Network Used for Public Safety, CCTV and Enterprise Mobility Applications to demonstrate business case for Mobile WiMAX

July 9 2009 – Alvarion Ltd, the world’s leading provider of WiMAX™ and wireless broadband solutions, and MLL Telecom, Alvarion’s partner in the UK, today announced that the Mobile WiMAX™ network built for the UK’s Mobile WiMAX Acceleration Group (M-WAG, www.mwaguk.com) has been used to test a wide variety of applications for consumer, business and local government market segments.

Established in 2007, M-WAG is a consortium of companies formed to create a WiMAX ecosystem in the UK to showcase the WiMAX business case in anticipation of Ofcom’s auction of the 2.6 GHz spectrum which is expected to take place during 2010.

The pilot network in Maidstone went live in July 2008 with the support of Maidstone Borough Council and has been used to trial a number of different applications such as mobile data, mobile VoIP and mobile video streaming.

An open day for those wishing to visit the network and talk to M-WAG members is scheduled to be held on Wednesday 22 July in Maidstone. More details are available on www.mwaguk.com.

MLL Telecom, an M-WAG member, was responsible for the design, integration and management of the WiMAX network and used Alvarion technology to deliver the service.

“The success of this trial shows the maturity of WiMAX technology,” said Eddie Minshull, CEO of MLL Telecom. “We have been proactively managing the network on a 24 x 7 basis and found it to be extremely stable. With the right sort of planning and design expertise WiMAX is now ready for mainstream use.”

Alvarion’s Mobile WiMAX BreezeMAX base stations have been positioned in the centre of Maidstone and communicate with different end-user devices including Alvarion Indoor CPEs (customer premise equipment), laptops equipped with Mobile WiMAX PCMCIA cards, USB Dongles and digital cameras and encoders.

Individual member companies of M-WAG are running a number of different trials over the network together with end users from various market segments:

Public safety trial: EADS Defence and Security, together with Kent Fire and Rescue Service, tested the use of Mobile WiMAX for delivering real-time video between an incident scene, ...