VCom does $10m deal out of Sydney

Stan Beer
Monday, 12 December 2005 15:19

IT Industry - Strategy

Canadian wireless equipment maker, VCom, has been selected by Bangalore based MRO-TEK to supply its WiMAX-ready base stations and customer premise equipment to serve market needs for WiMAX technology in India, in a deal done out of Sydney.

VCom's supply agreement with MRO-TEK was negotiated by VCom's new Asia-Pacific regional sales headquarters in Sydney, which opened in April of 2005 with the aim of of enlarging VCom's presence and revenues from the region and specifically from India and China.

Subsequent to achieving domestic regulatory approvals for India and compliance, MRO-TEK will offer VCom's 3.3 - 3.4 GHz WiMAX-ready products domestically in  India under the MRO-TEK brand label via a multi-year supply agreement worth some $US10 milloin

Vcom claims that, "This supply agreement represents one of the largest commitments to WiMAX  technology in the South Asia region to date and recognises VCom's design  leadership for WiMAX, the surging demand for broadband in India and India's  rapidly advancing economic growth."

Vcom claims that substantial needs for last-mile broadband technology in India are being driven  by its rapidly growing business and technology sectors and by nationwide  backhaul availability via high-capacity, yet underused optical backbone networks.

"National carriers, mobile telephony operators and Internet service providers of all types are positioning to offer broadband services in eitherlocal or national markets via recently awarded local and nationwide RF spectrum licenses at 3.3-3.4 GHz which permit deployment of two-way broadband wireless technologies. WiMAX technology is perceived as the leading contender for the use of this spectrum due to its superiority for Non Line of Sight (NLOS) performance, its scalability and the support of industry technology heavyweights such as Intel and Fujitsu."

MRO-TEK is a publicly traded India corporation with a strong brand identity within India for broadband technologies and a nationwide sales and technical support organisation. It is also a long-term partner of Israeli hardware vendor RAD Data Communications. MRO-TEK will market the VCom products under the "Maple" brand name.