SAN JOSE, Calif.-Fixed WiMAX products from Aperto Networks Inc., Redline Communications Inc., Sequans Communications and Wavesat Inc. have been stamped “WiMAX Forun Certified.”
“The WiMAX era starts today,” boasted Ron Resnick, president of the WiMAX Forum.
The WiMAX Forum made the announcement at the WCA Technical and Business Symposium in San Jose, Calif.
“With more than 150 commercial trials and deployments of fixed WiMAX networks announced to date, it is clear there is tremendous confidence placed in these systems by operators around the globe,” said Resnick.
Indeed, standards-based WiMAX products, built predominantly with off-the-shelf components, are expected to lower the cost of WiMAX deployments-ultimately sparking the global WiMAX market.
Certified products include Aperto Networks’ PacketMAX 5000 base station, Redline Communications’ RedMAX AN-100U base station, Sequans Communications’ SQN2010 base station solution and Wavesat’s miniMAX customer premise equipment solution.
“Certification means interoperability and compatibility,” explained Reza Ahy, chairman and chief executive of Aperto. “It means that customers can buy with confidence. Certification means that vendors like Aperto can compete and cooperate in a framework of open standards.”
The forum said all the products in its first round of certifications were developed according to the WiMAX Forum-defined certification profile for 3.5 GHz systems, which is based on the IEEE 802.16-2004 and ETSI HiperMAN standards.
In July 2005, the WiMAX Forum opened its first certification lab, operated by Cetecom Labs, in Malaga, Spain.
“This is a crucial step in the process of developing and certifying both fixed and mobile WiMAX networks,” said Lindsay Schroth, senior analyst of broadband access technologies at the Yankee Group. “We expect this announcement to impact the deployment time tables of large and small service providers around the world that will use fixed WiMAX networks as a way to deliver true broadband services to consumers and business users.”
