A WiMAX network was just launched in Perth, Australia by Vivid Wireless using Huawei gear. Coverage is currently minimal but is expected to cover all of Perth and to expand to other major cities.
With 90 to 98 MHz in the 3.2GHz band allocated in urban areas, Vivid expects to offer average download speeds of 4Mbps with peaks of up to 20Mbps possible in the future. AUD50 million (USD41 million) has been allocated for the project.
DragonWave’s Horizon Compact will be used by Vivid for backhaul connectivity of up to 200 Mbps initially. DragonWave’s backhaul integrates modem and radio in a single unit and will connect about 150 wireless base stations in Perth.
Unwired’s network currently covers most of Sydney and roughly 35% of Melbourne with over 90 base stations. The company plans to continue building out current sites and expanding to rollout new base stations as its customer base grows.
Though they have had difficulty convincing the industry of benefits of expanding wireless, the Australian Government has pledged to deliver 100Mbits/sec broadband to 90% of Australia by 2017. Also important to note, Australia’s $30 billion broadband stimulus package is actually bigger than the non-technology stimulus that Australia has announced thus far.
The Broadband Future Forum was recently held in Sydney and run by the Federal Government. The Forum was somewhat controversial and Prime Minister Kevid Rudd claimed that it was time to ‘stop the rot’ infecting Australia’s history of broadband. The forum discussed 18 different national broadband plans that had been created to solve the problem following the previous Liberal government’s failure to address the issue for the past 12 years.
Photo courtesy of autumn_leaf via Flickr
