From Russia With Love: WiMax Mobile Broadband Comes to Nicaragua

Russia’s Yota, the mobile services developer and provider and one of the world’s leaders in Mobile WiMAX (4G) technology, has announced the test run of the mobile broadband 4th-generation Internet access network in Managua, the capital of Nicaragua. The Yota network was rolled out in record time – in three months since the beginning of construction.
During the press conference attended by representatives of WiMAX Forum, Intel and Samsung, the strategic partners of Yota, journalists were told about the project and its perspectives in details.
Ricardo Olarte, Northern Cone General Manager of Intel, said that “the broadband penetration in Latin America is very low, and is the reason why the initiative taken by Nicaragua will allow a significant leap in the adoption of new technologies placing the country at the forefront and generating a positive effect in people and businesses to improve the competitiveness of it.”
In July 2009, the public international tender for 2.5-2.7 GHz spectrum was announced in order to provide the whole territory of Nicaragua with communications services based upon the Mobile WiMAX standard. Yota became the winner of the tender. “The implementation of this project, which is basically a rapid transition from dial-up and scarce fixed-line communications to 4G technology, will pave the way in a very short time for achieving meaningful social effects in Nicaragua,” said Dr. Mo Shakouri, Vice President and board member of WiMAX Forum.
Yota will start to operate in Nicaragua with its wireless broadband Internet access service. Later the company plans to increase the number of services and will concentrate on the high-quality voice services demanded in the market.
“The record time of deployment of the network in Nicaragua shows that Yota has accumulated the strong expertise and has created the proven network infrastructure based on Samsung equipment. All these issues allow Yota to deployment networks in any country in the world extremely fast,” commented Doctor Song, Samsung Electronics
Yota services, developed during Yota’s Russian project, and several types of end-user equipment will be available to subscribers, both to end-users and companies: USB modems, routers. The stationary VoIP device developed specially for Nicaragua, as well as the line of inexpensive netbooks with embedded Intel(R) WiMAX/WiFi module from the world’s leading producers will be launched in the market of the country.
These devices are scheduled for sale next spring when everyone will be allowed free use of the Yota services before commercial use of the network begins in mid-2010.
“We see great potential in our project in Nicaragua. The demand for communications services in this country is enormous. According to recent studies, the country cries out for telephony and for at least 300,000 new Internet connections,” says Yegor Ivanov, the vice president of business development at Yota. “Aside from Nicaragua, Yota includes Latin America, the CIS, as well as a series of countries in Asia and Africa, a total of 75 nations, into its global expansion plan. Currently, Yota manages more than USD 500mn of investment funds allocated for the international expansion in 2009. The company plans to raise the volume of investments to USD 1.5bn by the end of 2010.”