Navini Networks is announcing the availability of its mobile WiMAX 16e software with smart beamforming. Customer shipments will start in December 2006, following Wave-1 certification.
“One of the features that differentiates it from existing standards such as 3G, is smart beamforming, an important ingredient to delivering personal broadband,” said Roger Dorf, president and CEO, Navini Networks. “We are proud to be the first company to be bringing smart beamforming enabled mobile WiMAX (termed ‘Smart WiMAX(TM)’) to the market place.”
Navini is the only vendor to offer Smart WiMAX: Mobile WiMAX with smart beamforming enabled. While most other vendors are still talking about their first stage WiMAX systems with ‘Wave-2′ mobile WiMAX systems still on the white board, Navini’s first WiMAX systems claims it will deliver the smart beamforming benefits of ‘Wave-2′ mobile WiMAX networks in Wave-1 timeframe.
“We are pleased with our progress in hitting our milestones and delivering advanced products and technology to our customers,” said Dorf. “Now we have migrated smart beamforming to OFDMA and are ready to announce the next step — availability of the WiMAX software load with smart beamforming enabled.”
With Smart WiMAX, Navini says customers can experience up to 60% lower capex and up to 50% lower opex than 3G for delivering personal broadband. The comparison is even starker against WiFi mesh systems where the difference can be as much as 80% lower capex.
Navini Networks is a principal member of the WiMAX Forum and the IEEE 802.16e committee and is headquartered in Richardson, Texas.
“WiMAX will be competitive with fixed DSL services where copper loops are in place,” says Bob Larribeau, Principal Analyst at TelecomView and coauthor of Broadband Strategies for the Fixed Market.
Each subchannel on OFDMA is not a fixed value–it is determined according to the user’s bandwidth requirements, which means the number of subcarriers varies according to the transported content, optimizing the number of users at any given time. The subcarriers are also dynamically and optimally modulated for maximum thoughput. That means base stations typically handle several hundred simultaneous users.
Mobile WiMAX claims to be faster and cheaper than 3G cellular networks, even with the latest EVDO Rev. A or HSDPA technology, resulting in WiFi speed with cellular range.
How long until you can stick a Mobile WiMax card in a $200 mobile hotspot/router? Maybe sooner than many muni wireless planners expect. Maybe in six months. Of course the licensed 2.5 GHz band will be run by Sprint and Clearwire. Muni backers are therefore stuck with unlicensed WiFi (or 4.9 GHz public service bands) for broadband wireless.
Some entrepreneurs are floating the idea of setting aside sections of the 1.7GHz (in the AWS band) and 700MHz for muniwireless/public service. Perhaps a public discussion of the concept would be useful.
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