Siemens installs first WiMAX network in Latin America

July 07, 2006

Siemens Communications has installed Latin America’s first commercial WiMAX network for Orbitel, Colombia’s leading long-distance operator. The new network is located in Cali, Colombia’s third-largest city, and provides wireless internet access on the basis of Siemens’ WayMAX@vantage solution comprising base stations, modems and a monitoring and control system. Over the coming months, Orbitel will start to roll out the Siemens WiMAX technology in a further 14 major Colombian cities.

All-in-all, Siemens will cover 15 Colombian cities with WayMAX@vantage for Orbitel to provide the company’s customers with broadband internet access featuring data rates of up to 2 megabits per second. The network supports data-intensive services such as high-quality video streaming to laptops.

“We have chosen Siemens as our partner for the implementation of this project in view of the extraordinary functionality, the high performance and the simplicity offered by its WayMAX solution,” said Alejandro Toro, Orbitel’s head project manager.

“The Orbitel project opens up the Latin American market for our WiMAX technology. It is a major milestone in the regional rollout of our wireless technologies,” said Christoph Caselitz, president of Mobile Networks at Siemens Communications.

The WayMAX@vantage solution from Siemens is one of the first products to pass the interoperability tests of the WiMAX Forum’s international standardization laboratory. It is certified for the WiMAX FDD 3.5 GHz system and thus ready for the future IEEE 802.16e-2005 OFDM profile and the ETSI HiperMAN standard. The IEEE 802.16 standard used today allows data transmissions at rates of up to 10.5 megabits per second with a bandwidth of 3.5 MHz. The certification ensures the interoperability of systems from different vendors, thus reducing the investment risks for operators.