Olympics: Where There’s a McWill, There’s No Way

Posted on August 14, 2008
Filed Under Beijing Olympics, Mobile, Wireless Networks |

A much-heralded Wimax deployment at China’s Olympics looks likely to be “over promised and under delivered”, according to IMS Research.

China’s dominant mobile phone operator, China Mobile, has been designated to provide a Wimax network for the Games, according to IMS. The network was intended to cover the Olympic village and surrounding areas.

However, the 15 months China Mobile was given to roll out a network with 150 base stations in Beijing alone was a “lofty goal” that the company is unlikely to have met, IMS said.

Wimax will be used mainly at the Olympic sailing events near the coastal city of Qingdao, according to recent comments from Intel chief executive officer Paul Otellini.

Well if by “under delivered” they mean no one bothered, they’d just about hit the nail on the head. China Netcom was supposed to provide it, but they were assigned the infrastructure and China Mobile was tasked with rolling it out.

China Mobile has been running around trying to get the TD-SCDMA network up and running and desperately shoving subsidized handsets down the throats of Olympic staff. Maybe this all proved too much for them and they let this slide.

Or the culprit could be McWill (the name is derived from Multicarrier Wireless Internet Local Loop), the SCDMA-based (and China-developed) “rival” to WiMAX. It’s been developed by Datang, the folks who brought you TD-SCDMA.

Maybe all the deployment problems that have plagued TD-SCDMA made them a little leery of the whole thing.

I haven’t heard a peep about WiMAX in Qingdao, the site of the Olympic sailing, so maybe this idea is being quietly buried at sea.

There’s been a number of “test networks” announced over the years, but so far little has been done about WiMAX in China. Some of the new wireless cities initiatives that are popping up all over the place in China claim to have WiMAX in the development path, but there’s been no word on when and whether they will use WiMAX or McWill.