Bookmark & share

By Julia Yao

Year 2008 has witnessed WiMAX' s accelerated growth. Currently, there are more than 460 fixed and mobile WiMAX trials and commercial deployments in 135 countries. As the initiator and the strong advocate of WiMAX, what are Intel' s strategy to further promote the WiMAX ecosystem and expectations for WiMAX development under the financial downturn? With these questions in mind, COMMUNICATE met with Mr. Sean Maloney, Intel EVP, Chief Sales and Marketing Officer for an exclusive interview during the GSMA Congress Barcelona.

How do you see the market opportunities for WiMAX under the current financial downturn? 

The next 3 years are going to be economically challenging for many countries. And many of the markets that Huawei and Intel operate in would be more economically challenged. But governments all around the world are going to deploy broadband to connect their citizens and wireless networks. That' s where WiMAX fits perfectly. It' s ready. We think WiMAX is a perfect technology for an economic downturn. It is a low cost way of connecting people to the Internet. That' s what the world needs, low cost mass standard. So we believe that there are huge opportunities for WiMAX and companies like Huawei and Intel in this new economic environment.

How will the financial downturn impact Intel' s investment strategy on WiMAX? 

I think everybody in the next year or two is going to face tougher economic times and the winning companies would be companies like Huawei and Intel that invest for the future, not companies that are cutting back and eliminating research and development. 

Our philosophy has always been to invest during tough times. We' ve done that since the company was founded. Intel has been through many recessions. In the tougher economic time, you must invest, you must do research and development, you must produce new technology. We think WiMAX is the right technology at the right time. So we plan to carry on investing in WiMAX. I' m glad to see that Huawei is committed to doing that as well. This approach is always the winning approach in tougher economic times.

How would you comment on the ecosystem of the WiMAX industry? 

I think if you look at the progress that WiMAX has made over the last year and half, we now have dozens of different computers that are going to be WiMAX ready, new kinds of lower cost computers like Netbooks. We have the emergence of Smartphones, and a very broad ecosystem all the way around the world. In some ways it is a convergence of the computer and communication industries. It is a healthy ecosystem with tremendous opportunities for Huawei and Intel.

Would you please comment on Huawei' s role and contributions to the whole WiMAX industry and the cooperation between Intel and Huawei?
Huawei WiMAX equipment is tremendous, it' s advanced and it' s ready now. Intel and Huawei have worked together closely in the last year and are helping lead the global WiMAX ecosystem. There' s now a very broad movement of dozens of companies around the world, and Huawei has stepped into a leadership role there. Intel is delighted to be working with Huawei in this leadership role.

People always compare WiMAX with LTE. How do you view the relationship between the two? 

Whenever there is a new standard in the industry, people always talk about battles between standards. That' s always been the case. We saw the closure of the 16e standard in 2005 that led to the progress during 2008. I think things are going to move more quickly now. There is a broad IEEE agreement on 802.16 and I think the standard is going to carry on moving ahead just the same as Wi-Fi did a few years ago. It has a really unstoppable momentum worldwide. WiMAX is here now. It' s ready, and sometimes ahead of LTE. Over the next year or two years, WiMAX is going to build up a very large global install base.

What message would you like to give to operators worldwide who take a wait-and-see attitude towards WiMAX adoption? 

I think now is the time to build these networks out. It always seems paradoxical to invest in a recession. But in many ways that is the right time to invest. The right time is to prepare for the next boom. And the best way to do that is to deploy high speed broadband wireless network now. WiMAX is the perfect choice. 



Thanks for your support to Huawei Communicate, if you have any opinion or suggestion, please to us.