Amsterdam, 17 June, 2008 - Samsung Electronics, a leading provider of Mobile WiMAX™ solutions, announced that its Mobile WiMAX products were awarded the world’s first WiMAX Forum 2.5 GHz certification for both ‘Base Station’ and ‘Mobile Station’ at the WiMAX Forum Global Congress 2008, in Amsterdam, today.
The Mobile WiMAX Certified products are commercial grade Mobile WiMAX Wave 2 ‘Base Station’ and ‘Mobile Station,’ the Express card type device, using Samsung’s own Mobile WiMAX modem chipset, which will be commercially used in the Sprint-Nextel Mobile WiMAX service later this year.
Mobile WiMAX 2.5 GHz products introduce a number of new features including Multi-In Multi-Out (MIMO) and Smart Antenna. These features enable the fastest data rate, up to 37Mbps for downlink and 10Mbps for uplink, among currently available mobile technologies in service. At this speed users can download 3MB MP3 music files within 0.7 seconds and 700MB movie files within less than 3 minutes.
“We are very excited to obtain the Mobile WiMAX 2.5 GHz certification from WiMAX Forum by successfully passing all rigorous certification tests. This once again shows Samsung’s leadership in Mobile WiMAX technologies.” said Geesung Choi, President of Telecommunication Network Business in Samsung Electronics. He added “I am confident in Mobile WiMAX as one of the most promising solutions for mobile broadband services. This important milestone exhibits the technology is ready and mature and Samsung will accelerate the commercialization with in the global market to open new era of mobile broadband world.”
“The WiMAX Forum would like to thank Samsung and the other member companies that have worked so hard to achieve today’s milestone and enabling the Forum to continue to reach critical objectives with the ongoing certification of Mobile WiMAX equipment.” said Ron Resnick, president of the WiMAX Forum during a press conference at the WiMAX Forum Global Congress in Amsterdam. “Samsung has played an important role in WiMAX Forum’s success of driving market momentum by enabling us to move closer to delivering on our plan to certify more than 100 Mobile WiMAX products in 2008. Our six independent WiMAX Forum certification labs are on now online to manage the anticipated increase of products to be submitted for certification.”
The Wave 2 (2.5 GHz) certification designation today together with Wave 1 (2.3 GHz) certification award in April this year puts Samsung in a very few elite class of vendors which possess both certified commercial Mobile WiMAX Wave 1 (2.3 GHz) and Wave 2 (2.5 GHz) product lineups. Samsung’s Mobile WiMAX Wave 2 solutions are expected to be commercially available through KT and SKT in South Korea from later this year and UQ Communications in Japan from next Summer.
The WiMAX Forum is an industry-led, not-for-profit organization formed to certify and promote the compatibility and interoperability of broadband wireless products based upon the harmonized IEEE 802.16/ETSI HiperMAN standard. Currently, the organization has more than 500 member companies including service providers, regulators, equipment vendors, chip vendors, and content providers.