Taiwanese Wimax winded by credit crunch

TAIWAN IS doing its best to put on a brave face as the economic crisis deals its Wimax plans a series of serious blows.

It has been one thing after another for the Wimax industry. First, star player Nortel filed for bankruptcy last month, then Motorola reported whopping net losses and thousands of staff layoffs, then, adding insult to injury, Intel, Time Warner Cable, and Google all reduced their investments in Clearwire, set to build a major Wimax network in the US.

In Taiwan, the situation is similarly bleak for the wireless technology. Wimax should already have seen its Taiwanese debut with Tatung Infocomm promising it would launch the first network on the island of Penghu by December 2008. It didn't, and now the firm has backtracked, stuttering it might only be ready by Spring of 2009.

In addition, cash flow problems saw Taiwan's First International Telecom (Fitel) call a halt to its planned Taipei Wimax rollout. Fitel's network spread across the Taiwanese capital, would have been the country's largest, but it now seems Fitel might even have to sell its WiMax licence and scrap its network plans altogether.

Fearing the worst, several other Taiwanese Wimax licence holders have also delayed their launch plans.

But despite the doom and gloom embodied by the delays, the Taiwanese government seems to be doing its utmost to appear upbeat about it all.

"We're still very optimistic about WiMax," director general of Taiwan's Industrial Development Bureau, Chen Chao-yi, gushed unconvincingly at a meeting on Friday.

The Taiwanese government certainly wouldn't want to see Wimax fail, especially after having offered bumper research grants and investment to firms developing the technology under the government's M-Taiwan (Mobile-Taiwan) programme. µ

L'Inq
PC World