WiMAX Forum unveils first certified kit vendors
10 April 2008
WiMAX Forum unveils first certified kit vendors
The WiMAX Forum this week unveiled the first mobile WiMAX products to receive its official stamp of approval.
Eight products, manufactured by four vendors, were announced at the WiMAX Forum Congress Asia 2008, held in Singapore this week.
The first four vendors to be endorsed by the industry body are POSDATA with a USB modem and base station; Runcom with a CPE and base station; Samsung with a base station and PCMCIA card; and Sequans with a subscriber station reference design and base station reference design.
Each of the eight certified products operates in the 2.3GHz frequency band using 8.75MHz channels, which is the spectrum allocation of Korea Telecom's WiBRO service, and each have "Wave 1" certification status, that is, they don't have MIMO or smart antenna technology.
"This is a great day for the WiMAX ecosystem," said Ron Resnick, chairman and president of the WiMAX Forum. "[Certification] gives choice for service providers and end consumers, and with dozens of other products in line for certification, it is a sign of a healthy ecosystem."
Given the greater device choice that certification and assured interoperability between different vendors' products brings, as well as greater confidence among consumers and operators, Korean carrier KT expects this will act as a major driver for WiBRO growth. "There are 150,000 WiBRO subscribers now, but we project that will grow to 410,000 by the end of 2008," said Hyun Pyo Kim, director of WiBRO planning for Korea Telecom. "The availability of WiMAX Forum Certified equipment will enable KT to significantly expand its customer base."
For the 2.5GHz frequency band, which is used by Sprint Nextel, the WiMAX Forum expects certified mobile products to be ready in the third quarter and will start immediately with Wave 2, for both 5MHz and 10MHz channels.
"The 2.5GHz Wave 2 certification will act as a base line for Wave 2 certification in all of the other [standard] frequency bands," said Ed Agis, chair of the WiMAX Forum's Certification Working Group.
Agis says that 19 vendors have already submitted Wave 2 products for certification in the 2.5GHz frequency band. "We expect to start certifying mobile products at 3.5GHz by this August," he adds.
One way which the WiMAX Forum intends to speed up the certification process is to open up more testing labs. In addition to its current testing labs located in the US, Spain, China, Taiwan and Korea, the WiMAX Forum intends to open up one in Japan and India, as well as another in Taiwan, by the end of this year. Next year, a testing lab is scheduled to be opened in Brazil.
"By the end of 2011 we will have more than 1,000 certified mobile products, and this is not counting consumer electronics devices and the hundreds of other PC products that are embedded with pre-WiMAX Forum certified modems," said Resnick.
The WiMAX Forum reports there are 260 commercial WiMAX deployments, fixed and mobile, in more than 110 countries around the world.
"We have over 62 companies developing silicon and end user devices, as well as 37 companies developing products for infrastructure," said Resnick. "This shows a major commitment by the vendor community, despite being in the nascent stage of the [mobile Internet] industry. We have a lead start of two to three years over any other competing technology."
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