Alvarion Ltd. announced that Arctic Slope Telephone Association Cooperative selected the company's wireless broadband Wi-Fi equipment to provide connectivity to workers and residents across the North Slope region of Alaska. ASTAC provides local and long distance service, internet, wireless and data services across a road-less, remote arctic area of more than 90,000 square miles. Additionally, ASTAC is a provider of pay-per-use Wi-Fi to allow video, voice and data applications at the region's petroleum industry exploration and production camps located in the Deadhorse-Prudhoe Bay region.

These modular and mobile camps make implementing traditional fixed-line solutions particularly costly, labor intensive and impractical given modular design and regular facility relocation. To support these roving exploration and production camps, ASTAC selected the company's Wi-Fi solution to deliver the wireless broadband connectivity necessary, while remaining flexible, cost-effective, and rugged enough to meet the unique needs of the arctic environment. The company's general market Wi-Fi offering includes advanced carrier-grade, wireless broadband base stations operating in the 2.4 and 5 GHz unlicensed bands using spatially adaptive Beamforming technology and interference mitigation algorithms to provide optimal connectivity, extended range, increased capacity, indoor penetration and uniform coverage.

With this technology, ASTAC is able to deploy fewer access points in each camp, significantly reducing the labor costs and cabling associated with installations in such intense environmental conditions. Using the company's equipment, ASTAC is also exploring new service capabilities for its consumer and business customers such as managed services and Wi-Fi offloading.