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Huawei wins in Pakistan and Malaysia
Mobilink and Asiaspace build momentum for Huawei's WiMAX infrastructure portfolio.
Huawei Technologies of China announced a pair of mobile WiMAX wins this week. The equipment manufacturer will supply 802.16e-2005 network infrastructure to Mobilink of Pakistan and Asiaspace of Malaysia. As a result of the new customer projects, Huawei claims 19 overseas commercial WiMAX contracts.
Mobilink is the largest GSM operator in Pakistan and a subsidiary of Orascom Telecom. The network will be deployed to central business districts and hot spots including the cities of Faisalabad, Islamabad, Karachi, Lahore, Rawalpindi, and Sialkot. Huawei will provide a solution consisting of base stations, Access Service Network (ASN) gateways, and network management system. Work began late last year on the backhaul build-out of 270 wireless links from Canada's DragonWave Inc. Pakistan also has a significant nationwide network under development from Wateen. The Warid Telecom company announced that it had ordered 198,000 CPE based on the 802.16e-2005 standard from Motorola last year.
Huawei also won a supply contract for WiMAX from Asiaspace, a Malaysian WiMAX license holder. Asiaspace plans to deploy across Malaysia and reach 40% of the population by 2010. Huawei's localized engineering and delivery capability was cited as a main reason for the company's selection. Huawei has been contracted to design and install the network including base stations, gateways and management systems for Asiaspace.
"We plan to spend about RM500 million over the next three to five years to roll out our wireless broadband service," said Asiaspace chairman, Datuk Abdul Ghani Abdullah. "We hope to become Malaysia's top WiMAX player by 2012 in terms of revenue and number of subscribers." The operator expects to roll out service in the third quarter this year with the target of covering 25% of the population in Peninsular Malaysia by year-end. This is predicted to increase to 30% in 2009 and eventually 40% a year later.
By Jeff Orr
ORR Technology, LLC
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