HSBC Holdings Plc said yesterday that Long Term Evolution (LTE) would beat Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX) to become the mainstream fourth-generation (4G) technology worldwide.
There has been a tug-of-war over whether LTE or WiMAX will become the “golden” standard. The result of the battle has become clear as major global telecom operators such as NTT DoComo Inc, China Mobile Communications Corp (中國移動通信), AT&T Inc and Verizon Communications Inc have jumped on the LTE bandwagon.
“We believe this time around, the US will finally be the leader in telecommunications. Recently Verizon and AT&T have invested over US$18 billion [NT$573.77 billion] in LTE spectrum licenses combined,” Tucker Grinnan, regional telecoms research analyst at HSBC said yesterday after the LTE World 2008 conference held in Taipei.
“We can anticipate this technology coming to consumers in late 2009 or 2010,” he said.
However, Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信), Taiwan Mobile Co (台灣大哥大) and Far EasTone Telecommunications Co (遠傳電信), the nation’s top three mobile carriers, have taken a wait-and-see attitude on the 4G development in Taiwan.
LTE PLATFORM
LTE is an entirely new radio platform technology, which allows for data transmission at 10 to 15 mega bits per second.
“It can be thought of as using radio waves further down in frequency to allow for longer wavelengths, larger coverage area, bigger and fewer stations and, most importantly of all, greater reach to mobile clients,” Grinnan said.
Qualcomm Inc controls most of the patents for LTE technology.
WiMAX, on the other hand, provides wireless transmission of data ranging from point-to-point links to full mobile cellular-type access.
LIMITED APPEAL
There is a market for WiMAX, but Grinnan sees it as limited to computing devices such as laptops, personal digital assistants and digital cameras, rather than cellphones.
Intel Corp has been a strong proponent of WiMAX technology from the very beginning as part of its future laptop technology.
Due to Intel’s strong influence on the vendor community, Taiwan has been big on WiMAX as well. The government has been a strong supporter of the technology, recently auctioning off WiMAX licenses to Global Mobile Corp (全球一動) and Tatung InfoComm Co (大同電信).
The apparent advantage of WiMAX technology lies in its less expensive intellectual property rights, which average US$25 per chipset, Grinnan said.
But WiMAX does not have voice capability and Internet calling currently struggles with poor reception, which is why Grinnan does not see WiMAX being adopted by major telecom operators around the world.
“Chunghwa and Far EasTone have only recently seen its 3.5G efforts being paid off,” the analyst said.
“Taiwan, for some peculiar reason, has a very low data-as-a-percentage-of-revenue number of only 10 percent, which is almost the same as that in India, while the US and the rest of the world experiences a 25 percent rate,” he said.
It is not difficult to see why the three carriers are hesitant to select either technology immediately.
“Low commuting time and low adoption of simplified Chinese characters are probably two of many reasons why 3.5G has encountered such resistance in Taiwan,” Grinnan said.
Quanta Computer Inc (廣達) chairman Barry Lam (林百里) is expected to share his views about the artificial intelligence (AI) industry’s prospects during his speech at the company’s 37th anniversary ceremony, as AI servers have become a new growth engine for the equipment manufacturing service provider. Lam’s speech is much anticipated, as Quanta has risen as one of the world’s major AI server suppliers. The company reported a 30 percent year-on-year growth in consolidated revenue to NT$1.41 trillion (US$43.35 billion) last year, thanks to fast-growing demand for servers, especially those with AI capabilities. The company told investors in November last year that
Intel Corp has named Tasha Chuang (莊蓓瑜) to lead Intel Taiwan in a bid to reinforce relations between the company and its Taiwanese partners. The appointment of Chuang as general manager for Intel Taiwan takes effect on Thursday, the firm said in a statement yesterday. Chuang is to lead her team in Taiwan to pursue product development and sales growth in an effort to reinforce the company’s ties with its partners and clients, Intel said. Chuang was previously in charge of managing Intel’s ties with leading Taiwanese PC brand Asustek Computer Inc (華碩), which included helping Asustek strengthen its global businesses, the company
United Microelectronics Corp (UMC, 聯電) forecast that its wafer shipments this quarter would grow up to 7 percent sequentially and the factory utilization rate would rise to 75 percent, indicating that customers did not alter their ordering behavior due to the US President Donald Trump’s capricious US tariff policies. However, the uncertainty about US tariffs has weighed on the chipmaker’s business visibility for the second half of this year, UMC chief financial officer Liu Chi-tung (劉啟東) said at an online earnings conference yesterday. “Although the escalating trade tensions and global tariff policies have increased uncertainty in the semiconductor industry, we have not
Taiwanese suppliers to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC, 台積電) are expected to follow the contract chipmaker’s step to invest in the US, but their relocation may be seven to eight years away, Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) said yesterday. When asked by opposition Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Niu Hsu-ting (牛煦庭) in the legislature about growing concerns that TSMC’s huge investments in the US will prompt its suppliers to follow suit, Kuo said based on the chipmaker’s current limited production volume, it is unlikely to lead its supply chain to go there for now. “Unless TSMC completes its planned six
RSS