WCA: WiMAX Forum unveils first certified products

SAN JOSE, CALIF.--The WiMAX Forum, one day after discussing changes in the IEEE 802.16-2004 standard that led to a last-minute delay in certification testing, announced this morning the first products to pass conformance and interoperability testing and achieve the designation of WiMAX Forum Certified.

At the WCA International Symposium and Business Expo here, the Forum listed Aperto Networks’ PacketMAX 5000 base station, Redline Communications’ RedMAX AN-100U base station, Sequans Communications’ SQN2010 System-on-a-chip base station solution, and Wavesat’s miniMAX customer premises equipment (CPE) solution as the initial qualifiers.

Manish Gupta, vice president of marketing and alliances at Aperto, said that even though Aperto has successfully deployed WiMAX-ready gear in the market, possessing certification will give the company a leg up. "It's a competitive advantage and will helps us in deals where WiMAX certification is required," he said, adding that reports of Aperto's pending certification already had been stirring interest among service providers that currently use gear from Aperto's competitors.

Yesterday, Jeff Orr, director of marketing at the WiMAX Forum, confirmed that "no less than three" products had completed testing, but said the forum wasn't ready to announce them. Orr also said the Cetecom Spain certification laboratory has confirmed 26 additional reservations from manufacturers for testing slots for both subscriber and base station equipment certification. The lab is setting up multiple test lines and refining the procedure with automated test equipment from two vendors in order to better handle the "unexpected" level of interest, Orr said.

"We did not think that many pieces of equipment would be ready for certification," he said. He declined to name the test gear vendors that are working with Cetecom, but said they are forum member companies.

The first round of WiMAX Forum Certified products are in the profile of 3.5 GHz TDD systems. Initially, there was though to be a second wave of testing that would start later in the first quarter addressing an FDD profile, but Orr said the testing is moving to a "queue" approach that will be more efficient. Alvarion, one of the companies that had planned to submit its product in that later wave, said it is now among the 26 scheduled for imminent testing, according to Carlton O'Neal, vice president of marketing at Alvarion.