The WiMAX ecosystem went from skinny to fat last week as Nortel Networks Ltd. and Nokia Corp. launched their WiMAX portfolios at the WiMAX World trade show in Boston.
To date, Alcatel Inc., Fujitsu Network Communications, Motorola Inc., Nortel and Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. are among the tier-one vendors that have launched mobile WiMAX portfolios. Missing from the lineup is L.M. Ericsson. The behemoth Swedish supplier has shied away from investing funds into researching and developing mobile 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.
Or not. Peter Jarich, principal analyst at wireless research firm Current Analysis doubts Ericsson will change its mind and decide to play in mobile WiMAX.
“They really feel that HSPA technology is a viable solution for their customers,” noted Jarich. “They’re smart, and they were right with W-CDMA in that the market can only support so many vendors, so unless you come out with a really kick-ass solution, you’re just competing with everyone else. They understand that to support the R&D costs, you have to have a certain market share. And because of WiMAX’s open standards, though the technology might be able to support several vendors, there are already a lot of vendors going to market with WiMAX products. Ericsson knows they would just be one more name, and they would be fighting for a small share of the market.
“They’ll play the HSPA card. They’ll enhance with MIMO, and when they have to, when their customers say they want it, they’ll bring LTE to market. I don’t see them changing course.”
Nortel is calling its MIMO-powered WiMAX solution 4G mobile broadband technology and said the new gear can deliver content for one-10th the cost per bit of 3G networks.
“WiMAX is a profoundly disruptive technology,” stated Peter MacKinnon, Nortel’s general manager of WiMAX and chairman of LG-Nortel. “It will change the way content is delivered, the way users access information and entertainment as well as the economics of wireless operators.”
Nortel said its mobile WiMAX portfolio includes base-station transceivers, access service network gateways, mobile subscriber stations and network management systems.
Russian operator Golden Telecom is launching a mobile WiMAX field trial in Moscow using Nortel’s WiMAX equipment.
The operator said it plans to offer residents citywide access to high-speed mobile services like VoIP, Internet browsing, e-mail and multimedia applications. The trial is set to wrap up by the end of this year, according to Nortel.
Nortel also divulged that it struck a deal with Israel-based Runcom Technologies for MIMO chipsets and said it expects to deliver MIMO-enabled mobile WiMAX gear by the middle of next year.
Nokia’s WiMAX offering
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.
As this year’s WiMAX show was all about the base stations, next year’s show could be all about devices.
