EION’s WiMAX Products Receive Indian Regulatory Approval

Trial Shipments Underway to Indian Service Providers

OTTAWA, Canada – March 25, 2010; EION Wireless, a Canadian manufacturer of broadband wireless and products, today announced the receipt WPC (Wireless Planning & Coordination Wing) certification for its Libra MAX family of WiMAX products. EION’s Libra MAX products have been granted certification from the WPC for license-free WiMAX operation in the 5.830 to 5.870 GHz band. With the WPC approvals in place, Libra MAX products can be deployed in India without an operating license. The WPC is the regulatory body responsible for licensing radio equipment for use within country of India.

EION is currently shipping WiMAX base station and subscriber station products to service providers in India for evaluation purposes. During the pilot phase for two separate customers, more than 250 wireless links will be deployed. Future plans for the service provider networks will expand the size of the deployments to over 65,000 radio links.

The Indian service provider companies selected the license-free Libra MAX solution for its ease of deployment, network scalability, and high-throughput capacity. Operators can offer differentiated services through QoS for bandwidth hungry applications such as voice and video.

India is a key strategic market for WiMAX technology. A study from US market research firm Strategy Analytics predicts India's WiMAX subscriber base will reach 14 million by the Year 2013 and will grow annually at a rate of nearly 130%. Furthermore, the study projects initial investment in WiMAX ventures will top $500M in India alone. At this rate of growth, India is positioned to become the largest WiMAX market in Asia Pacific by 2013.

"Eventually, we expect WiMAX growth to be much faster in smaller cities and rural towns. The investment on WiMAX will then go up substantially. WiMAX will not be an alternative to 3G but will be used for overall broadband diffusion in India," said Rahul Gupta, Strategy Analytics manager for emerging market communication service.

"WiMAX, unlike 3G, will find the bulk of its consumer applications in providing fixed and nomadic broadband access in India. Purely mobile usage of WiMAX is expected to be a fairly small component of the total usage. But technological competition will come in the near term from 3G which is being marketed in many emerging markets as an alternative for fixed broadband access," said Mr Gupta.

The Libra MAX family of Base Station and Subscriber station products includes the popular Libra MAX-RBS – Rapid Backhaul System, and the Libra MAX-SPOT Outdoor WiFi hotspot. The Libra MAX family of products is used by enterprises and service providers to deploy broadband wireless access to underserved and developing markets. In addition to the 5.8GHz unlicensed band products, the Libra MAX family is available in the 3.3 to 3.7 GHz bands for licensed operators.