World Communication Group Inc. and ioWave Inc. last week signed an agreement to distribute ioLink 1.5 wireless, high-speed, fixed communications T1/E1 platforms in the People’s Republic of China.
The agreement is valued at more than $1.4 million during the next 12 months.
“The ioWave product is ideal for infrastructure buildout, and infrastructure buildout is what most developing countries need,” said Taher Behbehani, chief executive officer of ioWave. “ioLink 1.5 has a great deal to offer countries such as China, where the current lack of network infrastructure prevents a large portion of the population from gaining access to the type of telecommunications services they need.”
Behbehani noted the deployment will take place in quarterly phases.
World Communication develops, integrates and markets a variety of fixed wireless products and services including wireless local loop architectures and fixed cellular, said the company. The Asian market constitutes 90 percent of World Communication’s business, said Matthew Buckley, the company’s vice president of sales and marketing.
World Communication “provides the wireless products and turnkey services Asian telecommunications authorities need to leapfrog their countries’ lack of hardwire infrastructure,” said Buckley. “We believe that ioLink 1.5 is a cost-effective and rapidly deployable solution to the growing demand for phone service in these countries.”
According to Buckley, China has an emerging middle class creating a demand for telecommunications services, but not enough infrastructure to provide those services. WLL systems, he said, allow countries to provide communications systems without the expense and time required to install a fiber network. WLL systems also can provide a link through difficult terrain to rural villages that may only need one phone.
The ioLink 1.5 system, which employs spread spectrum technology, consists of a compact indoor modem with an embedded SNMP-compliant network management agent and a rugged outdoor radio-frequency unit. The ioWave system is ideal for terrain where wireline is difficult to deploy or is too expensive. The line-of-sight platform also can be deployed within a few days, said the company.
In addition, ioLink 1.5’s signal is spread over a wider bandwidth than traditional wireless links, said the company, making it nearly immune to interference caused by weather conditions.
ioWave’s current product line is a point-to-point cell site connection platform. Future plans call for a point-to-multipoint application to be developed by the end of the year, said Behbehani.
World Communication said it selected ioWave from at least a dozen candidates.
