NEW YORK-In a Valentine’s Day announcement, Teligent Inc., a point-to-multipoint carrier based in Vienna, Va., and Mannesmann Arcor AG & Co., said they had partnered to provide fixed wireless voice and data communications in Germany.
Mannesmann AG, which recently agreed to merge with Vodafone AirTouch plc of the United Kingdom, owns 70 percent of Mannesmann Arcor, which is headquartered in Frankfurt, Germany.
The Arcor subsidiary has built a 4,200-mile fiber-optic network in Germany and developed international transmission capabilities extending into Austria, France, Italy and the United States.
“Our alliance with Teligent marks a continuation of our strategy to rapidly offer local network services, including fixed wireless communications,” said Harald Stober, chairman of Mannesmann Arcor’s management board.
“It also means that, even this year, we will be able to win a wide range of new customers in Germany.”
The German government has awarded 26 GHz and 3.5 GHz spectrum licenses to Mannesmann Arcor and 26 GHz licenses to Teligent’s German subsidiary. The licenses offer access to more than 1 million businesses in cities like Berlin, Bonn, Dresden, Dusseldorf, Frankfurt and Mainz, the companies said.
The joint venture, 55-percent owned by Mannesmann Arcor and 45 percent by Teligent, also plans to “apply for additional German licenses in the upcoming regulatory award process,” the companies said.
During the past 14 months, Teligent said it has launched wireless broadband service in 40 of the 74 U.S. markets for which it has spectrum licenses. The carrier’s “SmartWave” technology uses rooftop antennas for two-way transmission of voice and data communications, the latter at speeds between 1.5 and 45 Megabits per second.
The antennas provide the gateway between a building’s internal wiring and a base station, typically situated within three miles of the customer premises telephone system. The base station aggregates signals from end users and transmits them to an Asynchronous Transfer Mode switching center, which then routes the traffic to public circuit-switched, packet-switched Internet and private data networks.
“The joint venture brings together Mannesmann Arcor’s strong presence in Germany, robust network infrastructure and surging customer demand for bandwidth with Teligent’s internationally recognized technical, field and product expertise in fixed wireless communications,” Richard J. Hanna, president of Teligent International, said.
Within the last month, Teligent announced a partnership with Louis Dreyfus Group and Artemis to seek licenses to provide fixed wireless telecommunications services in France. Earlier this year, a partnership among Teligent, HKNet and CCT Telecom won a license to provide fixed wireless services in Hong Kong.
Teligent said it also joined with Jazztel to apply for spectrum licenses in Spain and that it is “exploring other opportunities in Europe, Latin America and Asia.”
