Taiwanese telco Chungwa Telecom has become the latest carrier to announce a deployment of 802.16e Mobile WiMAX.

The central business district of Taoyuan will be the first area to receive the service, which will use Alcatel-Lucent’s Evolium line of base stations, IP routing equipment, network management, and planning tools. Chungwa and Alcatel are seeking local partners to develop customer premises equipment and mobile devices compatible with the standard.

In a related announcement, Alcatel is to open an interoperability test centre for WiMAX equipment in Taiwan. But as it is not the first Taiwanese WiMAX network, the carrier will need the interoperability testing.

Chungwa actually started deploying a Mobile WiMAX network in Yilan, north-western Taiwan, in December using Nortel gear.