Cal-Ore gains 900MHz-like coverage in 3.65GHz band

MOUNTAIN VIEW, USA: PureWave Networks announced that it has been selected by Cal-Ore Communications Inc. as the company's supplier of Mobile WiMAX (802.16e) infrastructure.

"When we began to roll-out 3.65GHz equipment one of our main concerns was maximizing the coverage area," said Charles Boening, Cal-Ore's Network Manager. "After-all, the reason operators are still using old, slow equipment in the noisy 900MHz band is because of the band's supposedly superior propagation characteristics. However, we were excited to discover that using PureWave's gear we were able to achieve similar coverage in the 3.65GHz band as we were seeing with our legacy 900MHz equipment but deliver up to 5 times the capacity we were seeing with our legacy system."

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With 16 base stations already deployed, the network currently covers approximately 200 square miles and a population of approximately 50,000 in rural California and Oregon.

"From a performance and operations perspective, we are very happy with the PureWave gear," added Boening. "Our installers are able to convert 10 to 15 customers to the new network each day, and customers are seeing stable, solid performance and service speeds that meet today's bandwidth hungry applications," Boening added.

In addition to advanced broadband service packages, offering aggregate speeds of up to 12Mbps, Cal-Ore also plans to offer phone services over the network and to expand the coverage area in the coming months.

"Many of our customers are realizing that PureWave's smart antenna technology allows them to achieve coverage equivalent to a 900MHz system in the 3.65GHz band, but to deliver substantially more capacity over those same distances," said Daniel Redmond, VP, Sales & Marketing for Moonblink Communications, a value-added distributor and PureWave partner that assisted Cal-Ore in making their network deployment choices.

Operating in the semi-licensed 3.65GHz band, Cal-Ore is using PureWave's Quantum 6636 base stations to replace obsolete and much slower network equipment that operates in the 900MHz and 2.4GHz bands.

"The 3.65GHz band offers a unique opportunity for smaller operators and private network owners," said Dan Picker, PureWave's CTO. "For one, FCC licensing requirements provide easy access to the band, while keeping out noisy consumer devices such as cordless phones, garage door openers and WiFi routers. This leaves 50MHz of often pristine spectrum, ideal for broadband wireless services."

"The Achilles heel of the band has always been range; however PureWave's smart antenna technology, combined with 802.16e technology, overcomes this challenge, allowing operators to achieve roughly the same coverage area that is achievable in the noisy 900MHz band, while delivering much higher sector capacity. Expect to see a mass migration of WISPs and private network operators into the band as they move to take advantage of this opportunity," Picker added.