Chinese infrastructure vendor Huawei has announced a partnership with Canada’s Manitoba NetSet Ltd at the Global WiMAX & LTE Development Forum in San Francisco on Thursday.
Manitoba NetSet – a consortium of the most prominent Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in rural Manitoba – has the lofty aim of expanding broadband network coverage across the province, where many households are out of reach of traditional land line services.
Huawei said it had won the bid to build out Manitoba’s WiMax network in a two-phased project which will bring 4G to far flung rural areas and give over 5,000 households access to the Internet for the first time within the first year alone.
“There are more than 22,000 households in the southern portion of the province that do not have access to carrier-class broadband Internet services and we are committed to delivering this service to all residents of Manitoba,” said Charlie Clark, owner of I-NetLink Wireless and President of Manitoba NetSet Ltd.
Clark said his firm had been picky when it came to choosing a network partner, but that Huawei had ultimately ticked all the right boxes when it came to building Manitoba’s first fully licensed wireless carrier network on the company’s 3.5 GHz licensed spectrum.
One of the reasons Huawei made the cut, said Clark, was the fact the firm offered an easy path to LTE upgrade, with its SingleRAN base transceiver stations (BTS) making the network ‘future-proof.’ Another reason was the system’s affordability, said the firm.
The network will span from the southern portion of Manitoba province, reaching from the Saskachewan border to the west, the Ontario border to the east, the U.S. border to the south. Services will also be made available to regions as far north as The Pas.
