Huawei, a leading Chinese network solutions provider, today announced that Saudi Telecom, the largest service provider in Saudi Arabia, has selected Huawei to deploy the first WiMAX 802.16e-based network in the Middle East, covering major cities including Riyadh, Jeddah and Dammam.
Under this agreement, Huawei will design and deploy an end-to end WiMAX 802.16e network, including Base Station, Access Service Network Gateway, Network Management System, as well as an Authorization, Authentication and Accounting system.
“We enjoy a longstanding relationship with Huawei cooperating on different technology fields such as GSM and WCDMA”, commented Bandar M. Al Qafari, general manager of STCs Network Department. Huawei has successfully delivered more than 5,000 wireless projects, and I’m confident that it will provide us with an excellent network that will allow us to provide wireless broadband access service to our subscribers.
Huawei is a leading WiMAX solution supplier, actively promoting the development of WiMAX and has more than 600 engineers engaged in WiMAX R&D. Huawei is a member of the WiMAX Forum and IEEE standard organization, and Huawei owns a number of essential patents in WiMAX technology.
Oki Electric and Huawei are also collaborating on mobile WiMAX business in Japan. OKI will provide Huawei’s mobile WiMAX Series products to telecom carriers in Japan starting in the fiscal year ending March 2008.
China Telecom, the largest fixed service telecommunications provider in the People’s Republic of China, is conducting WiMAX trials in nine provinces while China Unicom, the largest mobile operator with 52.6% of the company stock held by the state-owned China Unicom Group, is purchasing WiMAX equipment for similar trials.
But there is no guarantee these trials will lead to large-scale rollout, says Telecom Magazine. China vaguely defines the commonly used 3.5 GHz for ‘public and private broadband access’ but has not mentioned WiMAX specifically.
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