Altitude Infrastructure Selects DragonWave to Support WiMAX Growth in France

DragonWave has announced that Altitude Infrastructure, a subsidiary of Altitude Group, has selected its products to provide Ethernet backhaul as part of its rollout of WiMAX broadband services across France.

To date, DragonWave's Ethernet backhaul solution has been selected for four regional deployments in the Departement de la Haute Garonne, Departement des Deux Sevres, Departement du Jura and Departement des Pyrenees Atlantiques.

"WiMAX has matured beyond the developmental stage. Today it is being selected as a legitimate broadband access option by more and more French customers. To accommodate this growth we required the highest performance IP backhaul solution available." said Fabrice Ballart, Directeur General with Altitude Infrastructure. "A broad portfolio of frequency options provides the flexibility we need to introduce WiMAX in any region. Its superior payload-per-hertz efficiency means we can optimize our spectrum usage and overall backhaul investment without compromising the end user experience. These benefits have helped fuel our business and provide a better return on network investments."

Customer uptake in Altitude Telecom's services has intensified across business and residential markets. The operator recently announced it is accepting hundreds of new orders per month and this year plans to double the number of base stations in its WiMAX network to six hundred.

Altitude Infrastructure is deploying DragonWave's AirPair products operating in licensed frequencies between 6 and 38 GHz.

The deployment expands DragonWave's growing market presence in Europe. "Operators in more and more markets are validating our IP backhaul solutions as the state-of-the-art, high-capacity transport option for 3G and 4G base stations," said Peter Allen, president and CEO of DragonWave. "We will continue to work closely with Altitude to assist in its expansion plans in France and with WiMAX operators throughout Europe and other international markets."

Posted to the site on 9th September 2008