Mobile WiMax: So near yet so far.

A short news report today from Inquirer says that Mobile WiMax in the Philippines will be rolled out by the end of the year. Could this be the Globe Innove and Intel Philippines WiMax service I blogged about last October?

Or, it could also be start-up company Happy Communications. My source who’s close to an Intel executive says it’s coming real soon. The story from Inquirer.net is not clear exactly when or who are involved though:

Navin Shenoy, vice president and general manager for Asia Pacific of Intel Semiconductor Ltd., said Intel has already seen commercial WiMAX services launched in the United States and Japan early this year.

Shenoy said that Intel is now working with operators to bring in â€œmobile WiMAX service in the country.

And to think the 3.5G (HSDPA) roll out of Smart and Globe has not covered the entire archipelago yet (at least the populated ones). Sun Cellular has yet to announce their own 3G too. An old schoolmate who used to work for Hwuawei (a competitor to Chinese company ZTE) tipped me about the delayed launch.

IMO, it’s not the advanced broadband technology that really needed here but the bandwidth. I believe operators do not have enough capacity and are overselling the usual bandwidth limits.I’d rather stick to a 512Kbps account if it gives me the committed rate. Normally, consumers get only around 60% of the advertised speeds (and for some unfortunate ones, it’s even way slower than dial-up).

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8 Comments

BrianB · 18 years ago

re wiretapping:

http://www.engadget.com/2008/02/21/researchers-claim-gsm-calls-can-be-hacked-on-the-cheap/

minor · 18 years ago

yeah more bandwidth and stable connection, ayoko na maranasan ang mawalan ng connection for 6days. About Mobile WiMax many pinoy owned top of the line mobile phone but they dont know how to use it 100% e.g my boss has N95 but until now he dont know how to compose MMS

spidamang · 18 years ago

My suggestion is that ISPs should cut down their marketing budget and start investing in improving their systems. With a reliable system, it would be the customer’s themselves that would serve as their marketing arm di ba?

I sometimes feel that they are so smug about their lock in periods that they don’t care about customer satisfaction.

Puro sila benta ng benta ng subscriptions hindi naman nila mine-maintain.

jhay · 18 years ago

Agreed! Improve the connection first before rolling out new technologies and services. Local ISPs should really be sued or something for those fraudulent connection speeds they advertise when the customer actually gets way below what they signed up for.

It’s time something should be done to “moderate their (ISPs) greed.”