TAIPEI, Taiwan — WiMAX will soon be touching down in Pakistan.

China's ZTE Corp. said Monday (Sept. 19) it would launch a trial run
in Pakistan's capital, Islamabad, of its beta equipment for the fixed
wireless service. The trial will begin next month, through local
provider Telecard, and include an installation of one six-sector base
transceiver station and 17 receivers.

Telecard will target telephone service for residents, online services
for enterprises, broadband services for hotels and wireless backhaul
for Wi-Fi services at Islamabad's airport.

"This is the first trial of its kind for ZTE in Pakistan where DSL
coverage is extremely limited," said James Jiang, of ZTE's American
R&D center. "The success of this trial will be of great significance
for WiMAX expansion overseas, in particular in South Asia, Southeast
Asia and Asia-Pacific markets." Along with Huawei Technologies, ZTE
is one of China's largest telecom equipment makers, posting sales of
$4.1 billion last year. It has three WiMAX R&D centers in China and
the U.S. with more than 400 R&D personnel dedicated to WiMAX
operations.

The company said it hopes to carve out a niche in offering services
and hardware in Asia for the relatively new technology.