I-Burst announced today it had secured investments of AU$6 million from Mitsubishi Corporation and AU$8 million from e-millenium Asia. The injection of cash will allow the i-Burst consortium to deliver what it set out to achieve, according to consortium-member CKW Wireless board director Judy Slatyer.
"We have received an amount of money which is more than we originally planned, and that allows us to look creatively at our roll-out," Slatyer told ZDNet Australia . The i-Burst consortium consists of CKW Wireless, ArrayComm, Vodafone Australia, OzEmail, TCI, Crown Castle and CommWorks, all of whom supply some facet of the project.
Mitsubishi and e-millenium invested in CKW Wireless, and come on board as "traditional" investors, with the money being supplied in January, according to Slatyer.
The investment is seen as a strong endorsement of the i-Burst technology and marketing plan.
"The excitement about wireless LANs and 3G is just the beginning of what wireless can offer. We firmly believe that CKW will capitalise on this emerging trend and to deliver a service that people really want - high-speed, mobile access to the Internet," said Masayuki Kasahara, general manager of the International Development Project Unit, Mitsubishi Corporation.
Australia was chosen as the test-bed for the new wireless broadband system because of our unique spectrum licensing system. "The Australian Government chose to release the unpaired spectrum (TDD) separately from the paired spectrum (3G)," said Slatyer, adding almost no other country did this. "They did is expressly to encourage new entrants into the market."
"It's really a feather in the Governments cap," added Slatyer. In 2001 the Federal Government was widely criticised over its handling of the spectrum auction when it raised less than half the funds expected.
