Another interesting announcement from 3GSM World Congress was Alvarion's announcement of OPEN WiMAX. I gather that it's some kind of interoperability specification... but it puzzles me why WiMAX, which is itself an interoperability specification for systems based on 802.16 standards, needs another interoperabilty spec.
I've requested a briefing, and when I learn more, I'll write about it here.
By Steve Stroh
This article is Copyright © 2007 by Steve Stroh.
Steve,
I can shed some light until you speak with Carlton O'Neal. Indeed WiMAX is centered on a standard-based set of technologies and the ideal dream of WiMAX is to enable for the first time in the history of telecom (except maybe for the best-effort world of Wi-Fi) access networks as open as the Internet itself. In such a world, service providers can use whatever best-of-breed technologies they wish with full expectation of interoperability and across multiple peer WiMAX carriers. However, as a company we have since learned that some vendors may have plans to add non-standard proprietary hooks that will be carrier-specific. This would create walled gardens where the certain services or devices used are only those permitted by the carrier and/or the carrier's vendor. Sound familiar? It should as it is how the "broadband" Internet access cperates in the cellular world today.
So Alvarion intends to lead the market to drive towards a WiMAX world that is truly "open" and we are thus developing our BreezeMAX-based 4-Motion ecosystem to reflect and actualize the central value of that openess.
Posted by: Patrick Leary | February 15, 2007 at 20:17