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.”
Of course, that explosion will be predicated on the deployment of mobile WiMAX networks, which to this point have been limited domestically to Sprint Nextel Corp.’s recent launch of a trial network of its mobile WiMAX-powered Xohm service in Chicago and Washington, D.C./Baltimore. The carrier plans to expand the trial next year with hopes of covering 100 million potential customers by the end of 2008.
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.
2.3 to start, 2.5 later
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 under way soon afterward. Sprint Nextel is using the 2.5 GHz spectrum band for its service
“What’s important about that is that I think some early service providers have been moving forward with equipment that will eventually be certified by the WiMAX Forum,” said Philip Solis, senior analyst at ABI Research. “It’s really that some service providers are just waiting to use certified equipment.”
Service providers will now be able to choose devices that are certified, Solis added. “It’s definitely another positive step.”
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.
Driving the process
Sprint Nextel 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.
Sprint Nextel was driving the certification process here in the United States well before the WiMAX Forum opened its lab, Solis said.
Nadine Manjaro, a senior analyst at ABI Research’, said Sprint Nextel initially considered putting products in the market regardless of the certification so long as they were WAVE 2 certified and met second-phase requirements such as frequency bands and channel sizes. “I think this kind of puts them back on track,” she added.
“Sprint has always been very regimented in terms of testing so even with the WiMAX Forum certification stamp on there I think they’ll still do their own testing,” Manjaro said.
Shakouri said the forum and Sprint Nextel have collaborated extensively throughout the mobile WiMAX certification 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.”
