Nokia has said it is rejoining the WiMax Forum a month
after the company quit the organisation.
At the company's annual Connections event this week, general
manager of its networking business Sari Baldauf said Nokia decided
to leave because WiMax had no impact on its plans in the short
term, but then changed its mind because of heavy involvement in the
forum by the rest of the telecoms industry.
"The decision [to leave the group] was perhaps made too much on
a practical basis rather than with regard to what the rest of the
world is doing," Baldauf said.
Some industry observers said the U-turn looked like a move to
associate the company with a high-profile technology to please
investors and analysts, at a time when Nokia was struggling to
shore up its handset market share.
The WiMax Forum is the standardisation group pushing the IEEE
802.16 family of wireless broadband technologies. It currently has
105 members including Alcatel, AT&T, BT, Fujitsu and Intel.
802.16 and WiMax are an effort to bring a hotch-potch of fixed
and mobile wireless broadband efforts together under a single
standard. Eventually it will result in low equipment prices through
commoditisation.
Mobile equipment makers such as Nokia, are more interested in
the mobile 802.16e standard. But even WiMax's most vocal backers,
such as Intel, say 802.16e equipment won't be around for several
years.
Some analysts speculated that the company was concerned WiMax
would compete with Nokia's 3G efforts.
Nokia was one of the most high-profile founding members of the
forum: it created the group last April along with Intel, Fujitsu
and specialist wireless players such as Alvarion.
The forum's success is such that equipment maker Navini
Networks, which formerly backed the rival 802.20 standard, recently
switched camps, while telecommunications heavyweights such as BT,
France Telecom and Qwest Communications International have also
come on board.
Alcatel has announced the first 802.16d equipment using Intel
chips, which should appear later this year and be ratified next
year.
The WiMax Forum members, chiefly Intel, have gone to great
efforts to promote WiMax as the way to standardise both fixed and
mobile broadband wireless networks, but the reality is that only
fixed systems will be in use in the near future, say industry
analysts.
As a result, companies interested in using WiMax as a
replacement for or complement to fixed technologies, such as DSL,
are flocking to join the forum, while those interested in mobility
are keeping their distance.
Matthew Broersma writes for Techworld.com
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