Alvarion (Nasdaq: ALVR; TASE: ALVR) today announced another expansion of its WiMAX-ready system with Spainish carrier Iberbanda, in the country's largest province, Castilla y Leon.
To date, Iberbanda has installed Alvarion's BreezeMAX networks in the Spanish provinces of Andalusia, Catalonia, and Navarra. The value of the current contract was not disclosed.
Iberbanda CEO Carlos Morell said, "The broadband program of Castilla y Leon is to cover most of this province over the next few years to provide broadband services to residences and businesses areas that are currently without access because of the prohibitive costs of wired infrastructure."
"Our experience with BreezeMAX in the other regions of Spain lead us to build this network in Castilla y Leon, especially with its mountainous areas full of line-of-sight challenges. In addition, with the province's population of less than 3 million and given its geographic size, only a WiMAX network provides a profitable business model with a diversified service offering."
Alvarion president and COO Tzvika Friedman said, "Given the size, terrain, the population characteristics of the area, we believe that the initial network in Castilla y Leon has the potential to grow over the next few years, and become one of our largest BreezeMAX deployments."
The BreezeMAX platform has been designed from the ground up according to the IEEE 802.16-2004 standard and will be submitted for certification later this year according to the schedule and readiness of the WiMAX Forum labs. The platform serves as a base for Alvarion's future mobile solution targeted towards the emerging IEEE 802.16e standard for mobile broadband services.
Iberbanda is a provider of advanced LMDS-based broadband services to companies throughout Spain. Iberbanda provides high-speed Internet access, data communications, voice, and other value-added IP-based services in Spain's 72 largest cities. In addition, Iberbanda leases its advanced infrastructure to application service providers (ASPs), Internet service providers (ISPs), and transport and access services throughout Spain.
Iberbanda's investors include major international telecommunications, retail, and financial groups, including the Prisa Group (26%), El Corte Ingles (26%), Sercotel (America Movil) (18%), Omega Capital (9%), Caja Duero (7%), Ibercaja (4%), Caja San Fernando (4%), Caja de Huelva y Sevilla (El Monte) (4%) and Promecal (2%).
Alvarion provides wireless broadband systems to carriers, ISPs and private network operators, as well as systems that extend coverage of GSM and CDMA mobile networks to developing countries and other hard to serve areas. Alvarion has more than 2 million units deployed in 130 countries.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes.co.il - on Tuesday, July 19, 2005