Motorola, Inc. (NYSE:MOT) today announced that the company has reached agreement with SOFTBANK Group for the deployment of a WiMAX (IEEE 802.16e-2005) trial network in Tokyo.

Motorola is supplying an end-to-end trial system including access points, an access network, and prototype WiMAX mobile handheld devices. The trial will enable SOFTBANK Group to assess the effectiveness of WiMAX as a wireless broadband technology, and its potential as an integrated part of SOFTBANK’s growing portfolio of telecommunications services.

SOFTBANK Group aims to offer seamless mobility to customers in Japan with its mobile communications, fixed-line telecommunications and fixed-line broadband services. The company acquired Vodafone K.K., which is the third largest mobile service operator in Japan, in April 2006. SOFTBANK Group currently has more than 26 million fixed-line and mobile communications customers in Japan.

Expected to begin in September 2006, the five-month trial will focus on performance of WiMAX in the 2.5GHz spectrum with regards to throughput and range, as well as the speed of network handovers between access points.

Motorola will be deploying five WiMAX access points and 25 prototype WiMAX mobile handheld devices. The trial will also showcase MIMO (multi-input, multi-output) capabilities of Motorola’s WiMAX solutions in supporting multi-antenna telecommunications systems as well as enabling greater data throughput and range. Motorola will also lend its wireless broadband expertise by providing technical support and consulting throughout the WiMAX trial.

Motorola is driving the development of WiMAX through collaborative agreements with other industry-leading companies, research and development, trials and deployments. The company recently won a nationwide contract to deploy a WiMAX 802.16e network in Pakistan.

“Forward-looking service providers today clearly see the potential of WiMAX as a viable and crucial wireless broadband technology to deploy seamless mobility services. As a pioneer in WiMAX, Motorola is committed to providing such innovative technology to fast growing telecommunications markets such as Japan,” said Dr. Simon Leung, regional president, Asia Pacific, Motorola.

“The SOFTBANK Group has been preparing to provide innovative new services to launch full-scale wireless broadband services and to realize a true ubiquitous society. We are confident that our new cooperation with Motorola, a company capable of providing optimal solution proposals for the demonstration of WiMAX, will enable us to further improve communication technologies and to take another big step toward commercialization.” said Junichi Miyakawa, executive officer, executive vice president, Vodafone K.K.

MOTOwi4™ is a portfolio of wireless broadband solutions and services that creates, complements and completes IP networks. Delivering coverage to virtually all spaces, MOTOwi4 includes wi4 WiMAX, wi4 Fixed Broadband, wi4 Mesh, and wi4 Broadband over Power Line solutions for private and public networks. For more information about Motorola’s MOTOwi4 solutions, please visit: www.motorola.com/wi4

The number of 3.5G mobile broadband subscribers worldwide will boom more than ten-fold from 2.5 million in 2006 to more than 300 million in 2011, but market growth in 2006-07 will be restrained by a lack of compelling devices, according to Future Mobile Broadband: HSPA, EV-DO, WiMAX & LTE, a new Strategic Report from Informa Telecoms & Media.

“A lack of compelling devices and content led to delayed launches and slow take-up of WCDMA and EV-DO services, and early HSDPA and EV-DO Revision A services are expected to suffer from the very same problems,” says Malik Saadi, principal analyst at Informa Telecoms & Media and co-author of the Future Mobile Broadband Strategic Report.

Saadi notes that most HSDPA services are launching with only PC cards and notebooks, although a number of early handsets are also arriving. “However it is striking that as of June no major vendor has unveiled plans for EV-DO Rev. A handsets, although data cards are on the way.”

A lack of a wide range of compelling handsets will slow mass-market takeup of 3.5G mobile broadband services in 2006-07,but handsets will start to mature in 2008, leading to a sharp increase in 3.5G handset sales and subscribers in 2008-09. By 2011 85% of 3.5G devices sold will be handsets, and the remaining 15% will be notebooks and PC cards.

3.5G mobile broadband subscribers are defined as subscribersusing services based on HSDPA, HSUPA, EV-DO Revision A or EV-DO Revision B.

Mobile WiMAX will compete with HSPA and EV-DO Rev A/B in the mobile broadband market, but will suffer even more than those technologies from the slow arrival of compelling notebooks and handsets. “Mobile WiMAX will play a relatively minor role in the mobile broadband market through 2011, largely because Mobile WiMAX notebooks and tablets will not arrive in volume until 2008-09, and compelling Mobile WiMAX handsets won’t arrive until 2010,” says Mike Roberts, principal analyst at Informa Telecoms & Media and co-author of the Future Mobile Broadband report. “By comparison HSDPA notebooks and handsets are already shipping, which means that the HSDPA device market is one to two years ahead of the Mobile WiMAX device market,” Roberts says.

However that should not obscure the fact that WiMAX will gain significant momentum in the fixed, nomadic and portable broadband segments in 2006-11, although many WiMAX subscribers will be using fixed indoor modems rather than mobile devices, Roberts adds.

BellSouth (NYSE: BLS) and Alcatel (Paris: CGEP.PA and NYSE: ALA) announced today an agreement to trial Alcatel’s EvoliumВ® WiMAX solution in the BellSouth lab. This agreement comes four months after Alcatel conducted the industry’s first live demonstration of the newly ratified WiMAX IEEE 802.16e-2005 standard.

BellSouth, the first major telecom provider to commercially launch wireless broadband using pre-WiMAX technology in the U.S., will begin lab trials next quarter based on Alcatel’s standards-based universal WiMAX solution (IEEE 802.16e-2005). The trials will be conducted in the 2.3 GHz WCS spectrum.

“BellSouth continues to pave the way in wireless broadband,” said Paulino Barros, chief product officer – BellSouth Retail Markets. “We are committed to increasing our broadband coverage. We look forward to working with Alcatel to assess the viability of offering a simple and seamless WiMAX solution that will extend broadband even further into our network.”

In addition to its active role in the WiMAX Forumв„ў, Alcatel has been broadening the WiMAX ecosystem over the past year by cooperating with leading trendsetters to define reference usage profiles and conduct interoperability testing. With the WiMAX IEEE 802.16e-2005 standard now ratified, carriers are eager to move to the next stage of market validation so as to take advantage of its unique cost, coverage and performance benefits. Alcatel’s cost-efficient, high-performance EvoliumВ® WiMAX infrastructure is a truly universal broadband wireless access solution, natively supporting fixed, nomadic and mobile usage.

“Alcatel believes that broadband wireless access technology offers important strategic value to carriers looking to deliver the high-speed, high-quality services that their customers expect wherever they are,” said Hubert de Pesquidoux, Executive Vice President and President of Alcatel’s North American activities. “This trial with BellSouth is a significant indication that our customers agree – universal WiMAX is ready for the market, and the market is ready for universal WiMAX.”

WiMAX is a new broadband wireless access technology that enables connectivity through wireless networks for fixed, nomadic or mobile use in urban, suburban and rural areas. The technology offers a cost-effective broadband access alternative where DSL is unavailable for technical or economical reasons, or a last-mile alternative to unbundling for operators who are offering a combination of voice and broadband access offers to the next generation of wireless devices. The 802.16e-2005 WiMAX standard is in fact a more advanced successor to 802.16d-2004 (called “Static WiMAX,” or Revision d), and offers superior performance and flexibility in pure fixed deployment scenarios.

The Alcatel EvoliumВ® WiMAX solution will be shown in the Alcatel booth at the WCA conference June 27 through 30 in Washington DC.