Fujitsu, Taiwan unite over Wimax

AN ANNOUNCEMENT that Japan's Fujitsu has teamed up over Wimax with Taiwan's Ministry of Economic Affairs is expected tomorrow [4^th December].

The objective is clearly to supply Taiwan's PC manufacturers with easy access to Wimax without having to go through Intel. Which will particularly benefit AMD based machines.

Sources say, however, that the comms chips will most likely be built in Fujitsu's Kuwana, Mie Prefecture plant in Japan, although both the Taiwanese government and Fujitsu are reported as putting "several billion Yen" into the joint venture.
The big question is what type Wimax are we talking about? The answer appears to be 802.16e-2005 – better known as Mobile Wimax.

This could be a shrewd move as its one of the technologies which stands a good chance of winning out after the FCC auctions off the 700 MHz spectrum from today.

Mobile Wimax suffered a setback, of course, when Sprint announced it was pulling back from its announced Wimax roll-out.
But that doesn't stop others from viewing it as a potential 4G technology.
Fujitsu Microelectronics America recently took part in a technology demonstration using its Wimax MB86K21 chip in conjunction with Navini base station to show Smart Wimax in action.

Navini uses input/multiple output (MIMO) techniques which it claims double potential system capacity and in a truly mobile setting, they offer up to twice the coverage of simple Wimax. µ

L'INQs
Fujitsu America
Navini