Nortel Opens Center Of Excellence - Wimax 4G Ecosystem In Taiwan

TAIPEI, TAIWAN - Nortel* [NYSE/TSX: NT] today announced the opening of its Center of Excellence - WiMAX 4G Ecosystem in Taipei to promote interoperability across WiMAX devices and applications for global customers, helping to speed up the deployment of WiMAX technology throughout the world.

The new Center of Excellence will support field testing and demonstrations of a wide range of high-bandwidth multimedia applications such as VoIP, video streaming, IPTV, Digital Video Recorder and the transmission of data between WiMAX, Wi-Fi and 3G platforms when using PDAs, laptop computers and Wi-Fi handsets. Testing WiMAX customer premise equipment for interoperability will be a key test focus in the new center.

By delivering enhanced WiMAX technology interoperability, Nortel is making it easier for service providers to reduce costs while delivering next-generation services for anywhere, anytime voice, video and multimedia collaboration. As a pioneer in OFDM and MIMO technologies, Nortel is a leader in the development of 4G solutions designed to meet the challenges of an increasingly hyperconnected world, where anything that can be connected to the network will be. Hyperconnectivity encompasses person-to-person, person-to-machine and machine-to-machine communication.

“With many years of experience developing WiMAX technology, Nortel understands the sophisticated needs and requirements of deployment. The new Center of Excellence is designed to serve as an end-to-end resource for the global telecommunication industry, combining Nortel and third-party expertise, innovation, interoperability and collaboration,” said Stone Tseng, vice president, WiMAX 4G Ecosystem, Nortel. “Nortel chose Taiwan to establish its Center of Excellence - WiMAX 4G Ecosystem because the majority of the world’s networking and communications devices are designed and manufactured in Taiwan. Nortel is also collaborating with the Taiwan government to roll out the ’M-Taiwan’ initiative which enhances Taiwan’s leadership position in driving WiMAX developments.”

Nortel’s Center of Excellence - WiMAX 4G Ecosystem complements Nortel’s Center of Excellence for WiMAX Devices, which opened in May last year in Taiwan. The new Center further drives the developments of WiMAX by connecting different vendors and manufacturers who are able to share knowledge and improve products and technologies. Nortel previously collaborated with National Taiwan University to conduct WiMAX broadband service trials that focused on the interoperability testing of wireless devices and multimedia applications. Nortel also recently announced a second WiMAX contract deployment with Taiwan’s Chunghwa Telecom.

Nortel is a member of the WiMAX Forum, an industry organization that promotes the interoperability and certification of wireless products for the delivery of faster, more affordable data, voice and video services. Nortel owns dozens of patents in the technologies underlying the WiMAX standard, and the Company’s eight years of work in OFDM/MIMO technology has culminated with much of its patented technology being accepted as the basis for the global WiMAX industry standard.