Motorola grabbed its third Taiwan contract in eight months on April 9 to deploy a WiMax network. Motorola now has 19 contracts for commercial WiMax networks in 18 countries around the world.
Motorola and its partner, UTStarcom, will work with Fitel (First International Telecom), one of Taiwan’s major telecom carriers, to develop the network. Fitel won a license to provide WiMax services for northern Taiwan in July 2007 as part of the government’s M-Taiwan project.
The M-Taiwan project is designed to develop a WiMax ecosystem and to create citywide broadband networks. Fitel plans to complete and start testing WiMax base stations in a downtown area of Taipei by mid-year.
“This win reflects our rapid development of the WiMax networks and the growing demand for Motorola’s WiMax solutions in the region and worldwide,” Simon Leung, president of Motorola Asia Pacific, said in a statement. “This year, we expect the industry to launch several commercial WiMax systems with a wide variety of customer premises equipment, PC cards, mobile devices and innovative applications.”
Fitel supports mobile communications services through a PHS (Personal Handyphone System) network with more than one million subscribers. To expand its mobile services, Fitel acquired additional spectrum for the northern Taiwan WiMax network.
“The next generation personal wireless broadband service will enable rich media entertainment and high-speed data applications to be delivered to our customers,” Fitel President Charlie Wu said in a statement. “The new network will expand our service offerings and is critical to our future business growth.”