Four of the seven applicants for the 450MHz licence in Finland are proposing to use Flarion’s Flash-OFDM solution, with the other two basing their bids on Qualcomm’s CDMA 450 technology. One applicant said it would use either Flash-OFDM or CDMA 2000 1xEV-DO.
The winning applicant was due to be announced just as Mobile Europe went to press for the licence, which is intended to extend broadband wireless data services to rural areas.
 The proposals using Flash-OFDM are Digita, Finnet, LynxNet and Saunalahti. NMT and Cubio have chosen CDMA450. Elisa’s bid said it would use either CDMA 2000 or OFDM technology.
Cubio Networks, whose backers include the Russian Telecommunications Development Corporation, commited to 99% coverage of the population, and a “considerably large geographic coverage when compared to current mobile telecocmmunications networks,” and said in its application it would enable “mobile broadband connections up to the speed of 2.4Mbps. It said it had begun planning to provide coverage to the entire population by mid-2006. It also said it would operate a BREW distribution system for the mobile applications. BREW is Qualcomm’s platform for mobile device applications development. The company’s investment in the project would total EUR90 million, it said.
Many of the other bids were less forthcoming with details in their public proposals. Elisa, keeping a foot in both camps, did not elaborate on the reasons for its technology choice, although Finnet did say in its proposal that “Flash-OFDM technology is regarded to provide the best possibilities [sic]” to provide “an open, IP-based broadband connection, which can be utilised by end users, service providers and operators in the way they best deem fit.” Finnet thought is would invest around EUR50 million to cover the entire population by 2007.
NMT placed its bid within a Nordic and Baltic context, drawing on its CDMA 450 MHz licences in Norway and Sweden. The operator said, “Once Nordisk Mobiltelefon has acquired a licence in Finland, it hopes to provide a unitary Nordic network extending international borders and the Baltic Sea by the end of 2005.”
NMT said it had researched Flash-OFDM but found that “commercial equipment does not yet exist” for 450.