Alcatel-Lucent wins $US71m Malaysian mobile WiMAX deal

Stuart Corner
Tuesday, 29 January 2008 15:47

Business IT - Networking

The major Malaysian telcos - Maxis, Telekom Malaysia and DiGi, were excluded from participating in the 2.3GHz auction. Energy, water and communications minister Dr Lim Keng Yaik told reporters at the time that the incumbent telcos already owned 2.5GHz spectrum but were not using it, so there was no reason to award more spectrum to them.

Mobile WiMAX is also booming in Pakistan. Just two days ago Motorola announced a contract with Wateen Telecom-Pakistan for the supply of 198,000 end-user WiMAX customer premises equipment (CPE) devices for both indoor and outdoor use on Wateen Telecom's nationwide mobile WiMAX network which is built using Motorola technology.

Motorola was awarded the contract in the second half of 2006 and had the network operational in 17 cities by February 2007. However this week's announcement suggests that it has only recently launched commercial services. Motorola said: "Wateen Telecom-Pakistan anticipates a rapid demand for residential connections for its Motorola-based WiMAX broadband services during its first year of operation."