Egypt’s ancient city of Luxor has become the latest spot to offer WiMax wireless service, encouraging visitors to stay connected while they tour the city’s Pharaonic temples.

The service was offered for sale on Saturday, covering Luxor’s main tourist attractions including Luxor Temple, the Nile corniche and the historic Winter Palace hotel. SR Telecom’s SymmetryOne gear was used in total of 16 sites were installed in May 2007, prior to the service launch today in Luxor, Egypt.

Funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the project to install Wimax in Luxor mainly targets the 3.5 million tourists who visit the city every year.

“One of the main aims is to change the perception of Egypt among foreigners as a country of sun, sands and temples only,” said Nihal Soliman, a USAID marketing advisor.

The project was also launched in the Red Sea resort of Sharm El-Sheikh.

The Egyptian government has granted the project a temporary licence to install WiMax. It will compete with the Internet services provided by 3G mobile phone networks, operated in Egypt by Vodafone Egypt, Etisalat of the United Arab Emirates and recently acquired by Mobinil.

WiMax users in Luxor will buy scratch cards from retail distributors, starting at five 5 euros ($6.85) for a one-hour card and 15 euros for the whole day.

Meanwhile, Alvarion, the world’s leading provider of WiMAX, today announced that its BreezeMAX system was chosen for a deployment covering several major cities in Russia. The new network has already started rolling out with CenterTelecom, one of Russia’s seven interregional operators owned by the giant federal holding company Svyazinvest. Alvarion’s local partner for this deployment is Cedicom.

Alvarion’s BreezeMAX is planned to be deployed in the regions of Moscow, Tambov, Tula, and Vladimir. The first phase of the project is planned as part of the Russian Federation’s federal program for connecting hundreds of schools to a WiMAX network, offering numerous users the advantages of high-quality wireless broadband access services.

“Alvarion’s BreezeMAX solution allows CenterTelecom to provide Internet access to schools, successfully meeting the deadlines of the national Education project and dealing with the complicated technological decisions involved,” said Vadim Kondratov, CTO of CenterTelecom. “In addition, the WiMAX network created within the national project presents a basis for expansion of WiMAX networks in other regions in the future.

Recent Alvarion deployments include AT&T Alascom using BreezeMAX 2.3 GHz TDD gear in Alaska, a 802.16e-based 4MotionTM Mobile WiMAX solution in TaiChung, the third largest city in Taiwan, a commercial WiMAX network in the Ukraine, across 50 cities in northern and eastern India. Brazil and Mexico have been actively promoting fixed and portable WiMAX.

In order for Mobile WiMax to really take off, the three largest mobile subscriber capacity countries in the world today, the USA, China and India need to provide global interoperability on the same 2.5 GHz frequency range. Sprint is working with ZTE in order to influence the Chinese equipment vendors while Intel is working to adopt 2.5GHz frequency range in China and India.

According to IMS Research , shipments of WiMAX CPE are expected to increase from an estimated 250,400 shipments in 2006 to 41.9 million in 2012, and the number of base station sectors shipped will increase from around 7,000 in 2006 with revenues of $0.1 billion to around 408,000 in 2012 with revenues of around $2.2 billion.

Related Dailywireless stories include; BT’s European WiMAX Plan, Indian BreezeMAX to 50 Cities, WiMAX: 20M by 2010, Voice over BreezeMAX, Alvarion’s Mobile WiMAX, Redline Does 5.4GHz and Mobile WiMAX PlugFest.

Posted by Sam Churchill on Monday, September 10th, 2007 at 11:03 am.