Home segment holds potential

Motorola yesterday said it sees "immense potential" in broadband technologies in the home segment as it made significant gains from 4G and broadband in 2008.

"Motorola made significant gains in 2008, particularly with LTE (long-term evolution) to address the mobility demands being driven by consumers looking for personalised media experiences," Dan Moloney, President, Motorola's Home and Networks Mobility business, said in a statement.

"Our testing of LTE networks has demonstrated great forward movement for the cellular community into networks that are fast, agile and able to deliver content on consumers' terms. We're looking forward to carrying this commitment into 2009 and leading the market in further development and deployment of LTE technologies."

Motorola will carry LTE, WiMAX and fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) deployments into a projected expansion of broadband in 2009, the statement said.

Soon after Motorola successfully completed the first LTE call in the 700MHz spectrum, major carriers including Verizon/Vodafone have taken notice of Motorola's LTE leadership and are conducting LTE trials with Motorola.

With the wireless broadband technology's expected 2009 launch, Motorola is ready for the necessary products to keep pace: products for both 700MHz and 2.6GHz are expected to be offered commercially in late 2009.

According to a new report from West Technology Research Solutions, regulatory conditions are looking bright for the mobile WiMAX industry growth and adoption. As for the fixed WiMAX market, Forrester Research sees Africa and Eastern Europe as key areas for telecom growth.

Motorola said it is poised to take advantage of both. The company already has 25 contracts for commercial WiMAX systems with customers in 20 countries, and has shipped more than 5,000 multi-sector access points (powering more than 17,000 sectors) and hundreds of thousands of CPEs and PC cards as of Q3 2008.

The company's WiMAX business for contract deployments, trials, and other customer engagements is currently engaged in 49 countries.

Its global gains include a $165 million contract with Saudi Arabia's Atheeb, and contracts with Embratel in Brazil and Axtel in Mexico. Other new contracts and expansions occurred in previously underserved areas of the world, including Jordan, East Malaysia, and Pakistan, the statement said.

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