Korea Looking to Speed WiMax Deployments

October 26, 2005

South Korean government officials, network equipment companies, and cellular network suppliers devised their own Wireless Broadband - WiBro - subset of the WiMax standard and hope that their work will gain worldwide acceptance. "The Koreans want to move ahead with WiMax deployments and since the standard is not yet fully ratified, they developed their own version of it," noted Lance Wilson, an industry analyst at ABI Research.

Korea decided to jumpstart the WiMax standards making process: WiBro is their version of 802.16b standard. The move is in keeping with Korea's aggressive promotion of wireless data services: "The Koreans are two to three years ahead of the U.S. in deployment and use of wireless data services," said Neil Strother, an analyst with The NPD Group.

The Koreans hope that the aggressive action will enable businesses and consumers to take advantage of wireless broadband services. Another potential perk is Korean equipment vendors could be in a strong position to establish themselves as top WiMax suppliers.

The Koreans are betting that wireless WAN data services will be popular, but historically, these services garnered only niche interest. Carriers have only been able to offer point-to-point WAN services, which can be expensive, and items, such as line-of-sight problems, diminished user interest. In addition, WiBro faces more intense competition than in the past, because alternative wireless data services, such as 3G cellular networks and WiFi are emerging.

Given its nascent stage of development, WiBro's future is unclear. "It would be unwise not to take what the Koreans have done seriously," concluded ABI Research's Wilson. "They have government, hardware manufacturers and service providers working as a cohesive group, which in itself is a major accomplishment, and one possible in only a few other counties."