BridgeWave Communications’ FlexPort 80 GHz gigabit wireless radio has been named a finalist in the Network Infrastructure, Wide Area Network category in the CTIA (News - Alert) Emerging Technology (E-Tech) Awards.

CTIA’s fifth annual E-Tech Awards program recognizes products in 15 categories in the areas of mobile consumer electronics, luxury mobile, applications, enterprise, green solutions and network technology.

International CTIA WIRELESS 2010 will take place March 23-25 at the Las Vegas Convention Center.

More than 80 prominent media and industry analysts judged the 300-plus entries submitted for the E-Tech Awards program this year.

Products and services were judged on innovation, functionality, technological importance, implementation and the overall “wow” factor.

Officials with BridgeWave (News - Alert) said that the company’s FlexPort 80 GHz wireless system is the first millimeter wave solution on the market that was purpose built for next generation networks.

Company officials said that aside from simply providing gigabit capacity, FlexPort contains carrier-class features needed to support existing operators migration from 3G to 4G networks, or for carriers considering greenfield WiMAX (News - Alert) deployments.

According to company officials, FlexPort combines native TDM plus IP transmissions in a single, compact, all-outdoor solution while enabling Advanced QoS, Ethernet OAM, flexible RF channel tuning, Adaptive Rate and Modulation, and software capacity upgrades for true future-proof network connectivity.

“BridgeWave has maintained its focus on enabling carriers to build out the most cost-effective, high-capacity 4G networks, so they can continually provide their subscribers the best service possible,” said Amir Makleff, chief executive officer at BridgeWave, in a statement.

Makleff said that for this reason, the company is pleased that the carrier-grade functionality of FlexPort product is being recognized by CTIA’s E-Tech awards, as this draws more attention to carriers’ sincere efforts to roll out high-frequency 4G networks for even better mobile experiences.

BridgeWave Communications is a supplier of multi-gigabit wireless connectivity links for next-generation 4G mobile and WiMAX backhaul.