Pipex tests its WiMAX services at Warwick Athletic Meet

Pipex, the first UK broadband supplier to offer wireless broadband using WiMAX in the UK, launched the second trial of WiMAX services at the 7th European Cup Race Walking, an event jointly organized by UK Athletics, the Race Walking Association and Warwick District Council. The test will enable the company to get enough feedback from the users in the tournament and to make necessary corrections. It should be noted that Pipex successfully its WiMAX services with speed up to 8 mb, when its customers were connected to a network in Milton Keynes.

Pipex broadband provider has been planning to offer its WiMAX services on experimental basis. During the firstl phase, the Warkwick District Council is expected to be offered WiMAX service while the whole system will be monitored by Pipex. The gradual deployment of WiMAX services in houses and SMEs will take place in a time span of six months, as quoted by Pipex.

While we trace the birth and evolution of Pipex, one of the major broadband suppliers of UK, we see lots of changes the company went through during the last ten years. After its inception in 2003, the company had to compete with the major UK internet providers like BT broadband, TalkTalk and Virgin Media etc. Pipex purchased 118,000 broadband customer base Bulldog, a subsidiary of Cable and Wireless in an attempt to expand its broadband business. Although Pipex has its own LLU lines, the additional LLU lines provided by BT broadband internet services exerted financial burden on Pipex, which reflected on the poor results announced by the company last month. Profit before tax fell to £4.8m from previous year’s figure of £5, down by more than 8 percent. Pipex announced that the costly acquisition and its payments to BT towards LLU usage have significantly cut the profits during the last financial year.

However the positive side of the picture is that the company has been recently coming up with new strategies to become a niche player in the SME sector. The launch of WiMAX services certainly are expected to boost up the growth of Pipex customers in the coming years. It should be mentioned here that Pipex also has achieved good level of penetration as far as residential broadband connections are concerned and how its WiMAX services will help the company to have an edge over other providers is yet to be seen.