Nokia is to team up with Intel to consolidate WiMAX standards.
Martin Blade, systems marketing director for radio networks at Nokia’s Networks division, made a point of saying that no product decision has been made on whether Intel’s WiMAX chips will find their way into Nokia handsets. Rather, he said, the alliance was about consolidating the 802.16e standard for mobile WiMAX.
Mr Blade said the IEEE was still deliberating as to how WiMAX networks would look, in terms of what would be required on the network side. Indeed, one of the drivers behind the tie-up with Intel is to push for speedy ratification of the standard in order that they can start work on producing and selling standards-based kit.
The logical place for WiMAX radio equipment to go, however, would clearly be existing cellular base stations. Mr Blade said Nokia and Intel’s plans were for the distance from a base station/access point up to which WiMAX connectivity would be possible was 500 meters, and that Nokia sees WiMAX as complementary to the 3GPP cellular technologies already on its roadmap.
These are GPRS, WCDMA and, most recently, HSDPA, which speeds the downlink (base station to device) in 3G networks. With HSDPA equipment becoming available this year, in 2007 Nokia expects to deliver HSUPA, which improves the speed on the uplink.
Beyond that, Nokia is pushing for ratification of a kind of cut-down version of HSDPA and HSUPA called Internet-HSPA. This is a Nokia development that is designed to enable a reduced architecture in the core network and reduced mobility, the advantage being that it uses the same infrastructure and devices. Nokia now wants this technology ratified as a standard.
Clearly both sides are being coy in their statements as to how far this partnership could go, but it seems reasonable to assume that eventual 16e chips from Intel would go into Nokia handsets, as well as potentially into the network equipment needed to communicate with them. As Mr Blade points out, Nokia was actually a founding member of WiMAX Forum, but the technology’s addition to its radio portfolio, together with the collaboration with Intel, indicate a commitment to actually bringing it to market, rather than merely talking about it.
