WiMAX Forum: 10M WiMAX Subscribers Worldwide

• Posted: Saturday, December 05, 2009
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• Author: pradhana
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• Filed under: WiMax

By Sue Marek

XJ Wang, marketing director for the WiMAX Forum, said there are now 540 WiMAX network deployments in 146 countries around the world--and more than 150 deployments in the Americas alone--an update intended to show the technology's progress to attendees of the WiMAX Forum Americas 2009 conference here.

Although many of the WiMAX networks are greenfield, such as the Clearwire WiMAX network in the U.S., Wang said 95 WiMAX operators also have cellular networks. "There are GSM operators such as Digicel that operate a WiMAX network too," Wang noted. "WiMAX contributes to the bottom line."

On the subscriber front, Wang said there are now about 10 million WiMAX subscribers worldwide, indicating that the technology is moving from niche to mass market. In addition, he said that there are 165 WiMAX Forum certified products available.

Many of those WiMAX products likely are running on chips from Beceem. The WiMAX chipmaker said it is on track to sell 3 million WiMAX chips in 2009. The company also today launched "4G Turbo" technology, which it said improves the uplink performance of its WiMAX chips. [FierceWireless]

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