Nortel Networks Ltd. has made no secret of its plans to play big-time in the WiMAX ecosystem. Shortly after Sprint Nextel Corp. announced its plans to build a nationwide WiMAX network, Nortel named Peter MacKinnon as the new general manager of its WiMAX business.
MacKinnon was already chairman of LG-Nortel and president of Nortel’s GSM/UMTS Networks, roles which he still maintains.
Speaking to Nortel’s WiMAX ambitions, MacKinnon told RCR Wireless News that he believes Nortel has “a strong opportunity to lead.”
More specifically, he said, “We’re not looking at WiMAX as a tactical strategy, we’re looking at it as our next-generation of products.”
As hopeful WiMAX vendors vie for a piece of Sprint Nextel’s network buildout, MacKinnon says Nortel’s advantage is that the company is going with Multiple-Input, Multiple-Output technology from day one. However, Nortel was not named as an initial supplier to the Sprint Nextel network. Those honors went to Intel Corp., Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. and Motorola Inc.
“We’re in full execution mode, this year we have a number of customers that we’re working with as far as being in their networks with products.”
And MacKinnon said those networks will likely serve a multitude of devices that will be able to talk to each other.
“Every single consumer electronic product will have a WiMAX chip in it—from PDAs, TVs, iPODs, Nintendos, digital cameras—the chips will be so cost effective that they’ll be naturally included in devices.”
MacKinnon boldly stressed that WiMAX looks set to dominate the next 10 to 15 years of infrastructure investment and predicted that the industry will likely see content owners getting closer to their viewers, delivering their material via wireless networks.
“For operators, 3G is sort of the Mercedes for delivering voice. But it’s not well suited for video, which could bring some of the networks to their knees. The next-generation of network solutions will solve that problem for operators in a lot more cost-effective manner than voice is solved today.”
