Wireless Taiwan

As we have noted on this blog before, WiMAX is becoming big in Taiwan. Intel have invested significantly in WiMAX in Taiwan and yesterday Digitimes notes Motorola has made a significant investment in Taiwan's WiMAX industry:

Motorola will soon set up its first WiMAX IOT (interoperability testing) center worldwide in Taiwan, fulfilling the commitment of an MOU it signed with Taiwan's Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) in October 2007 aimed at helping foster the development of the WiMAX industry in Taiwan

Monday also saw the opening of the first annual WiMAX show in Taiwan with a significant number of international and local companies putting up displays. Perhaps the most notable comments on WiMAX came from President Ma himself who has vowed to develop WiMAX in Taiwan as a way to bridge the digital divide.

However, does anybody remember Wi-Fly, the wireless Wi-Fi network developed in Taipei city when he was Mayor. Yes, Wi-Fly are still struggling along and still advertising aggressively on buses etc. but it seems hardly anyone uses it. The New York Times reported on the difficulty of the Wi-Fly system way back in 2006:

Despite WiFly's ubiquity — with 4,100 hot spot access points reaching 90 percent of the population — just 40,000 of Taipei's 2.6 million residents have agreed to pay for the service since January. Q-Ware, the local Internet provider that built and runs the network, once expected to have 250,000 subscribers by the end of the year, but it has lowered that target to 200,000.

On Tuesday President Ma said:

We did not develop WiMAX infrastructure then because it was only in the making at that time.

So what was the cost of Wi-Fly? According to the New York Times article around US$30 million. Who footed the bill? Apparently it was Q-Ware, the company that runs the 7-11. Of course they have tried to bundle other things together with Wi-Fly but with so many competing technologies it is just very difficult.

OK. Before we bash Wi-Fly too much the New York Times does acknowledge that Wi-Fly has led to some savings:

The brainchild of Taipei's mayor, Ma Ying-jeou, the CyberCity project was first conceived in 1998 as a way to catapult past Seoul, Hong Kong and other Asian capitals that were recasting themselves as cities of the future. Many government agencies now communicate almost exclusively online, saving millions of dollars, and citizens have been given hundreds of thousands of free e-mail accounts and computer lessons.

WiFly plays a role, too, by allowing policemen to submit traffic tickets wirelessly, for instance. But making it appeal to the average citizen is another story.

Getting enthusiastic about technology is great and to be honest it is good to see some governments trying to be progressive. But I do feel sorry for those who invest in systems that become redundant in a few years. WiMAX now is the next big thing and is sure to provide many benefits to Taiwan. However, project managers in more conservative computer industries here are not that excited. For them it is just a bridge to the next wireless standard and they are cautious about investing to much into developing WiMAX compatible systems.

Digitimes: Motorola to set up first global WiMAX IOT in Taiwan
NY Times: What if They Built an Urban Wireless Network and Hardly Anyone Used It?