Motorola launches first large-scale WiMAX network

Wateen turns up Motorola gear in 22 cities in Pakistan, using it initially for fixed access

Motorola’s first commercial WiMAX network went live today in 22 cities in Pakistan, making it the first of its three high-profile nationwide network contracts to launch.

In a message to employees and customers posted on the company’s Website, Wateen Telecom Chief Executive Officer Tariq Malik revealed the official launch of the broadband access network throughout the country of 175 million people. “We are proud to be the largest and the first in the world to roll out a WiMAX 802.16e network nationwide in 22 cities,” Malik said in the message. “The launch of Wateen's Broadband Internet, Data, Telephony and a fantastic range of value-added services is geared to completely revolutionize the way you communicate from now on.”

Wateen is using Motorola’s WiMAX kit as a broadband access alternative to homes and businesses in its major metropolitan centers, using home gateways and external antenna masts as a fixed-wireless solution in a country which has less than 200,000 DSL lines. Unlike many WiMAX deployments, which target rural or small markets with few broadband resources, Wateen is focusing on the major metro areas—capital Islamabad and urban centers Karachi, Lahore and Peshawar are all on the initial launch list. Though Wateen and Motorola have not revealed the exact scale of the rollout in those markets, the buildouts are likely significant, accounting for the majority of Motorola’s base station and customer premise equipment shipments to date.

Moto has now shipped 2000 base stations and tens of thousands of customer premises equipment units and PC wireless cards, said senior vice president of home and networks mobility Fred Wright. Some of those are going to the 44 active trials Motorola is engaged in worldwide, Wright said, but the majority of that gear is going to commercial deployments, of which Wateen is by far the largest to date.

Motorola’s other two high-profile WiMAX contracts, with Sprint and Clearwire, have garnered most of the headlines, but Motorola is still several months to a year away from a large-scale rollout with either operator. Sprint last week turned up Motorola and Samsung’s first Mobile WiMAX networks in Chicago and Washington D.C./Baltimore, respectively, but the launches were limited to Sprint employees and covered only the downtown cores of each city. Sprint, however, plans to expand the Chicago footprint quickly, moving outward from downtown in the first quarter and launching new networks with Motorola gear in Indianapolis, Detroit, Minneapolis, Kansas City and Grand Rapids, Mich., in 2008.

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