Linkem Spa, one of Italy’s largest wireless broadband service providers, will deploy DragonWave’s Horizon Compact radios for backhaul in its new nationwide WiMAX network. The company provides both nationwide Wi-Fi Hotspot services and Wireless DSL services. At the beginning of 2008 the company consolidated its position by acquiring 13 regional WiMAX licenses to provide mobile broadband coverage to 80 percent of the Italian population, with the mobile WiMAX network scheduled for completion in 2013.

The Horizon Compact network will be deployed by SELEX Communications, a system integrator offering turnkey planning, deployment and support services for all DragonWave products. These products operate in both licensed and unlicensed radio frequencies between 6 and 38 GHz. An uncompromised product design delivers pure ‘packet’ microwave performance with software scalable, ultra-low latency transport of up to 1.6 Gbps per link.

“DragonWave solutions are a very important part of our IP backhaul strategy. They will enable rapid and cost effective deployment of our network”, said Davide Rota, CEO of Linkem. “In view of our aggressive roll-out plans, we required a field proven and robust solution that addresses the need for high capacity backhaul, scalability and carrier class performance critical for delivering real-time IP services. Also, we needed to minimize our backhaul spectrum costs, so the superior efficiency of DragonWave products was a key consideration. We are confident that DragonWave’s innovative technology, end to end network optimization techniques and extensive experience with 4G WiMAX networks will enable us to achieve our goals.”

Peter Allen, president and CEO of DragonWave, said, “We are very pleased to have partnered with a premier systems integrator such as SELEX Communications and to have been selected by Linkem as the backhaul radio supplier for their mobile WiMAX network. Our packet microwave technology has been validated extensively in some of the world’s largest 4G networks. Our Horizon Compact solution will enable Linkem to roll out their nationwide network quickly and in future allow them to grow backhaul capacity in a very flexible and cost efficient manner.”