Alvarion (News - Alert) Ltd, an IBM partner, announced that it has received IBM’s SAFE (Standard Architecture Framework for Energy) certification for its wireless broadband solution for smart grid connectivity.

In a press release, Alavarion claimed that the recognition marks a new step in the partnership between Alvarion and IBM (News - Alert) on the Smart Utilities and Smart Cities markets. Alvarion CEO and President Eran Gorev said, “This certification is also an important milestone in aligning our Smart Grid and Smart City offering to customer objectives, based on a holistic wireless connectivity approach that we are confident will bring benefits to our customers in this market.”

Alvarion provides optimized wireless broadband solutions addressing the connectivity, capacity and coverage challenges of telecom operators, smart cities, security, and enterprise customers. It is one of few companies IBM has formed partnerships with in order to deliver a comprehensive end-to-end smart grid-ready solution offering to meet utilities’ needs on a global level.

The partnership allows the two companies combine their strength in their respective fields and provide the power and water utilities, municipalities, Telcos and enterprises with a reliable, secure and scalable smart grid network infrastructure solution that help them optimally meet their smart grid network infrastructure requirements.

Alvarion’s network infrastructure is a critical component of Smart Utilities and Smart City networks. Through the partnership, Alvarion and IBM bring the benefit of Alvarion’s best-of-breed wireless broadband connectivity solution, integrated with IBM’s Tivoli management platform to their customers. As part of the holistic management of the Smart Grid network, Tivoli provides monitoring and fault management of the Alvarion wireless broadband infrastructure. These capabilities allow the utility to achieve its smart grid project objectives within time and budget constraints.

In a separate press release, Alvarion reported a successful test of its 4Motion solution supporting TD-LTE by Canadian rural broadband services provider Xplornet Communications Inc.

In the release, Alvarion said that this was the first trial in Canada that tested 4G TD-LTE (News - Alert) technology on existing WiMAX infrastructure, offering a smooth migration from WiMAX to TD-LTE technology, based on a software-defined radio solution from Alvarion. According to Xplornet CEO John Maduri, this initiative marks a breakthrough for rural broadband in Canada.