WiMAX Applications
WiMAX Urban Application:
Czech Radiokom, Czech Republic
CESKE RADIOKOMUNIKACE a.s. (Czech Radiokom) is a modern, nation-wide telecommunications company that began offering wireless telephony and broadband data services in 2004 when the Czech Republic deregulated telecommunications. Today, Czech Radiokom is competing successfully against market ILECs, giving subscribers a viable alternative for telecommunication services.
Czech Radiokom needed to rollout broadband data and carrier-class voice quickly to secure market share in the newly deregulated market. Initially, they targeted 18 urban and suburban sites representing 38% of the Czech Republic's population. The geographic terrain in these regions varies; however, a pre-existing radio-tower infrastructure could be leveraged easily for deployment of Fixed Wireless Access base stations and antennas.
Besides requiring a rapidly deployable solution, a key technical challenge was they were limited to only one block of 3.5 MHz spectrum allocated for the planned deployment. After extensive evaluation of products addressing the 3.5-GHz spectrum, Czech Radiokom selected SR Telecom's symmetry system for its carrier-grade data and voice services, its superior NLOS (Non-Line-of-Sight) performance, and its overall system capacity. Unlike competing technologies, symmetry's unique suite of advanced NLOS technologies (like sub-channelling, smart antenna systems and space-time coding) allows Czech Radiokom to deliver high-quality data and voice in the limited spectrum it had available. Moreover, SR Telecom's system could be installed easily and quickly.
Czech Radiokom's network consists of 18 base stations and 10,000 subscriber stations. Each base station supports a coverage radius of approximately 30 km.
"From the very first installation it was quite evident that SR Telecom's product provided superior NLOS coverage than our existing solution. Our engineers were thoroughly impressed with the ease of installation and deployment flexibility offered by the symmetry solution."
Jaromir Charvat, Director of Telecommunications Division, Czech Radiokom
WiMAX Universal Access Application:
Telefónica, TRAC Project, Spain
Telefónica de España (TdE) is a leading international telecommunications operator. Mandated by the government to deliver universal Internet access, Telefónica's "TRAC Migration" project is bringing high-speed Internet and high-quality voice to suburban and rural Spain.
The project called for broadband data services, carrier-class voice with CLASS 5 vertical features, V.90 modem; as well as value-added services like SMS messaging, payphones, credit-card point-of-sales devices and video-conferencing terminals. The area to be served was over 500,000 square kilometers with hills and heavy vegetation. This terrain would have been difficult and costly to serve using traditional LOS wireless technology, so an NLOS solution was required.
Telefónica chose symmetry over a number of competing technologies for several key reasons: not only does symmetry provide extended NLOS coverage and supports all the services they required but also offers fully integrated work order entry and provisioning tools as well as unparalleled network management capabilities. Telefónica realized they would significantly reduce the costs of administration, deployment and maintenance as a result of these capabilities. Finally, Telefónica was impressed with SR Telecom's strong technical support and quick response in addressing their customisation needs.
To date, Telefónica has deployed over 60 base stations and plans to deploy another 200 by the end of 2005. Once completed, the overall deployment will consist of approximately 500 base stations and over 100,000 subscriber stations.
After laboratory and field-testing, Telefónica concluded that symmetry was the [wireless] technology that best suited the TRAC project. Specifically, symmetry was chosen for its spectral efficiency, NLOS capabilities, MAC separation between data and voice, and ease of integration with TdE's network.
