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Vividwireless expansion waits on investors

After completing Vividwireless' WiMax network expansion into Brisbane, Adelaide and Canberra, CEO Martin Mercer said that the company will hold off further expansions until it receives more investment.
Written by Josh Taylor, Contributor

After completing Vividwireless' WiMax network expansion into Brisbane, Adelaide and Canberra, CEO Martin Mercer said that the company will hold off further expansions until it receives more investment.

"We're in advanced discussions with a few investors at the moment," he said, adding that he couldn't give a timeframe for when these expansions from the city centres will occur.

Vividwireless' WiMax network offers wireless broadband in city centres in Perth, Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Canberra and Brisbane where users will receive an average of between 4 and 6 megabits per second using the service. Mercer said that the city centre spots would serve as launching pads for a full national expansion.

"They're always stepping stones to a full national roll-out. The next phase for us is to do full city-wide coverage in all of those cities. And that's just a question of when, and not if."

Mercer said that the company has been pleased with its ongoing testing of Time Division Duplex Long Term Evolution (TD-LTE) or 4G broadband technology being trialled with Huawei. The advances in technology for devices that will use LTE could see Vividwireless ultimately use this technology in its city-wide expansion.

"It's only reinforced our confidence in the readiness of TD-LTE. There has been a lot of developments in the last few months, even on the chipset front, so for devices it has been very encouraging. The ecosystem for TD-LTE is developing at a much more rapid rate than any of us expected," he said. "Which just makes it even more likely we will be using TD-LTE when we do full city-wide networks."

At the Communications Day Summit in March, Mercer said that because the company has a decent amount of spectrum up its sleeve, he believes the company will have a consistent and reliable LTE service up and running before Telstra, Optus and Vodafone can get their services off the ground.

Telstra and Vodafone have both announced plans to launch LTE services later this year, while Optus has trialled LTE technology but has not yet announced a date for when it plans to offer services.

Vividwireless' WiMax services went live in Adelaide and Canberra in January, and the company had planned to launch the Brisbane service at the same time; however, Mercer said that this was delayed by the disastrous floods that hit the region in January.

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