SKOPJE, Macedonia-Motorola Inc. announced that its pre-WiMAX MotoWi4 Canopy equipment has been deployed throughout Macedonia, providing the country with a national wireless broadband network.
The company explained that the government-sponsored Macedonia Connects Project aims to provide the country with affordable high-speed wireless connectivity. The network is already delivering Internet access to 360 primary and 100 secondary schools, along with school dormitories, university faculties and other educational buildings. Motorola said more than 1,000 businesses also have been connected to the network.
Though Motorola did not disclose terms of its agreement with the Republic of Macedonia, the company noted that the project is being funded by the United States Agency for International Development and Macedonia’s Ministry of Education and Science.
“To establish a national wireless network requires that at least 95 percent of a country’s population has ready access to low-cost Internet connectivity,” said Glenn Strachan, director of the Macedonia Connects Project. “Wiring the schools created the springboard to full connectivity, and we knew from experience that this would produce a tremendously positive economic impact for Macedonia. In terms of Macedonia’s relatively small land mass, which is about 25,333 square kilometers, we were able to conduct this cost-effective program on a national, rather than a pilot scale.”
The IEEE approved the mobile WiMAX standard in early December, designating the standard as 802.16e-2005.
The WiMAX Forum is set to begin trials and certification testing in early 2006, with certified products scheduled to hit the market later in the year and services expected to follow in early 2007.
The industry seems eager to adopt the new standard, as pre-WiMAX products are already in use where pre-WiMAX networks are under construction or already up and running.
While wireless carriers with adequate spectrum that already have invested heavily in traditional wireless technologies likely won’t be initial targets for WiMAX solutions, other carriers, including wireline operators, rural local exchange carriers and spectrum-deprived wireless carriers, may deploy WiMAX solutions.
In rural areas, often left out of the latest and greatest in technology, Motorola said its MotoWi4 architecture offers a low-cost-of-deployment and ownership or can be considered a “light infrastructure” solution.
The company’s MotoWi4 Canopy portfolio offers point-to-point and point-to-multipoint configurations, and Motorola said it envisions its WiMAX product line starting out with the antennas, evolving to desktop modems for nomadic PC applications, then to PCMCIA cards and battery-operated devices, then to rugged modems for public safety and finally to handsets-type devices. Motorola’s MotoWi4 technology supports mobile WiMAX services.
Motorola has an agreement with Sprint Nextel Corp. to test MotoWi4 products at 2.5 GHz.
