After spending three years to deploy wireless broadband service in Dhaka, Pervez Sajjad, managing director of Ektoo Ltd., turned to Motorola's Canopy solution and became an Authorised Canopy Solution Provider (ACSP) in Bangladesh.

Motorola's wireless broadband access system and Wi-Fi solutions were formally launched on November 26 at Dhaka Sheraton Hotel.

"Key differentiating factors made my job of deciding on the Canopy products easy," said Sajjad, who spent much of his career in the IT and telecommunications industries of Southern California. "It required a very low initial investment as well as low expansion costs. Canopy's high-performance, interference resistant and outstanding range results in low megabit cost."

"Key advantages of Canopy can be summed up in three words affordability, speed (of deployment) and quality (of service)," said Benhur Mesfin, director, Wireless Broadband, Commercial, Government and Industrial Solutions Sector (CGISS) during his presentation at the launch.

"This innovative system supports additional delivery options for public networks, wireless ISPs and small-to moderate-sized private networks," he added.

Canopy wireless broadband solutions are proved to be a cost-effective, reliable broadband solution for private networks, such as governments or enterprises and for service providers and carriers. This easy-to-deploy system has a strong reputation for being a scalable, robust and reliable platform incorporating Motorola's extensive expertise in radio and data communications.

Canopy has already started getting positive feedback from its users in Bangladesh. So far, BRAC BDMail Network, an ISP that operates its own multi-megabit IP Metro-Area-Network (MAN) in Dhaka, has installed seven point-to-point backhaul units strategically centred in Dhaka and Sylhet in August.

Canopy's performance has made them plan for additional six access points in Dhaka that will give them coverage throughout the city.

"Customers appreciate the high availability of our service delivered via Canopy because the smallest downtime directly impacts their revenue stream," said Sajjad. People here are used to experiencing outages on an hourly and a daily basis. Motorola Canopy equipment completely resolves those problems and our customers recognise that.

Bijoy Online Limited, another ISP that had been providing internet access services on a wired DSL infrastructure but had to face frequent service disruptions due to damage to the cables. Bijoy got rid of the hassle by switching to a full wireless infrastructure built on Canopy by initially installing three point-to-point backhaul units in July and added 18 more access points in September.

Wireless is the best possible alternative to the unplanned physical wiring infrastructure of the country that needs to be upgraded, mentioned Sajjad. "I spent a year and a half doing research on next-generation equipment. The more I read about it, the more the Motorola Canopy wireless equipment seemed perfect for what I wanted to do," he added.

He also described how Canopy has been successfully delivering IT services to their clients' branch offices at remote locations in Bangladesh.

The Canopy solution offers a coverage radius of up to 16 kilometres for the point-to-multipoint system and 56 kilometres for the point-to-point system. It is ideally suited for providing high-speed Internet-Protocol (IP)-based services such as data, voice and video to locations where existing infrastructure is not available or affordable.

Canopy is currently deployed in 85 countries around the globe. Motorola's current portfolio of Wi-Fi products includes the Motorola WiAP-100 a highly secure 802.1x-based WLAN security with auto key management Wireless Access Point, Motorola WiB-60 Wireless Ethernet Bridges and the ORiNOCO Network Interface Card.

Benhur Mesfin also announced that the next generation Wi-MAX series wireless products from Motorola will be available in the middle of the next year.