Huawei which recently kicked off the world’s fastest smartphone “Huawei Ascend D quad” seems being sued by an Electronics firm Creative Technologies for $9.3 million in the result of the collapse of mobile broadband project between the two in Singapore, Straits Times reports.
A Creative subsidiary, QMax Communications, agreed ona deal with Huawei to set up a WiMAX network in its Singapore center back in 2010, but now the company reportedly asking the ICT provider to return back the money after the problem spread across the network was shut down in December 2011.
There is no explanation from Creative side which supports that why the network was closed, but in Creative’s recent financial statement, the reason is cited there stated that it is because of the failure to meet network performance requirement to blame.
Why WiMax didn’t connect? – Background Story
USED in high-speed wireless Internet access, WiMax has a signal radius of 50km – conventional Wi-Fi offers only 30m. Yet it has not been widely adopted because there are few compatible mobile devices. Today’s tablets and smartphones have 3G or Wi-Fi connectivity or both – but not WiMax.
Embedding gadgets with wireless connectivity is crucial to winning users in mature markets, said senior research manager Alex Chau at IDC Asia-Pacific. He said WiMax had a chance here before 2008, when surfing was sluggish on 3G smartphones. Many handsets then did not support the faster 3.5G technology, though telcos had upgraded their networks.
Today, 3.5G allows surfing at 21 Mbps – 50 times faster than for 3G – and handset makers have caught up. All smartphones can deliver up to 21 Mbps in Web surfing speed. Consultancy firm Gartner’s research vice-president for communications, Mr Foong King Yew, said WiMax has a less comprehensive eco-system than the cellular network.
Moreover, he noted, the 2.3 GHz/2.5 GHz airwaves now used for WiMax services will be turned over for use in 4G mobile services in 2015, so no one would invest in rolling out WiMax services today.
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