Proxim supercharges backhaul products with 4G technology

Both systems support licensed, unlicensed and public safety frequencies in the 2.3 GHz to 2.5 GHz and 4.9 GHz to 6.08 GHz bands, but Proxim plans to add other bands in its next release phase. Also in the works is a much higher capacity radio. Manglik said Proxim is developing a version of the 8100 radios that could support up to 600 Mb/s, though he wouldn’t offer many specifics for competitive reasons. Manglik would only say that Proxim aims to achieve that capacity boost with both improvements to the radio’s spectral efficiency and increases in spectral bandwidth used. Proxim is targeting the end of the year for their release.

Proxim has traditionally been a wireless LAN equipment vendor, but over the last few years its core focus on radio has shifted to wide area technologies such as broadband wireless access and backhaul. “Our history is in wireless LAN, but over time, WLAN proved to be not as differentiated a market as it was before,” Manglik said. “We wanted to be in a market where we can differentiate our technology.”

That new focus on high-capacity long-distance radios has turned Proxim into an access company: 50% of its revenues come from sales fixed WiMax gear as well as proprietary access equipment using its wireless outdoor routing protocol (WORP). The remaining half of its business is divided among its point-to-point backhaul business targeted at operators and its WLAN business focused on enterprises. While Proxim has several customers that use its access gear for standard residential and business broadband, Manglik said its fastest growing segments are in new machine-to-machine applications. One particularly hot area is video surveillance and security (see Telephony’s series on IP Video Surveillance), which is now the second largest part of Proxim’s business, Manglik said.