Tuesday, September 13, 2005

Marconi WiMAX in Italy

Genoa - 12 September 2005 - Marconi Corporation plc (London: MONI and NASDAQ: MRCIY) today announced it has been selected to support the largest public trial of Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX) to date, providing WiMAX connectivity in Italy’s Piedmont and Sicily regions. The selection was made by a working party that included representatives from the Italian Ministry of Communications, the Italian Ministry of Defence, and the Ugo Bordoni Foundation, which is coordinating the trial at a national level.

Working in partnership with Airspan Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ: AIRN), a provider of fixed and wireless voice and data systems and solutions, Marconi will deploy Airspan's AS.MAX family of WiMAX broadband wireless access products. The AS.MAX product family is IEEE 802.16-2004 compliant and due to its Software Defined Radio (SDR) technology, it can be upgraded to be IEEE 802.16e compliant, to include Spatial Division Multiple Access advanced services.