The WiMAX ecosystem once was full of companies that provided turnkey network infrastructure and device portfolios, but with the increasing popularity of the technology, that’s changing. Some infrastructure vendors are focusing on what they do best, while letting their consumer electronic partners exploit their own talents.
That has been Alcatel-Lucent’s intention since it got into WiMAX in
late 2004, and a joint venture partnership with Kyocera it announced
this week at WiMAX World lives up to that intention. The companies said
they will work together on an end-to-end system using Alcatel-Lucent’s
Universal WiMAX platform and Kyocera multi-mode mobile phones, PC cards
and USB devices that rivals other single-vendor turnkey approaches. The
end-to-end system will be ready during the first half of next year.
“We don’t want to be a CPE vendor, but we want to strengthen the
ecosystem for devices,†said Michael Seymour, vice president of
partnerships at Alcatel-Lucent’s WiMAX Business Unit. Seymour said the
network equipment vendor tests its own system interoperability with as
many devices as possible to give carriers more flexibility.