Huawei eyes Australian WiMAX market

Stephen Withers
Friday, 29 February 2008 06:33

IT Industry - Strategy

Asia Pacific nations are "a little late" in issuing WiMAX licences, he suggested.

Huawei demonstrated a range of services running over WiMAX, including FTP, Web, streaming video, PC-based softphones, and videoconferencing, using a variety of equipment including a USB WiMAX dongle, a fixed WiMAX CPE unit (around the size of a set-top box), and IP videophones.

Another demo involved monitoring remote video feeds, as used for security and other purposes. While the setup involved a regular videocamera connected to a video server that transmitted the images across the network, standalone WiMAX cameras are likely to appear. WiMAX allows higher resolutions and/or framerates than 3G, and it will be used to transmit video feeds from boats in the Beijing Olympics sailing competition.

These services have different quality of service requirements, and Huawei's equipment implements all five QoS levels as specified by the WiMAX forum, allowing multiple services to run simultaneously and successfully over one connection.

An Jian said WiMAX would be a suitable technology for extending broadband access to parts of Australia that are currently outside the footprint of DSL and cable networks, but most operators are still investigating business models and are largely looking for someone to follow. He declined to say which Australian operators had visited the demonstration.

While Huawei thinks it has the systems that operators need, An Jian said that the existence of more than 100 WiMAX manufacturers will help to drive down the prices of consumer equipment, even though prices are already in "the range Australian people will accept. Terminals for WiBro (a Korean mobile broadband standard that is now part of WiMAX) are available for less than $US100, he said.