Everything you need to know about WiMAX
WiMAX in the Caribbean
I spent most of last week visiting a Cisco WiMAX customer in the Caribbean island of Curacao. Scarlet BV offers a wireless broadband service in the Nederland Antilles islands, some of the most southerly islands in the Caribbean Sea.
Curacao is the biggest of the 4 islands that make up the Nederland Antilles, still owned and governed by Holland, although with a large degree of autonomy. The population of about 130,000 is made up of 50,000 Dutch, with the rest coming from all over. The island is very polyglot, with Dutch, English, Spanish and Papiamento (the local language, which is unique to Curacao) all of the commonly spoken and official languages. This Wikipedia entry has much more detail about the island, and some great pictures - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curacao.
In 2001, the only telecommunications service came from the government owned telco monopoly, with no broadband. Gaining access to an undersea fiber line, Scarlet launched a broadband wireless service to offer competitive voice and data access. Realizing that they needed a non-line-of sight offering to penetrate the hurricane proof thick walls of Curacao residences, Scarlet converted to a TD-SCDMA based technology from Navini Networks, since bought by Cisco. The first site was a 650 foot (200m) tall refinery chimney, now they have nearly island wide coverage.
In 2009, Scarlet converted their network to Mobile WiMAX (802.16e). Most of the network was upgraded by a software upgrade, including nearly all the subscriber units, the few older base stations that couldn’t make the upgrade were replaced, and re-deployed to start service on St. Maartin. The following is the link to their website, where you can see their service pricing and marketing - http://www.scarlet.an/en/.
Plans to expand onto Aruba and Bonaire are well underway. Recently Scarlet was purchased by an investor group headed by Belgacom, providing access to capital for additional expansion. Cisco is also an important business partner as well as radio technology and network services provider. Scarlet now has close to 5% market share by population on the island, possibly the highest market penetration of any WiMAX service provider in the world. In fact, they have more customers than there are households on the island, showing that Mobile WiMAX offers a “personal broadband” experience, similar to cellular voice service.
And the Hilton Curacao has great Mango Daiquiris!!
Curacao is the biggest of the 4 islands that make up the Nederland Antilles, still owned and governed by Holland, although with a large degree of autonomy. The population of about 130,000 is made up of 50,000 Dutch, with the rest coming from all over. The island is very polyglot, with Dutch, English, Spanish and Papiamento (the local language, which is unique to Curacao) all of the commonly spoken and official languages. This Wikipedia entry has much more detail about the island, and some great pictures - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curacao.
In 2001, the only telecommunications service came from the government owned telco monopoly, with no broadband. Gaining access to an undersea fiber line, Scarlet launched a broadband wireless service to offer competitive voice and data access. Realizing that they needed a non-line-of sight offering to penetrate the hurricane proof thick walls of Curacao residences, Scarlet converted to a TD-SCDMA based technology from Navini Networks, since bought by Cisco. The first site was a 650 foot (200m) tall refinery chimney, now they have nearly island wide coverage.
In 2009, Scarlet converted their network to Mobile WiMAX (802.16e). Most of the network was upgraded by a software upgrade, including nearly all the subscriber units, the few older base stations that couldn’t make the upgrade were replaced, and re-deployed to start service on St. Maartin. The following is the link to their website, where you can see their service pricing and marketing - http://www.scarlet.an/en/.
Plans to expand onto Aruba and Bonaire are well underway. Recently Scarlet was purchased by an investor group headed by Belgacom, providing access to capital for additional expansion. Cisco is also an important business partner as well as radio technology and network services provider. Scarlet now has close to 5% market share by population on the island, possibly the highest market penetration of any WiMAX service provider in the world. In fact, they have more customers than there are households on the island, showing that Mobile WiMAX offers a “personal broadband” experience, similar to cellular voice service.
And the Hilton Curacao has great Mango Daiquiris!!
Comment
-
Comment by Alan J Weissberger on June 24, 2009 at 11:43pm
-
Paul, Thanks for sharing that with us. Very interesting story. Hope Navini succeeds in deploying WiMAX equipment now that it's owned by Cisco. The company heavilly promotes its Core IP NGN systems solution, but says very little about the WiMAX equipment (with actual radios and air interfaces).
On June 23, Cisco hosted a webcast regarding the recent independent testing by the European Advanced Network Test Center of Cisco's IP NGN solution to gauge its performance.
Here is a URL to the replay:
https://cisco.webex.com/ciscosales/lsr.php?
AT=pb&SP=EC&rID=39886637&rKey=208515790d0ba9bf
alan
-
Comment by Paul Sergeant on June 24, 2009 at 8:24am - Hi Alan. There is a veryinteresting story there. The founders of Navini (in about 1998) were Chinese (I forget their names, and I wasn't there at the time). Originally they developed TD-SCDMA for broadband wireless access, and only later (c. 2000) created adaptive beamforming. After a VC-initiated management shuffle, they were eased out and replaced. They went back to china, where they had kept the private IPR rights to TD-SCDMA, and voila - China chose TD-SCDMA (very similar to ours) as their path to 3G. Navini chose to follow the WIMAX path instead.
-
-
Mike, I don't think they serve Margartias in Curacao. Perhaps Paul could enlighten us vacation deprived souls.
Paul, Did you try the native drinks? How about the snorkeling and body surfing? Was there good calyso music and/or other entertainment, e.g. steel drum bands? And how about the food and beer? Looking fwd to reading about your next travelogue.
Separately, I was not aware that Navini (now Cisco) had developed and sold TD-SCDMA gear. I thought that was only for China Mobile. Please enlighten us.
Thanks
alan
-
Comment by Mike Wolleben on June 22, 2009 at 12:54pm -
That is the good life. Selling WiMAX in the Caribbean! Broadband to Margaritaville. Thanks for the post.
Mike
© 2010 Created by WiMAX Broadband Solutions
You need to be a member of WiMAX360 to add comments!
Join this Ning Network