WiMAX MARKET RACE SEES NEW CONTENDERS IN INTEL, PROXIM

Proxim Corp. and semiconductor giant Intel Corp. announced last week they will work together on WiMAX reference designs in an effort to speed WiMAX product development and time to market. Proxim also unveiled its WiMAX product roadmap, joining companies such as Alvarion and Aperto Networks, which have made similar announcements in recent weeks.

Proxim and Intel will christen the partnership by co-developing fixed base stations supporting the 802.16a, Revision D WiMAX specification, now being referred to as 802.16-2004, according to Jeff Orr, director of product marketing at Proxim. “We're trying to get everyone away from the alphabet soup,” he said. “The IEEE didn't want to be confusing with the letter suffixes. The different letters are for document tracking. 802.16 Rev. D is not meant to be a replacement for 802.16a.”

The partners also will co-develop a reference design for WiMAX customer premises equipment. The reference design will be used by Proxim in its Tsunami MP.16 base station. However, the design's hardware and software components also will be made available for CPE designers from other companies using Intel WiMAX chipsets to help create a large pool of commercial WiMAX equipment quickly. “Intel's other ODMs will use that reference design rather than having to create their own from scratch,” Orr said.

Proxim and Intel also will collaborate on base stations employing the emerging 802.16e specification designed to enable mobility in WiMAX deployments. “There is a market need now for equipment based on that specification,” Orr said. “There is pent-up demand for mobility in a fixed environment for users in public safety, transportation and other markets.” For that reason, Proxim will come out with pre-standard 802.16e product capabilities, he said.

This week, Proxim will be displaying its products at a kiosk in Intel's booth at the Supercomm 2004 trade show in Chicago.

The alliance of Proxim and Intel follows a similar partnership between Wavesat and Murandi Communications that was announced last week. Those two companies said they will develop WiMAX-compliant reference designs, but based on Wavesat's chipsets. Intel, Wavesat and Fujitsu Microelectronics are the three semiconductor companies that are members of the WiMAX Forum.

In addition to the partnership with Intel, Proxim also has announced its product roadmap for supporting WiMAX. The company sees a three-phase rollout of WiMAX capabilities, with the first phase being a proprietary system that will migrate to WiMAX Forum certification in early 2005. The second phase will see integration between 802.11 Wi-Fi and 802.16 WiMAX products. “The way base stations are constructed probably will change,” Orr said. “Networking functions will be handled by indoor equipment, and RF will be outdoors.” The third phase of the roadmap is evolution to mobility with 802.16e.