Alcatel-Lucent and Société du Haut Débit (SHD) officially announced the signing of a contract for two years, one that implies supplying and installing France's first next-generation WiMAX network using standard 802.16e-2005.

SHD operates a WiMAX network in the Ile-de-France and Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur regions. The planned sites of the network will be equipped by Alcatel-Lucent until 2009 the latest. In Paris and the surroundings, several sites are already operational due to the fact that at the end of 2006 a pilot network was deployed. A second pilot deployment will make sites from all the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur operational.

Olivier Picard, President of Alcatel-Lucent's Europe and South activities, said: "This first deployment of a WiMAX 802.16e-2005network in France follows several similar contracts won by Alcatel-Lucent in other European countries since the beginning of the year. This first WiMAX reference in France confirms Alcatel-Lucent's commitment to this technology, which is at the core of our universal broadband access strategy. It shows moreover that we are devoting the best of our R&D resources to satisfy our customers in France and throughout the world."

3.4 - 3.6 GHz frequency band will be used by the new radio network based on the standard IEEE 802.16e-2005. Users will have broadband internet access in regions with poor or no DSL access, in both fixed and moving environments. With the integral next-generation WiMAX solution from Alcatel-Lucent, SHD's WiMAX network will feature a cutting-edge radio frequency management technology.

The Executive Vice-President of SHD, Frédéric Laforest, declared: "This contract follows on from the success of the first pilot WiMAX network deployed by Alcatel-Lucent for SHD last December on ten sites in the Paris region. WiMAX gives the possibility of distributing state-of-the-art services, particularly in rural or urban regions that today lack sufficient connectivity. We considered that Alcatel-Lucent's solution offered the best performance and was the most innovative."