Airspan Networks, a provider of broadband wireless access networks, announced that Aptics Trading, a Zimbabwe Internet Service Provider, has selected Airspan 4G equipment to deliver broadband services to a large portion of the nation.
The deployment, operating in the 2.5 GHz band, employs Airspan’s Air4G, a powerful, yet compact, macro base station offering wide area coverage and extremely high capacity.
The first phase of the project, initiated in February of this year, includes 60 base station sectors operating on the WiMAX 802.16e platform and the network will continue its countrywide growth with a second phase deployment.
Airspanis especially suited for our company. The quality of the equipment and features such as advanced antenna technologies and frequency reuse made Airspan a clear choice. In addition, their competitive pricing supports our long-term business model,” said Jahdiel Mafukidze, chief executive officer, Aptics.
Aptics will offer consumers a variety of packages including data, voice and mobility. Zimbabwe, similar to much of Africa, still faces extremely low Internet penetration rates. After over a decade of economic strife and political discord, the country has been slow to build telecom infrastructure.
According to market research, at the end of 2010, Zimbabwe had only a 17 percent Internet market penetration rate.
Airspan has secured a number of key contracts across Africa and expects to see continued demand in the continent,” said Amit Ancikovsky, president of Products and Sales, Airspan Networks.
Airspan is able to provide ISPs such as Aptics with a cost-effective 4G solution and with such high consumer demand for broadband connectivity, Aptics can expect a quick return on their investment.
Airspan products provide 4G WiMAX and LTE solutions operating in the 700 MHz up to 5.9 GHz bands.
By Telecomlead.com Team
editor@telecomlead.com
