The WiMAX Forum today announced the first ten 2.5 GHz Mobile WiMAX products to receive the WiMAX Forum Certified Seal of Approval.
The announcement included four base stations and six mobile station modules (also known as terminals) operating in the 2.5 GHz frequency band from eight WiMAX Forum member companies.
They include basestation and client devices from Airspan Networks (MiMAX Q-Series USB dongle), Alvarion (4Motion), Beceem Communications (BCS200 chipset), Intel Corporation (Wi-Fi/WiMAX Link 5350), Motorola (WAP 25400), Samsung Electronics (SPI-2211 and SWC-E100), Sequans Communications (SQN2130 ASIC and SQN1130 SOC system-on-chip), and ZyXEL (MAX-206M2). All of the newly certified 2.5 GHz mobile station modules passed the mandatory MIMO testing protocols.
“With the unwavering support of our members, the WiMAX Forum team has fulfilled our promise to ensure that WiMAX operators have the certified equipment and devices needed to deliver mobile internet services that consumers want,” said Ron Resnick, president of the WiMAX Forum, during a news conference in Amsterdam. “With the successful completion of extensive 2.5 GHz testing, we’ve laid the groundwork to speed up additional profile certifications and ultimately to continue advancing global WiMAX deployments at a record pace.”
Sequans Communications was awarded WiMAX Forum Certification for both its base station and Mobile WiMAX client reference designs at 2.5 GHz. This follows the award of certification for its 2.3 GHz reference designs two months ago.
The Sequans WiMAX Forum Certified Mobile WiMAX reference designs are based on the Sequans SQN1130 SOC for Mobile WiMAX clients and the SQN2130 ASIC for Mobile WiMAX base stations.
Sequans says the base station solution is the first and only ASIC-based solution in the market today and the client solution is the first and only to implement uplink MIMO for greatly improved cell coverage.
Hosted by AT4 wireless Labs in Malaga, Spain from June 1, through June 7, 2008, the WiMAX Forum conducted rigorous performance and interoperability testing with other WiMAX vendors in the 2.5 GHz spectrum band. Participants also tested the leading-edge features including Beamforming and Uplink Collaborative MIMO.
“We are very pleased to have our Mobile WiMAX 2.5 GHz designs receive the WiMAX Forum stamp of approval,” said Georges Karam, Sequans CEO. “Our chips are already powering some of the world’s most important Mobile WiMAX networks, and official certification will accelerate both the adoption of WiMAX technology and the rollout of more and more networks. We congratulate all the vendors who won certification today and especially our customer, ZyXEL.”
WiMAX Certification insures that all clients and basestations can connect to each other — like Wi-Fi certification from the Wi-Fi Alliance. The 2.5 GHz band is likely to be the main spectrum used by mobile WiMAX world-wide. Roaming agreements between different carriers, such as Sprint, Clearwire, Comcast and others, are expected to allow nation-wide, even global roaming.
Okay. Can we do this now?
