WiMAX certification lab opens

The WiMAX Forum has opened its first, and lead, lab to formally test and evaluate mobile WiMAX products for certification. With the lab now open for submissions, certified mobile WiMAX products are projected to hit the commercial market in the coming months.
“This is a major milestone for us,” said Mo Shakouri, VP of marketing at the WiMAX Forum. Calling this the “end of the line,” Shakouri said these certifications will lead to an explosion of services and commercial availability in 2008. “We are expecting hundreds of devices to go through certification in 2008,” he added.
The forum is anticipating a two- to three-month timeline for each device’s certification. Everything from base stations to feature-rich devices will be tested for interoperability, power control, minimum uplink and downlink speeds and numerous other parameters defined by the organization.
“In order for a certification stamp to be achieved . they need to be able to go through and interoperate with at least two other vendors,” Shakouri explained.
The group said 2.3 GHz certification testing will begin in the first quarter of the year, with 2.5 GHz MIMO testing expected to get underway soon afterward.
The first lab is headquartered in Spain. “We have to focus on one main lab to make sure everything is working,” Shakouri said. Four additional labs will begin operations in 2008 in the United States, Taiwan, China and Korea.
The WiMAX Forum estimates that more than 300 operators in more than 65 countries have deployed mobile WiMAX trials. “The majority of the work in WiMAX is international,” Shakouri said.
Sprint Nextel Corp., which is soft-launching three test markets before the end of the year, has been testing the technology at its own lab in Virginia for months. The lab also houses teams from the operator’s core vendor partners to speed up the process.
Shakouri said the forum and Sprint Nextel have collaborated extensively throughout the process and will continue to do so.
“Certification facilitates Xohm’s model for open access,” Barry West, president of Sprint’s Xohm business unit, said in a prepared statement. “We applaud the WiMAX Forum for this important and timely step, which will encourage device innovation in anticipation of Sprint’s WiMAX network launch in the United States.”