ä¸ŠFi Squeaks into the Inner Ring Road

Posted on May 9, 2008
Filed Under Beijing Olympics, China Business, China Internet, Wireless Networks |

Shanghai Mobile and Shanghai Telecom both signed with Putuo District yesterday to expand wireless coverage for the first time within the region of Inner Ring Road, the central part of the city.

Previously, carriers signed with governments in suburban areas on the “wireless city” initiative, including Baoshao, Minhang and Nanhui districts and the Chongming County.

Today, Shanghai Mobile will sign similar agreements with Xuhui District where the major Olympic stadiums are.

…The number of wireless Internet hot spots in Shanghai will hit more than 3,600 by the end of this year - triple last year’s level.

China Telecom will establish an additional 2,000 Wi-Fi hot spots this year from an existing 1,000 now. Shanghai Mobile will establish 666 more Wi-Fi hot spots this year from the current 100 to 200 Wi-Fi sites.

…In the city, carriers adopt various methods such as WiMax, 3G and current mobile networks to construct wireless networks, besides major stream Wi-Fi (802.11 standard).

Shanghai Telecom said it was considering adopting WiMax (Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access), a wireless broadband access technology built on the 802.16 standard.

…Intel Corp will invest US$500 million in Taiwan mainly on WiMax.

It is also in negotiations with carriers and the governments to be involved in the wireless city project, according to Sean Maloney, Intel’s executive vice president, who visited Shanghai last month.

Shanghai Mobile plans to set up 3,000 3G base stations in Shanghai this year.

China Telecom’s Putuo deployment is in the inner ring road, but just a bit of it in the north west of the central city. China Telecom does have WiFi spots in the inner city, just not anything approaching district-wide saturation.

China Mobile’s deployment in Xuhui is of a different scale entirely. With three months to go before the Olympics, they’re cutting it a little fine. Xuhui district is home to the road, transport, retailing, business, and utter chaos hub that is Xujiahui. Even thinking about it can induce agoraphobic cringing. The place is utterly packed at just about any given moment. The stadiums are about two kilometers south of it, so Xujiahui probably won’t be within the Olympic-area coverage. China Mobile got the head start there because it’s an Olympic sponsor. With the density of population there (and two or three big computer malls), Xuhui will be an interesting test for their solution.

Intel’s Mr. Maloney was probably in Shanghai for the Intel Developer’s Forum last month. Previous reports had stated pretty clearly that WiMAX was going to be in the mix for the project, so I’m not sure what the “negotiations” were about.