French-American telecom equipment group Alcatel-Lucent said on Monday it had won a contract from Germany's VSE NET to build the country's "first commercial" WiMax network in the Saar region bordering France. Work on the network--being implemented with WiMax license holder Inquam Broadband--would start this autumn, and commercial operations should start in January 2008, Alcatel-Lucent said in a statement.
WiMax stands for Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access. It is a technology for voice and broadband communications that avoids the need to run cables into homes and offices, making it useful in rural or thinly populated areas. VSE NET is a subsidiary of Artelis, a joint venture between Luxembourg utility Cegedel and German utility VSE, which is majority owned by utility RWE. Inquam, which holds WiMax frequency licenses in Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Slovakia and Croatia, is majority owned by NextWaveWireless. WiMax networks are also being developed in Germany by Nortel and Motorola.
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