Vecima securing additional contracts for WiMAX deployments in Canada

Vecima Networks Inc. will soon be announcing another major WiMAX win in Canada, following an agreement with Cybersurf Corp., announced on October 4. Victoria-based Vecima revealed during its second-quarter financial results conference call that it plans to partner with an as yet to be identified company to deploy a national WiMAX network. "Negotiation has also recently been completed for another WiMAX deployment leveraging Vecima's Canadian spectrum. This partnership will provide broadband connectivity to unserved rural markets starting in British Columbia and then expanding across Canada," Surinder Kumar, Vecima's chair and CEO, said on the November 14 call. Wayne Fredin, Vecima's VP of sales, told Report on Wireless prior to the release of the company's Q2 financial results that more news of this sort is likely on the horizon. "The Cybersurf press release has generated a tremendous amount of interest in the rest of the Canadian market," he said. "And quite frankly, we've had a number of companies come to us to try and do similar things in other areas and in other specific market segments." The Cybersurf agreement calls not only for the deployment of Vecima WiMAX equipment, but gives Cybersurf the opportunity to acquire a portion of Vecima's 3.5 GHz spectrum holdings. Vecima believes it has an advantage in the WiMAX market over some of its rivals because it has vast spectrum holdings in the key WiMAX bands 2.3 GHz and 3.5 GHz. And as Fredin explained, it has always been the company's "intent to leverage the spectrum to help us build our hardware sales." Industry Canada auctioned the 2.3 GHz and 3.5 GHz bands in two separate auctions in 2004 and 2005, but to date auction winners have done little in terms of deployment. The timing seems right, however, as more equipment vendors are becoming WiMAX certified, and trials and pilot deployments are moving to the commercial stage.

Vecima securing additional contracts for WiMAX deployments in Canada

News | November 16, 2007

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