BUKIT JALIL, 23 Feb: Malaysia's first amax City was launched in Technology Park Malaysia today, providing the around 5,000 occupants within 700 hectares of the park with unlimited access to online services and facilities via wireless broadband.

This project came about following complaints of slow broadband connectivity by many of the park's tenants, most of whom are high-technology startups.

It's implemented by Asiaspace WiMAX Sdn Bhd, employing the WiWi (WiMAX-WiFi)  hybrid customer premises equipment (CPE) developed by MIMOS Bhd and commercialised by Pernec Integrated Network Systems.

The WiWi CPE connects to the base station via WiMAX wireless broadband and provides WiFi coverage of the local area, thus enabling users with already abundant WiFi-enabled equipment such as notebook PCs, netbook PCs, WiFi-PCI cards, WiFi-USB dongles, PDAs, smartphones, printers and so on with Internet access.

There are three amax WiMAX base station in the area – namely one in Technology Park, one in Pintasan Puchong and one in Sri Petaling, each with a range of 1.5km radius. Backhaul connectivity from the base stations to the network core is provided by Telekom Malaysia.

Besides WiWi, other MIMOS-developed frontier technologies include WiFi seamless mobility, Internet Protocol TV (IP-TV), multi-device handover, converged networks and applications using IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS).

Besides providing coverage in buildings, shopping malls, universities, colleges and gated communities, the WiWi access points also provide connectivity to outdoor electronic billboards and bills payment points and so on.

Following this collaboration project between Technology Park, Asiaspace WiMAX and MIMOS, Asiaspace WiMAX will implement other amax City projects in other areas.

Asiaspace is one of Malaysia's four  Mobile WiMAX operators with 2.3GHz licensed spectrum from the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission.

It's also has the second widest WiMAX coverage of Peninsular Malaysia after Packet One Networks, currently with 60 base stations covering parts of the Klang Valley and 70 towers ready in the rest of the country. The other commercially operational WiMAX operator is Redtone, which currently has licensed spectrum for East Malaysia. The fourth, YTL Communications will launch commercial service in Peninsular Malaysia in July.