Averaging one new market every week, Motorola has been pushing the envelope with WiMAX over the last month. Most recently, Smart Communications in the Philippines launched its first WiMAX tests using Motorola equipment. From the press release:
To date, [Smart] has about 8,700 cell sites across the country, housing various network equipment, including antennae for GSM, HSPA and Canopy. Very soon, these same towers will play host to Smart’s extensive WiMAX network.
For the trial, Smart and Motorola installed the latter’s WAP 450 WiMAX Access Points equipment to a number of cell site towers across the country. The WAP 450 utilizes tower top power amplifiers that can be housed in a small cabinet, allowing for a compact cell site configuration.
The news with Smart follows on the heels of a WiMAX launch in Pakistan on June 30th with the wireless provider Wi-tribe. Before that came the Clearwire Atlanta launch in mid-June, and a nationwide rollout with Etihad Athib Telecommunication Co. in Saudi Arabia announced on June 6th.
WiMAX is gaining momentum globally as a technology platform for next-gen mobile broadband. Ultimately it will play alongside LTE, but for the moment it is moving forward faster with a multitude of commercial deployments around the world.
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