WiMax Goes Live in '05

ANDALUSIA, Spain -- Iberbanda, the Spanish broadband telecommunications operator, has completed the first European commercial pilots of broadband and Internet telephony access services using Intel technology for WiMAX. The pilots took place in Andalusia and as a result, Iberbanda is planning to launch the first European commercial WiMAX services in the fourth quarter of 2005.

In July and August 2005, Iberbanda tested Alvarion’s (NASDAQ:ALVR) WiMAX-Ready BreezeMAX™ equipment in 50 customer sites in Spain. BreezeMAX™ is based on the Intel PRO/Wireless 5116 broadband interface.

The pilots, that were carried out in the towns of Canjayar, Instinción, Ohanes, Padules and Ragol in the Andalusian province of Almeria, have allowed Iberbanda to optimize technology extending bandwidth and distance.

Iberbanda’s commercial public WiMAX services, that are expected to launch in the last quarter of 2005, will deliver broadband and Internet telephony services with 10 Mbps bandwidth and more than 30km coverage, enabling the rapid deployment and extension of new broadband networks in areas where xDSL cable cannot reach.

Iberbanda will initially offer its public WiMAX services in rural towns and suburban areas of Andalusia, Catalonia, Castilla y Leon and Navarra, where the company has already run trials and won public bids to build networks without broadband coverage to date. Thanks to these networks, based on pre-WiMAX technology, more than 20,000 individuals and companies already enjoy telephony services (VoIP) and high speed Internet access in these regions.

"The successful pilots helped us to optimize real commercial networks based on more than 300 base stations and covering more than 25% of the Spanish territory. We made a decisive step towards WiMAX standardization, equipment and network interoperability and cost reductions in the deployment of new broadband networks," said Carlos Morell, general manager of Iberbanda. "With the trials we have started migration to Intel silicon and have developed one of the greatest pre-WiMAX networks in Europe, what positions Iberbanda in the vanguard of WiMAX implementation," he concluded.

"We are very pleased with the success of the trials, which are paving the way towards the first large scale commercial WiMAX deployments based on Intel silicon in Europe,” said Jesus Maximoff, Country Manager in Spain at Intel. “Iberbanda is playing a pioneering role in making WiMAX happen, bringing wireless broadband to Spanish regions where cable or DSL cannot reach."

“We are pleased to be working with an innovative operator like Iberbanda that has leveraged WiMAX-ready networks based on our BreezeMAX™ platform, and that is now using the market’s first commercially available subscriber unit, BreezeMAX PRO, that uses Intel’s WiMAX chip,” said Zvi Slonimsky, CEO of Alvarion. “The economic and technological advantages that WiMAX offers operators are clearly demonstrated when deploying the BreezeMAX PRO. Iberbanda’s progressive penetration into more areas around the country is a major step for the entire industry toward the mainstream adoption of WiMAX services.”

Intel Corp.