMAX Pavilion

MWC February 2009

The best perspective on the viability of any technology is heard directly from
the end-users and customers themselves.  This week at the Mobile World
Congress in Barcelona, attendees are getting that chance to do that by hearing
from a number of actual providers deploying WiMAX networks.

WiMAX Eco-System Pavilion, MWC February 2009

The WiMAX Eco-System pavilion, sponsored by Intel, features panel sessions every
few hours from WiMAX operators, vendors and application providers.  On
Monday, operators included OneMAX from the Dominican Republic, Max Telecom from
Bulgaria, Yota from Russia, Imagine Communications from Ireland and Monaco
Telecom, among others.  Representatives from equipment providers ZTE,
Huawei and Intel participated as well.

WiMAX Eco-System Pavilion, MWC February 2009

Also featured in the booth were live, two-way video conferencing over WiMAX
networks with WiMAX providers from around the globe.  During these
sessions, audience members participated by asking questions on business models,
markets served and technical/performance characteristics of the networks.

A common theme among the group was the ability of WiMAX to differentiate by
offering flat data rate plans, something typically not possible with existing 3G
operators.  "The current mobile operators are not able to offer flat-rate
plans since that would kill their business model or be very expensive," said
Krassimir Stoitcheff with Max Telecom.  "We are able to offer services by
the day, by amount of data (i.e.  10GB) or by subscription."

The service provider group also emphasized the "plug-and-play" model enabled by
new WiMAX USB dongle devices which makes WiMAX extremely easy to provision.

Certification of equipment was also discussed and the group agreed that with
products now available, 2009 is the year for mass WiMAX certification, but a
simple, low-cost approach is needed to ensure that this happens.  The group
also insisted that the WiMAX Forum? needs to take an active role to ensure that
profiles are managed to avoid vendors from continuously pushing their own
features into the profiles.  The group also expressed an interest in a more
active participation in the certification process.

XJ Wang, Senior Director with the WiMAX Forum agreed that there were too many
profiles and work was underway to reduce and consolidate them, which would also
be necessary in order for WiMAX roaming to mature.  "We are working to
receive input from providers and it is on our roadmap to reduce the number of
profiles," said Wang.