As one of the first new service providers in the world to launch a nationwide WiMAX network, Wind Telecom is set to bring affordable broadband services to customers in underserved areas of the Dominican Republic as well as the country's major cities.

The Dominican Republic's current Internet usage is low with only 15 percent of the population connected and only half of those connections at broadband capabilities. Twenty-five percent of Dominicans live in poverty and the fixed line teledensity sits at only 10 percent, lagging behind the average for Latin America and the Caribbean by about 9%. While the approximately 47 percent of the Dominican population carries mobile phones, much of the country is still without access to basic telephone or Internet services.

The WiMAX technology that Wind Telecom has selected for its network will deliver broadband services wirelessly at an affordable cost to users across the Dominican Republic. With its new network, Wind Telecom will offer Internet connectivity as well as VoIP services. In addition to providing consumers in some areas with a new option when selecting a service provider, Wind Telecom will also be delivering telephone and Internet services to some rural areas for the very first time. The delivery of these services powered by WiMAX is expected to drive improvements in education and business across the country.

"WiMAX will create unprecedented opportunities to enhance education within the Dominican Republic, especially in remote areas where it has been too expensive to extend wireline infrastructure," said Manuel Bonilla, CEO, Wind Telecom. "By extending wireless broadband services to previously underserved areas, WiMAX is making it possible for students and teachers to take advantage of Internet-based educational tools that schools in most other countries take for granted".

In addition to the benefits that Wind Telecom will bring to education in the Dominican through WiMAX, it can also bring enhancements to the nation's general development in areas such as business.

In business, greater availability of affordable broadband services can stimulate e-commerce, linking buyers, sellers, and suppliers via the network. This can help to enhance the Dominican Republic's competitiveness in industries such as tourism which can benefit from Internet marketing and high bandwidth remote connectivity.  For example, tour operators could manage their business, monitoring online reservations in real-time for the next day while on the road delivering the current day's tour.

Wind Telecom - which plans to launch the WiMAX network by the end of 2007 using equipment and services provided by Nortel - is a greenfield operator. As a new entrant to the telecom service provider market, it was important for Wind to find the most efficient and cost effective way to build a new network capable of offering high-bandwidth communication services. WiMAX emerged as the ideal solution because it offers these capabilities at a lower cost than existing wired and 3G wireless technologies.

As with most service providers, cost is a key concern for Wind Telecom. Minimizing costs is not only necessary for maximizing revenues, but also for ensuring that services are affordable to the market. Because WiMAX is a wireless technology, the capital expenditure required to build a new network from scratch is significantly lower than running cables to homes and businesses throughout the country. This is especially important for connectivity in rural and sub-urban areas where users are widely dispersed and the costs of connecting them through a wireline network is prohibitive. 

Wind Telecom's WiMAX network will use spectrum up to five times more efficiently than 3G technologies. This enables transmission of data over long distances, at higher speeds and supports more customers than 3G technologies within same amount of spectrum.

The selection of Nortel's WiMAX solution provides an additional economic benefit for Wind Telecom in that it consumes minimal energy, providing as much as 50 percent savings in power consumption when contrasted with competitive solutions. In addition to lowering operating expenses for Wind Telecom this minimizes the impact of the network on the Dominican energy sector which experiences shortfalls resulting in blackouts.

The favorable cost structure of WiMAX paired with its advanced technology allows Wind Telecom to offer more services to customers within their network while maintaining low prices. The affordability of Wind Telecom's services will help to ensure that they are used on a continuing basis by customers across the country. Keeping prices low for key services increases the likelihood that people - in both urban and rural areas - will connect to the Internet or use VoIP.

"Wind Telecom is striving to improve the communications landscape in the Dominican Republic where the adoption of services has been slow due in part to high prices and limited availability.  We will bring affordable broadband to the mass market as a full service provider of voice, data, and video services," said Bonilla. "WiMAX allows us to simply and affordably deliver communications services that will change the lives of many Dominicans."
 
_{For additional details about Wind Telecom's strategy for deploying a nationwide WiMAX network in the Dominican Republic listen the parts one and two of the Nortel podcasts with Wind Telecom CEO, Manuel Bonilla at www.nortel.com/wimax.}