Israeli-owned wireless backhaul and broadband access solutions provider Radwin is looking to provide connectivity to the Brazilian federal government's digital inclusion programs, Radwin Brasil country manager Wilson Conti told BNamericas.
"We are able to address the two largest needs we have in Brazil: to leverage internet services for the municipalities in the government project, and to leverage internet to schools. Radwin can easily help operators and ISPs to meet that demand," said Conti.
The company recently launched local operations and currently has two people in Brazil supervising the preparation and certification of distributors. Radwin has also established regional offices in Mexico City and Lima.
"In Brazil we have two large distributors and their network has over 50 integrators. In Latin America we have about 30 direct partners," said Conti.
Radwin marketing and business development VP Adi Nativ said the company has been successful in selling connectivity projects to cellular and fixed operators throughout Latin America. The region represents about 25% of the company's business, making Latin America the second largest market for Radwin after India.
"We are selling data and voice connectivity. We're talking to ISPs - cellular or fixed operators - and they all want to connect customers and to provide corporate data services. Many of them, however, don't have the infrastructure to do that, or the infrastructure they can afford is either expensive microwave networks, which are not practical to connect a single customer, or on the other end of the other scale, point to multi point solutions," said Nativ.
According to the executive, the problem with that is if the operator is in a major city and it has customers close to the base stations, the [expense] is justified. If customers aren't close, however, that is when point to point comes into play.
"Most of the [operators] we talk to in Latin America are users of the high-end point to point network solution or point to multipoint to connect customers," said Nativ. "But in between there is a huge gap of medium to big-sized customers that [operators] want to connect but who are outside the outskirts of the city and [the therefore the operators] don't have the ability to do it cost effectively. So what we are doing is expanding the network, enabling them to expand [quickly]."
WIMAX
The provision of backhaul to WiMax networks is seen by the company as a business opportunity in developing markets.
"WiMax is a new market in development. We have just released a product - IP transmission, a good solution for IP backhaul - for WiMax backhaul. And we see this market as one that still needs to prove its [worth]. So operators are now moving from trials into real deployments," said Adi.
"What happens at this stage is that many of the operators have selected good WiMax base stations, so backhaul becomes a burden due to the huge investment" needed to install a sufficient amount of similar base stations to service their coverage area, he added.
Radwin's products operate in the sub-6GHz capacity, with the technology functioning in non-licensed spectrum bands. The Radwin 2000 system addresses the backhaul needs of WiMax networks.
According to Adi, the use of sub-6GHz bands gives Radwin's solution the benefit of working better in wave propagation and being low cost, fast to install and simple to use.
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