Vividwireless talks up retail channels

Vividwireless has entered "early discussions" with Harvey Norman and Dick Smith to act as retail channels for the company's forthcoming WiMAX internet products.

The company engaged Unwired to build and operate a $50 million network in Perth and had plans to expand nationwide.

Vividwireless chief executive Martin Mercer said the company hoped to have retail agreements "well and truly done by Christmas".

"We're in very early discussions with Harvey Norman and Dick Smith to see if they will be part of our distribution channels," Mercer told CRN.

"They're the only two retailers we've had discussions with so far."

Mercer said Vividwireless had provided "indicative pricing" to both retailers.

"They thought [pricing] was pitched at an appropriate level to make the product appealing," Mercer said.

Vividwireless planned to provide formal proposals to the retailers "within the next month".

But Mercer indicated the company had no plans to extend its channel to include IT resellers that targeted the small-to-medium business segments.

Despite targeting consumer users, SMEs could also be interested in the services, which were expected to provide average speeds of at least 4Mbps and be available from March 2010.

"We're not planning to engage any channel partners to focus on small businesses," Mercer said.

But an executive for integrated communications services at IBM Global Technology Services A/NZ, Craig Campbell, has speculated business partners could be retained.

IBM Global Technology Services won a role in the network deployment through its alliance with Juniper Networks.

"It could be that IBM offers the WiMAX service to our partners [to resell]," he said, "But that's all hypothetical."