Pakistan Gets the World’s Largest WiMAX Network

Wateen Telecom and Motorola together rolled out the largest and the first in the world WiMAX 802.16e network nationwide in 22 cities of Pakistan. Motorola’s first commercial WiMAX network went live today in 22 cities in Pakistan, making it the first of its three high-profile nationwide network contracts to launch. Wateen Telecom of Pakistan is using Motorola’s WiMAX kit as a broadband access alternative to homes and businesses in its major metropolitan centers, using home gateways and external antenna masts as a fixed-wireless solution in a country which has less than 200,000 DSL lines. Unlike many WiMAX deployments, which target rural or small markets with few broadband resources, Wateen is focusing on the major metro areas—capital Islamabad and urban centers Karachi, Lahore and Peshawar are all on the initial launch list. Wateen Telecom Chief Executive Officer Tariq Malik revealed the official launch of the broadband access network throughout the country of 175 million people. Moto has now shipped 2000 base stations and tens of thousands of customer premises equipment units and PC wireless cards, but the majority of that gear is going to commercial deployments, of which Wateen is by far the largest to date.