Germany gets commercial WiMAX

Mega vendor Alcatel-Lucent said Monday it has won a contract to deploy what it claims to be Germany’s first commercial WiMAX network – based on the 802.16e 2005 standard.

The network will be deployed in the Saar region for VSE Net, a regional service provider based in Saarbrucken, with collaboration from Inquam Broadband – a nationwide spectrum license holder in Germany.

VSE said it is specifically targeting an area not covered by conventional DSL technology. Work on the network will start in the autumn and commercial operation is set to commence in January 2008.

The network will support high speed internet access and VoIP as well as other data services with transfer rates of up to 6Mbps.