South Korean companies have a pretty interesting plan to turn their version of (mobile) WiMAX aka WiBro into a global standard: go after some of the fastest growing emerging markets, and get the necessary scale to compete with rivals, mostly from the US. A few months of making a WiBro play in Brazil, South Korean companies are now targeting India.
Samsung , encouraged by some of the recent spectrum allocations in the 2.3 GHz to 2.5 GHz and 3.5 GHz bands in India, is now attempting to sell its gear which would allows 2 megabits download speed, and upload of 1 megabit per second. The company sees huge potential in the rural areas and regions that are off the main grids. Samsung vice-president (global marketing group) Dr Hung Song says the company is in talks with some Indian operators for the possible roll-out of WiBro in the near future.
Om,
Did you notice in BusinesWeek’s top 100 tech companies, half of the top 10 are Telcos 🙂
Maintenance of cable is problematic in India due to various reasons. So making Internet available over any wireless technology whether it is wi-max or wi-bro will speed up the Internet usage there.
Om,
Are we seeing more of India related news on your blog lately?
🙂
Ravneet
Samsung is making a very smart play. I think their only misstep is avoiding the US, where the vendor picture is still far from decided. Of course, with the big appeal of WiMax being the ability to mix and match components from different vendors, the real winners could be companies that dominate the network services side of things — hello Siemens-Nokia and Ericsson.
Samsung isn’t avoiding the US, they have a deal to deploy WiMAX 802.16e compatible systems for an ILEC in Michigan called Arialink. Its just that they haven’t convinced any operators in the US to choose WiBRO.
Check out this link for more: http://www.infoworld.com/article/06/04/10/77276HNwimaxmichigan1.html
Oh, I know their stuff is for sale in the US. It’s just they don’t seem to be making the effort that folks like Alavrion and Motorola are. Samsung is big enough to compete on equal footing with Moto and Alavarion would be no contest. Contrast the lengths they are going to in Brazil and elsewhere with what they have done in the US.