Alvarion negotiating Indian WiMAX deal

The company is in contact with BSNL, which won a $534 million Indian government grant to deploy a mobile WiMAX network.

The Indian telecommunications market is heating up, and one of the companies likely to be warmed is Alvarion Ltd. (Nasdaq: ALVR; TASE: ALVR). The Indian government wants to link the country's remote regions to broadband infrastructures. Last week, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd. (BSNL) was awarded a $524 million grant to deploy a mobile WiMAX network.

WiMAX solutions provider Alvarion is in contact with BSNL, and could become the vendor for the network. If Alvarion supplies the equipment, it will be a long-term contract that could generate tens of millions of dollars in revenue for the company, possibly even more.

Another possibility is that several equipment vendors will get together to share the project. BSNL is a government-owned telecommunications carrier. The Indian government recently published a public tender for the allocation of 4G frequencies on a regional basis, and Alvarion is in contact with other mobile carriers that won frequencies.

Alvarion has been operating in India for a long time. A year ago, there were reports that the company had won a share in BSNL's WiMAX project, together with other vendors. Recently, Alvarion has said that the potential of the Indian market makes it one of the company's growth engines.

Alvarion's share closed at $2.58 on Nasdaq on Friday, giving a market cap of $160 million. The share price rose 0.5% by mid-afternoon on the TASE today to NIS 9.41.

Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on November 29, 2010

© Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd. 2010

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