WiMax to Face Rough Road Ahead in Korea

August 13, 2004 - source: Telecoms Korea

An analysis said that Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMax), Intel's IEEE 803.16 standard-based technology, would not be successful in Korea.

KISDI, a leading IT research center said in its report on the trend and prospect of WiMax market that WiMax will be welcomed in Europe, China and India where fixed line networks are not well established yet. But, it would not appeal to Korean market, where fixed-line networks are well developed.

KISDI, however, projected that WiMax technology, backed by global companies including Intel, AT&T and BT will have significant impact on global broadband market.

KISDI referred to Senza Fili Consulting data and said that the price of WiMax CPU will fall to 50~70 dollars by the end of this year and to the level of DSL or cable modems within 3~4 years. As a result, the research institute predicted that WiMax would replace DSL gradually because the prices of the two technologies will get similar.