Beeline Kazakhstan has announced that it is conducting a fixed-wireless access (FWA) trial in the city of Makinsk.
The small-scale test is being carried out using CPE routers for fixed-only use, reports CommsUpdate. The operator, which is the country’s largest by subscribers, has not disclosed the exact technology that it will use in the trial.
KaR-Tel, which operates as Beeline, has been providing fibre-to-the-building (FTTB) services in Kazakhstan since 2009, and since 2018 has also offered residential broadband services in Almaty, Nur-Sultan and Shymkent via its 4G cellular network.
The operator has used FWA technologies in the past, most notably operating a WiMAX network across seven cities through its former subsidiary 2DAY (the unit became a part of KaR-Tel in December 2017).
While Beeline does not publicise a WiMAX offering, its parent group Veon mentioned an enterprise WiMAX service in its annual 2019 report, and KaR-Tel still holds fixed-wireless spectrum in the 2.5GHz-2.6GHz, 3.3GHz-3.5GHz, and 5.5GHz bands which is suitable for such a service.
