Aperto Networks (News - Alert) has been selected by Egypt's Ministry of Interior to provide equipment for that nation's first wireless WiMAX network.

Aperto’s equipment will be used to connect police stations and offices across the nation. Barkotel, a distributor based in Egypt, will reportedly provide engineering services for the deployment.

“We are pleased with Aperto's solution,” said General Mohammed Sadek, general director of Police Communication with the Ministry of the Interior in a statement.

Sadek explained that their deployment is now moving into high gear and they plan on using Aperto's WiMAX solutions for many applications in the future -- including their Tetra application, video surveillance, voice communications between police stations -- and then expanding these applications into other geographical areas in Egypt.

Egypt's Ministry of Interior also would like to be the first to adopt Aperto's 802.16e solutions as they become available in the near future.

“We are extremely proud to be selected by the Ministry of the Interior for such a massive project,” said Vice President of Marketing & Alliances for Aperto Networks and WiMAX (News - Alert) Forum Board Member, Manish Gupta.

According to Gupta, Egypt is taking a strong leadership position in adopting WiMAX technology to protect its citizenry and promote economic growth. He expressed his company’s excitement to be working with the Egyptian government to deploy one of the largest WiMAX networks in Middle East to date and leverage many of the carrier grade capabilities of their PacketMAX system.

Aperto’s PacketMAX solution will be deployed in two phases. While the first phase is currently underway and will connect all major cities and towns in Northern Egypt, the second phase, planned for next year, will connect smaller towns and remaining rural regions. These two phases will involve PacketMAX base stations and subscriber units to provide integrated voice, data, and video services.

Atef Barkouky, CEO of Barkotel said that they have partnered with Aperto as they fully understand the superiority of the PacketMAX system. He emphasized that PacketMAX offers tremendous capacity, QoS, and flexibility to the end customer and believes that with Aperto, they are well positioned to implement other WiMAX networks in other regions for the Egyptian government.

Berge Ayvazian (News - Alert), chief strategy officer for Yankee Group said that the contract positions Aperto to support other advanced applications such as video surveillance and VoIP communications between police stations in Egypt.

Aperto Networks helps service providers worldwide profitably deliver affordable wireless voice and broadband services by building the world's most advanced fixed and mobile WiMAX Forum Certified base stations and subscriber units.

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Anuradha Shukla is a contributing editor for TMCnet, covering call centers, CRM and information technology. To see more of her articles, please visit her columnist page.