14 DAY TRIAL // Us carrier Sprint has awarded Nokia the four Texas markets of Dallas, Fort Worth, San Antonio and Austin for the initial build-out of the carrier's mobile WiMAX network.
The Finish company will deploy WiMAX infrastructure, including its Flexi WiMAX Base Station at sites throughout the four Texas markets. This will enable Sprint to deliver wireless Internet broadband to its consumers. The service is expected to debut during the first half of 2008, with plans of covering 100 million people nationwide by the end of the next year.
"Nokia's WiMAX solution provides Sprint Nextel a highly cost-effective network infrastructure solution for delivering broadband wireless Internet connectivity to its Texas customers," said Mark Louison, head of Nokia's Networks division in North America. "Nokia has extensive experience in designing, deploying, and maintaining high quality networks in North America, and will apply best practices to ensure the highest level of service for Sprint Nextel's WiMAX customers. We are confident in our ability to deploy the network on time in these markets in the first half of 2008."
Nokia's Flexi WiMAX Base Station enables mobile operators to optimize the cost of siting and operating WiMAX infrastructure equipment through its small, modular size. There are several advantages to its compact size and light weight weather-proof design, including the minimizing of space, power consumption, physical effort required to install and run high-quality WiMAX networks and durability.
It also allows easy capacity upgrades as traffic increases. Moreover, these characteristics are critical for ensuring an environmentally friendly solution. The Finish mobile phone manufacturer will present its complete WiMAX infrastructure solution and demonstrate the technology at this year's CTIA wireless at the end of March. Nokia will also develop WiMAX-enabled mobile phones, including multimedia computers and Internet tablets, scheduled to become available during next year.