Notas de Imprensa

Alvarion, Ltd. Provides Ecopetrol BreezeAccess II Equipment for Fixed Wireless Access Service in the 2.4GHz Unlicensed Band

Tel Aviv, Israel, September 23, 2002 – Alvarion, Ltd., today announced that it is providing Ecopetrol -- Colombia’s national oil company – with its BreezeACCESS II solution for use with its accounting and administration database. The database, which polls each point of oil production for information and status, is connected to four regional hubs via leased digital lines. The Regional Hubs connect to each remote location with a Broadband data connection and a telephone line. Alvarion’s BreezeACCESS II equipment, which was procured by Ecopetrol through Nera Telecommunications, links each of the company’s remote wells and mines to its regional hub with a broadband connection where cabling is not feasible.

Nera Telecommunications designed the Alvarion system in a cellular fashion in order to cover a large geographic area. Since Columbia’s tropical fauna does not always allow for clear line of sight, the high gain transmission (43 dBm EIRP) of the remote radios allowed for installation in near line of sight situations. The first of fifteen phases in the project involved the installation of two 18 Mbps base stations and seven 3 Mbps micro-base stations in a 280 square kilometer area. Thirty-two monitoring stations were each connected to these base stations with high-speed data and voice.

Ecopetrol’s original vision of the system was a pure IP solution. However, a Voice over IP solution was chosen after testing. “I was very impressed with the quality of the voice over IP,” said German Delgado, Ecopetrol’s Network Systems Manager. “We have links at up to 13 kilometers with 3Mbps of data and toll quality voice. The Nera/Alvarion solution was convenient because the interfaces are standard RJ-48 Ethernet and RJ-11 telephone ports, giving us exactly what we need without additional routers or converters.”

The success of the first deployment has given additional push to the other fourteen phases of the database project. Delgado says that the decision to purchase the Alvarion solution was made with this growth in mind. Once the project is completed, Ecopetrol plans to continue expanding the system as needed.

About Alvarion
Alvarion is a premier provider of solutions based on Point-to-Multipoint (PMP) Broadband Wireless Access (BWA) used by telecom carriers, service providers, and enterprises worldwide. Alvarion systems provide Internet access and voice and data services in the last mile, cellular network feeding, building-to-building and wireless local area network (LAN) connectivity.

Alvarion offers the broadest range of BWA solutions by market segment and frequency band, designed to address all carriers’ and service providers’ business models. With its combined market experience, strong customer base, diversified distribution channels and field-proven deployments, Alvarion is a leading BWA pure play provider for every end user profile, from residential subscribers to business customers.

About Ecopetrol
Ecopetrol is a State Industrial and Commercial Company, attached to the Ministry of Mines and Energy, with legal existence, administrative and decision taking autonomy and its own, independent capital. The tutelage and administrative control of Ecopetrol are in the hands of the Ministry of Mines and Energy. Fiscal supervision is the responsibility of the General Controller of the Republic and, internally, it has a Superintendency (which reports to the Board of Directors) and an Internal Controller's Office.

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