WiMAX Forum initiative should boost consumer electronics products

HONOLULU, Hawaii—The WiMAX Forum’s recently announced Open Retail Initiative should spur more consumer electronics companies to make products using WiMAX technology because they will be able to bring those products to more operators quickly, said Ron Resnick, president and chairman of the forum.
The initiative also will lower costs for member-operator companies in the WiMAX Forum because they won’t have to spend their own money to ensure devices and other products are certified to run on the networks. The program has several components, Resnick told the audience at the Global WiMAX Business Development Forum, sponsored by Huawei. First, client products can be tested for interoperability and radiated performance testing, among other tests, at seven independent labs in the United States, Spain, Taiwan, China, Korea and Malaysia. The labs will be able to test network devices like base stations later this summer, he added.
An important feature of the program is its Certification Version Signaling, which lets participating operators to identify a subscriber device and know its feature set when the device is trying to connect to the operator’s network. The CVS uses the Open Mobile Alliance’s OMA DM device management to allow an operator’s network to automatically configure and maintain the devices over the air once the device is on the network. Resnick said the CVS feature will let carriers not only know which products are trying to attach to the network, but to tailor business offerings to the consumer based on the device. Because the WiMAX Forum envisions consumers buying products at retail stores not necessarily associated with the operator, it is especially important that the operator be able to know what device is trying to connect to its network. The OTA provisioning feature should be live in the third or fourth quarter of this year. “So when the consumer buys a product in a retail outlet, the device will find the operator’s network and the operator will know whether that device is certified to operate on its network.”
Operators can still differentiate on products by add-ons, Resnick said, but for devices like laptop computers, this saves the operator money and time. “This will be a catalyst for WiMAX to grow,” said WiMAX Forum COO Frank Farjood.