May 30, 2005 12:00 AM,

WiMAX SECTOR GETS ACTIVE IN ADVANCE OF SUPERCOMM

By Dan O'Shea

Terabeam Wireless, in advance of a press conference scheduled to take place next week during Supercomm 2005, said last week that it is developing WiMAX gear using the system-on-a-chip recently announced by Fujitsu Microelectronics America.

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Also, Adaptix, a maker of base stations and terminals intended to comply with the 802.16e Mobile WiMAX specification, announced it is partnering with LG Electronics to develop a channel card for LGE's system based on the Korean WiBro standard. The WiMAX Forum has been working closely with Korean companies to align WiMAX with WiBro.

In related news, ASIC developer Altera and broadband access equipment supplier SkyPilot Networks both separately announced that they are joining the WiMAX Forum. Also, the Open Base Station Architecture Initiative group announced that it has developed a WiMAX base station open interface.

The announcements come not only days before the first-ever WiMAX Pavilion is unveiled at Supercomm, but just weeks before the first round of WiMAX Forum product certification testing is due to begin at Cetecom Laboratories in Malaga, Spain.

Leigh Fatzinger, executive director of marketing at Adaptix, said the entire WiMAX community is looking toward the presence of multiple WiMAX vendors at Supercomm as another significant step in the validation of the technology.

“The WiMAX Forum and all of us feel that this show is something we've been preparing for, where we can say ‘Here are the applications, here are the service providers working with it, and here is the spectrum or here's where the efforts to work with regulatory agencies in the world to get the spectrum stand,” Fatzinger said. “WiMAX got downplayed and pushed aside at other Supercomms, but the enthusiasm for it now is well-founded.”

Terabeam's new gear, to be available in the fourth quarter as part of the company's TeraMax product family, also will leverage the vendor's Logan processor-agnostic operating system supporting multiple modes, including 802.16, 802.11 and Terabeam's proprietary TurboCell technology.

“It's hard for companies to rip out existing networks, so when we introduce new technology, we will not try to limit them to one kind of technology,” said Amit Malhotra, vice president of marketing at Terabeam Wireless.

Terabeam Wireless is the operational name of YDI Wireless, and the result of a merger one year ago between YDI Wireless and Terabeam, the free space optics vendor. Terabeam Wireless, in addition to developing its Imax products, still offers an FSO platform under the TeraOptics label.

Malhotra said WiMAX is a natural addition to a product portfolio that already includes the point-to-point capabilities of FSO technology and the point-to-multipoint capabilities of the firm's other broadband wireless equipment. WiMAX can be used in both kinds of deployment. The company also will continue to evaluate the evolution of WiMAX toward 802.16e Mobile WiMAX before deciding if it will produce equipment compliant to that future specification.

Meanwhile, Adaptix has been more focused on Mobile WiMAX, and Fatzinger said that participating in a partnership targeting upcoming deployments of the similar WiBro standard will give the company an early look at adoption models. “The WiBro standard was developed in conjunction with the Korean government, and Korea has become the world's testbed for these types of broadband technologies,” Fatzinger said. “There could be 10 million WiBro users by the end of the decade.”

Mobile WiMAX platforms probably will not be commercially operated on U.S. networks until at least sometime in 2007.