RIGA (WiMAX Day). The market for WiMAX services is becoming increasingly competitive in Latvia as Lattelecom, the leading fixed-line telecom operator, has begun a limited commercial launch of WiMAX. The company has been testing WiMAX since last year and, according to Novanews, with 39 test customers the service now will be offered commercially on a limited basis.

The director of product development for Lattelecom, Uldis Kaleis, told ComNews that the service will be only available to customers living in areas where WiFi, cable or DSL broadband is unavailable. The WiMAX service will offer a connection of 1 Mbit/s for $53 per month, and a 2 Mbit/s service is also available at $91 per month.

Lattelecom is already the largest operator of WiFi hotspots in Latvia, and the company is also a subsidiary of the Scandinavian telecom operator TeliaSonera. In addition to Latvia, TeliaSonera has subsidiaries operating WiMAX in Estonia through AS Eesti Telekom, and with its Norwegian subsidiary NextGenTel. In Sweden TeliaSonera has been testing WiMAX throughout the country for the last year.

Competitive market
Lattelecom is not alone in its WiMAX aspirations for Latvia. Alternative telecoms provider Unistars is in a testing phase and plans to launch its WiMAX network later this year, and broadband Internet provider Telecentrs is also planning to deploy a network this year.

Telecentrs was acquired last year by Norby Telecom, which is the leading WiMAX operator in Estonia. Norby chairman Oleg Shvaikovsky told WiMAX Day, “the acquisition was an essential part of our strategy to build up a pan-Baltic telecom operation in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.”

Among the three Latvian WiMAX operators, Telecentrs has perhaps the most competitive business model. The company is a major player in the Latvian telecoms market, and in some segments such as data communication for business customers, it is the second largest operator.

Given this, Telecentrs will target corporate customers initially, and may also look to deploy WiMAX in towns outside of Riga where there is no broadband Internet access.

The network of Telecentrs is also highly differentiated from its competitors. While its first phase is to construct a network using fixed WiMAX, the company plans to launch mobile WiMAX based on 802.16e standards in the near term. Telecentrs is also reportedly deploying far more base stations than Lattelecom or Unistars in Riga, which will give its network far greater coverage throughout that city.

With mobile WiMAX, Telecentrs will allow customers to connect their laptop computers and handheld devices anywhere in the network, making it a serious competitor to the plethora of WiFi services in Riga, as well as the 3G networks already established by GSM operators LMT, Tele2 and Bite.