Abigroup wins vividwireless base station deal
In brief The telecommunications arm of construction company Abigroup has won a multimillion-dollar deal to build base stations for Perth's new WiMax network vividwireless.
The value of the deal has not been disclosed; however, Abigroup's work will cover the construction of base stations and installation of networking equipment for the Channel Seven subsidiary's $50 million WiMax network. The key supplier for the network's WiMax technology is Chinese vendor, Huawei.
Besides constructing base stations, Abigroup will also install antennas and cabinets, as well as conduct testing of the base stations.
Perth's newest ISP entrant is expecting the network to be up and running by March 2010. It has planned to build around 150 base stations across the city and has claimed its network will offer average speeds of 4 megabits per second (Mbps) and peak speeds of up to 20Mbps. At the announcement of the new network the ISP's chief, former Telstra executive, Martin Mercer, said it would trump competing 3G networks with speeds up to 10 times faster.