BOSTON—The WiMAX ecosystem is getting fatter by the day, as Nokia Corp. joined the list of tier-one vendors launching WiMAX portfolios at the WiMAX World trade show in Boston.
Nokia unveiled its modular Flexi WiMAX base station, which the company said will be available for the 2.5 GHz band at the end of 2007 and for 3.5 GHz in the first quarter of 2008.
“As the world is going wireless we believe the Nokia Flexi WiMAX Base Station offers broadband operators an easy and trusted way to offer wireless Internet connectivity to their customers anytime, anywhere,” explained Ari Lehtoranta, senior vice president of Radio Networks at Nokia. “Nokia is a strong believer in having a multi-radio strategy that gives operators a future-proof solution and the flexibility to choose different technologies as they evolve.”
The company noted that its WiMAX-capable mobile devices are expected to be available in 2008.
To date, Alcatel Inc., Fujitsu Network Communications, Motorola Inc., Nortel Networks Ltd. and Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. are among the tier-one vendors that have launched WiMAX portfolios. Missing from the lineup is L.M. Ericsson. The behemoth Swedish supplier has shied away from investing funds into researching and developing WiMAX technology.
With so many WiMAX base stations now on the market, contract announcements could be just around the corner, and that could spur Ericsson to enter the WiMAX fray, possibly through a WiMAX-developer acquisition.
