Chunghwa Telecom, Nortel to Build Taiwan's First Integrated Local Government WiMAX Network

A new Mobile WiMAX network in the northeastern county of Yilan, built by Chunghwa Telecom in association with Nortel and eASPNet, is to become the first fully integrated broadband wireless network driven by a local government under the Mobile-Taiwan (M-Taiwan) project.

The M-Taiwan Initiative is one of Taiwan's top 10 new infrastructure programs. It engages local governments and private sector partners in constructing an island-wide wireless broadband environment to provide people with convenient Mobile WiMAX services and applications. The vision of the M-Taiwan Initiative is to develop an infrastructure providing wireless Internet access for 8 million subscribers and to provide broadband internet coverage to 80% of the population in urban areas.

Radically impacting the daily lives of Yilan residents, visitors and businesses -- and positioning the district as a national showcase for ubiquitous wireless broadband services -- the WiMAX infrastructure will enable broadband wireless access to such services as M-Learning, M-Commerce, M-Tour as well as video surveillance and IPTV services.

"This initiative demonstrates the significance of Mobile WiMAX technology in advancing the government's rapidly evolving M-Taiwan project," said Chun-Ming Hsieh, vice president, Chunghwa Telecom. "Nortel is an established leader in Taiwan's telecommunications industry and we look forward to working together in extending the same integrated wireless capabilities to other areas of Taiwan to help bolster the competitiveness of local economies."

"The people of Yilan will now be able to take the Internet with them wherever they go, and enjoy high-speed mobile access using virtually any wireless-enabled device," said Jackson Wu, president, Greater China, Nortel. "This is a momentous step forward for the M-Taiwan project."

Nortel is providing Chunghwa Telecom with next generation Mobile WiMAX base stations, based on the IEEE 802.16e standard, incorporating Nortel's patented MIMO antenna technology. Nortel's MIMO is a key capability enabling the provision of the most demanding real-time applications such as VoIP and voice over WiMAX.

Nortel will also provide an Access Service Network Gateway, customer premises equipment, and network management capabilities, as well as network integration and optimization services provided by Nortel Global Services. Nortel ranked number one in the global markets for service provider softswitches and gateways for the first half of 2006, according to Synergy Research Group.

Taiwan is playing a pivotal role in Nortel's WiMAX development. Nortel recently signed an agreement with Chunghwa Telecom to deploy a WiMAX solution in the operator's experimental park to create an environment for testing WiMAX and integrating the technology with the Nortel Wireless Mesh Network solution deployed in Taipei and Kaohsiung as part of the government's M-Taiwan initiative. In addition, Nortel is deploying a WiMAX trial system at the National Taiwan University campus, and has also established a Center of Excellence for Devices in Taipei.

Nortel is the only WiMAX vendor with products in virtually all mobile technologies currently available across both public and wireless networks. Nortel also owns dozens of patents in the technologies underlying the WiMAX standard, and the company's eight years of work in OFDM/MIMO technology has culminated with much of its patented technology being accepted as the basis for the global WiMAX industry standard.