Italian broadband provider Linkem and Chinese telecoms vendor ZTE have announced plans to deploy a fixed-wireless LTE-Advanced (LTE-A) network in Rome, utilising the ISP’s 3.5GHz WiMAX spectrum. The vendor claims that the network ‘will represent one of the largest single city fixed wireless deployment utilising 3.5GHz spectrum worldwide,’ adding that the rollout will ‘demonstrate that all structural, archaeological and environmental constraints – items of great importance in Rome – can be overcome thanks to Linkem’s alternative network model’.
Linkem presently covers more than 50% of population with its fixed-wireless WiMAX solution, including large urban areas such as Palermo, Bari, Turin and Naples. The ISP currently has over 330,000 subscribers on its books and is growing at a rate of 10,000 net new users per month.