ALVARION (ALVR) - Toby 12/23/05
Alvarion jumped after the Israel-based telecommunications equipment maker received a $7 million order from Mexico-based Telmex, according to Oppenheimer analyst Troy Peery. Alvarion representatives could not be reached to confirm the name, and did not identify the customer in the press release. Alvarion said the agreement could be worth up to $15 million total, depending on the mix of products ordered.
In other news, Alvarion announced the deployment of a 5,000-square mile broadband network using its BreezeACCESS VL by Rioplex Wireless, a leading Texas wireless broadband operator now targeting high-capacity business customers in its service territory. To date, Rioplex has deployed 23 sectors of BreezeACCESS VL to offer multi-megabit services across its current service territory.
With the announcement of Feb. 15, 2009, as the date when the ENTIRE U.S. analog TV spectrum goes back to the Federal government, guess where a lot of this spectrum will wind up?
You will see most of that valuable spectrum going to WiMAX systems for both fixed and mobile 15MB-30MB high-capacity broadband.
While we are at the WiMAX temple, last weekend the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) ratified the Mobile WiMAX standard 802.16e, which greatly increases its odds of becoming the viable alternative to 3G cellular technologies for enterprise mobility services.
Here now is a rough timetable for accelerated roll-outs:
Some operators have already been lab-testing pre-standard mobile WiMAX equipment. Those tests will now accelerate and field tests should start this coming spring. Those field tests will morph into limited availability to consumers starting in the fall and, from there, the technology will start becoming more widely available through the winter and into 2007.
The bottom line is that, by this time next year, some people in some places will have mobile WiMAX service. This is GREAT news for WiMAX equipment makers like ALVR and Motorola by the way.
My guess is that the first to offer the service will be the more aggressive wireless ISPs and Sprint, which has a huge swatch of spectrum in the 2.5 GHz range that it will lose if it doesn't use it in the next couple of years. It has pretty much said that it intends to use mobile WiMAX in that spectrum.
I'm more convinced than ever that mobile wireless broadband will be highly disruptive technology that will both radically change both the communications industry, the services offered to end users and how much we pay for them.
"It is anticipated that laptops with embedded Mobile WiMAX chips will be available to internet users in 2007," Unwired chief executive David Spence tells the Australian Associated Press.
"WiMAX technology has been specifically developed to allow a lot of high speed mobile data at a very low cost ... it is all very well to have expensive networks delivering high speed data, but if the cost is too high then they don't work."
Intel, who undoubtedly is the largest single proponent of WiMAX right now, is promising to have the silicon ready for inclusion into laptops by 2007-2008.
Since the spectrum that WiMAX operates in will be licensed (at least in the U.S. and Canada), we will see a whole round of auctions or beauty contests, in order for it to be allocated.
But WiMAX was one year behind, due to the delay in IEEE approvals -- now it is ready to fly.
I believe we will see WiMAX sales double in 2006 -- and double to triple in 2007.
Get on the WiMAX wave and get your Alvarion before it gets back to double digits, or be sorry.
"Growth is all that matters!" CRAMER
