Rioplex Creates 5,000-Square-Mile Network In Texas

Rioplex Wireless, a provider of very wide-area broadband wireless services, is extending its South Texas network to cover 5,000 square-miles.

In an announcement Wednesday, the service provider said it has deployed BreezeACCESS VL from Alvarion Ltd. and as a result can offer broadband with speeds of 15Mbps across its service area.

"When we first deployed in January of 2003 we believed our network was the largest of its kind in the U.S.," said Bill Moon, director of sales for Rioplex. He said the value of the current upgrade by Alvarion is that it was "affordable and was quickly" installed.

The Rioplex network initially used pre-WiMAX equipment from Navini, which was installed in urban areas in the Rioplex service region. Moon said the new rollout enables the firm to better compete with existing broadband suppliers of DSL and cable modem solutions.

Because it already owns its backbone and last-mile networking infrastructure including towers, Rioplex was able to quickly scale the upgrade."While our licensed footprint covers a very large part of South Texas, our current network only allows us to offer speeds suitable for small office, residential, and nomadic users limiting our ability to capture revenue from high capacity business customers," said Othal Brand, Rioplex president, in a statement.

"As a complement to our existing network, Alvarion's BreezeACCESS VL gives us the opportunity to build a cost-effective, overlay network to connect high-value consumers that want multi-megabit services to support bandwidth intensive IP applications such as video and VoIP services."