The Irish broadband operator Imagine Networks sued Motorola, alleging that it failed to meet its obligations to deploy a WiMAX network. The company claims that Motorola breached the terms of the original contract by only installing 125 WiMAX base stations instead of the planned 234.
Imagine Networks sued Motorola for €90 million, claiming that the vendor has already caused it to lose €17 million to date, and expects the cumulative losses to run to €90 million by the end of 2013.
Motorola claimed that it has complied with its obligations. The company stated when it won the contract in October 2009 that it was providing a degree of vendor financing to support the supply of WiMAX equipment.
Starting in October last year, Imagine Networks maintains that Motorola has been unwilling to resolve the financial and technical problems, and has instead asked Imagine to contract with Nokia Siemens Networks to resolve the issues. Motorola is in the process of selling its wireless networking business to Nokia Siemens for $1.2 billion.
The lack of an adequate capital on hand is said to have caused Imagine to consider cutting 100 jobs to save costs.
Separately, the former state monopoly telco, Eircom, has announced that it is planning to quadruple the size of its Wi-Fi network from 1,000 to 4,000 hotspots by 2013. The enlarged network will be focused on boosting Wi-Fi coverage in high density population areas. However, this ambitious plan might stumble unless Eircom's new business plan can convince lenders to restructure its €3.75 billion of debt, which includes asking the creditors to agree to write off some of the company's debt.
For more:
- see this Irish Times article
- see this Silicon Republic article
- see this Telegeography article
- see this Cellular News article
- see this Independent.ie article
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