In a recent report published by Infonetics Research, Directing Analyst, Richard Webb characterizes Russia asthe 'perfect storm' for WiMAX," referring to the country's enormous wildly dispersed population, tough-to-wiregeography, lack of current broadband infrastructure, and "a population able to pay for services." There arealready 10 commercial WiMAX networks in Russia. Notably, Russia was the market where HTC chose tolaunch the world’s first dual mode GSM/WiMAX smartphone, in partnership with Yota. The CIS regions alsooffer great promise for WiMAX, with exciting announcements and deployment plans recently unveiled by ICONPrivate Equity and Freshtel, both of whom we are honoured to have confirmed to speak at this year’s event.

Building upon the success of last year’s inaugural event, which attracted 195 attendees from 18 countries,Informa Telecoms & Media are bringing together regional representatives of the entire WiMAX value chain toexplore and resolve the commercial and strategic challenges that lay ahead at this year’s official WiMAX Forum Russia & CISconference. This event is sure to provide a much-needed forum for Russian operators, regulators, investors and equipmentvendors to come together to share experiences, formulate strategies to support the commercial launch of services, plan fornetwork infrastructure evolution and exchange valuable new contacts across the industry. We look forward to welcoming you inMoscow!

SERGEY PORTNOY,

Regional Director, WiMAX FORUM (Russia)