Ericsson In ...
... can QUALCOMM and TI be far behind in joining WiMAX Forum?
Both Ericsson and Nokia may do OEM deals with Airspan Networks and Alvarion respectively ...
>> Ericsson to Enter WiMAX Market at Last
Caroline Gabriel
WiMAX Trends
June 27, 2005
wimaxtrends.com
Ericsson, the world’s largest maker of mobile infrastructure, is expected to enter the WiMAX market at last with an OEM deal with Airspan Networks.
The Swedish giant did join the WiMAX Forum at the end of last year and has several WiMAX-style and OFDM-based R&D projects ongoing, but it has made not concrete moves to announce products until now, making it the last of the telecoms equipment majors to come out with an 802.16 roadmap.
Fellow Scandinavian Nokia, which was similarly hesitant about WiMAX and its potential conflict with revenues from the core 3G market base, also took the plunge this month with a joint development agreement with Intel, focused on mobile devices, and is rumoured to be negotiating an OEM deal with Alvarion.
Ericsson is so far steering clear of pronouncements about the mobile version of WiMAX and concentrating its efforts on fixed wireless, where it already has a business unit, which includes some of Airspan’s proprietary last mile products. It said when it joined the Forum that it saw the standard primarily as an alternative to DSL although it would create products for the mobile 802.16e if demand were to emerge.
"WiMAX ensures interoperability of the open IEEE 802.16 standard for broadband wireless access. It is a natural part of an operator's Ethernet broadband offering and can also serve as transmission backhaul," said Karl Thedeen, vice president of wireline at Ericsson. “We don’t see WiMAX as a mobility solution.”
Ericsson recently announced a major push to increase its business in wireline and fixed line systems, as a step towards a strong position in the converged systems market. It seems that is where it will position WiMAX, rather than as a cellco technology.
Airspan, which also has OEM deals with Marconi and Fujitsu Networks, was the first vendor to launch an indoor, self installable subscriber terminal, a move that has positioned it well in the market. It is also creating a reference platform, with one of its chip suppliers, PicoChip, for a software defined radio architecture supporting various implementations of 802.16, current and future. This will allow for a software upgrade to 802.16e and future iterations. Airspan also uses chips from Sequans for its smaller base stations. <<
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