Airspan Announces Distribution Agreement With Nortel For WiMax Products

Boca Raton, FL -- Airspan Networks announced that it has signed a Master Purchase and Sale Agreement with Nortel, covering the distribution and sale of Airspan's AS.MAX family of WiMAX broadband wireless access products. The Agreement gives Nortel worldwide rights to resell Airspan's HiperMAX, MacroMAX and MicroMAX base-station products, as well as EasyST and ProST customer premise equipment.

Nortel and Airspan Networks will work together to evolve and market WiMAX solutions in the frequency bands supported by the WiMAX Forum for implementations starting with the 802.16-2004 WiMAX standard. Beyond delivering broadband to users, these solutions can also be used to eliminate the need for expensive wired T1/E1 or DSL circuits for wireless backhaul and create a simpler path to profitability for service providers. Nortel's optical backhaul technology, data networking solutions, and full suite of wireless services may also be integrated with Airspan's WiMAX base transceiver stations and subscriber terminals.

Commenting on the agreement, Eric Stonestrom, President and CEO of Airspan Networks, said: "Interest in our AS.MAX portfolio is growing considerably. We are very pleased that Nortel, a recognized leader in wireline and wireless technologies, has chosen to adopt our portfolio as a key element of its recently announced WiMAX strategy. Nortel is already a leading supplier of switching and mobility products to many of the world's largest carriers, and together we will be able to bring truly innovative access solutions to customers in Nortel's key markets."

"Nortel is very focused on serving the telecommunications access market with wireless product solutions," stated Mark Whitton, Nortel's vice president and general manager, WiMAX and Wireless Mesh Networks. "While no single solution will suit all the needs of an operator, the addition of Airspan's WiMAX product line to our systems will significantly broaden the products we will have to match the application requirements of our customers."

Airspan's AS.MAX product family has been designed for indoor, self-installable deployment of customer premises equipment, an essential requirement of operators for the economic rollout of broadband wireless. The EasyST is the first product of its type to offer fully indoor plug-and-play WiMAX services. The product family will be commercially available in the third quarter 2005. The products will give businesses and consumers uninterrupted access to a rich variety of high bandwidth applications such as networked gaming, streamed digital music, TV, videoconferencing, and other real-time services at speeds faster than today's 3G networks. Fixed WiMAX is expected to deliver end-user data rates greater than 1 Mbps - 3 to 5 times faster than today's commercial 3G networks.

SOURCE: Airspan Networks Inc.