Airspan Networks has announced the release of a new 700 MHz WiMAX product suite targeted at rural markets in areas of the United States and around the world.

"700MHz license holders in the USA and internationally have been waiting for a credible WiMAX solution to upgrade their service offering to their customers," said Declan Byrne, Airspan's Chief Marketing Officer. "Airspan delivers a solution to support a strong business case. The combination of excellent signal propagation and robust Airspan equipment will enable operators to offer high speed Internet to a broad population in a wide network coverage area at a very low cost-to-market. We led the market in delivering pre-WiMAX 700MHz equipment and we plan to lead with WiMAX in this frequency as well."

Low-frequency sub-1 GHz bands, such as 700 MHz, have excellent signal propagation characteristics where the radio signal penetrates obstacles such as trees and buildings and travels considerably farther than higher frequency solutions. These qualities translate into cost savings for operators by requiring far less infrastructure per square mile. This solution is especially attractive for areas with low population density or for long-range coverage requirements.

This frequency band is broadly available in the United States, and is available to operators in Asia and other key international WiMAX markets.

"We believe that this new product, coupled with our products in the 1.5 and 3.65 GHz frequency bands, provides the perfect 'trifecta' of solutions in support of rural broadband access in the United States," continued Declan Byrne. "U.S. President-Elect Obama has been a strong advocate of extending broadband coverage to every U.S. community and has even been quoted as supporting tax and loan incentives to reach rural regions. We share in Obama's vision and look forward to serving this important market."

Paul Senior, Airspan Chief Technical Officer, added, "The expansion of our WiMAX product range into the 700 MHz band gives new and existing customers access to equipment with enhanced reach and higher system capacity. This enables operators to create highly cost-effective, non-line-of-sight solutions for broadband data and leading edge Voice-over-IP."

For added flexibility, the Airspan equipment is designed to operate in a range of channel sizes, from as small as 1.5MHz to as wide as 10MHz.

Source:cellular-news