HAGATNA (WiMAX Day). The Pacific Island of Guam is an American territory, and long-time military asset. According to a report in Marianas Variety, the US Military is planning to build-up its forces in Guam, re-locate a military base, and import an additional 40,000 personnel from an American military installation in Okinawa, Japan.

The military build-up will far more resources than are available on the tiny Island today. The international consulting group KPMG said in a report to the government of Guam that significant infrastructure changes will be required to support increased demand for services. In particular, “increased capacity will be critical to providing an improved connection service as well as speed for Internet services to provide multimedia capabilities including voice, video and data capabilities,” said KPMG.

Amongst its many recommendations, the KPMG report noted that Guam will need to provide an environment that will “facilitate the 4th generation [4G] technologies for convergence of wireless voice, video and data services,” particularly for use with WiMAX. To achieve this, the report said that Guam should proceed with an “auction of WCS band for WiMAX deployment.” The WCS band occupies the 2305-2320 MHz and 2345-2360 MHz frequencies.