Proxim works with Intel on WiMAX reference platform

Rethink IT, August, 2004

Proxim is to work with Intel to create a WiMAX reference platform that can be licensed to OEMs, and has also announced its own 802.16 product roadmap.

The company, which was a founder member of WiMAX Forum but has been fairly quiet on the subject since, will co-develop the reference design for 802.16d and 802.16e base station and customer premises equipment (CPE) in the 5.8GHz band. This is designed to help CPE designers come to market quickly. Low cost, commodity CPE lies at the heart of the economic argument for WiMAX, with prices expected to come down from the current $300 mark to around $50 within a year, and then to be incorporated in laptop cards.

The hardware reference platform will be available to be licensed by any OFM, while Proxim will also license its software architecture to selected partners on a case by case basis. Lynn Lucas, director of marketing and business development, explained that the software would give those partners significant competitive edge, since they could benefit from Proxim's own developments for the outdoor point-to-multipoint market, where it has played since acquiring Western Multiplex.

Like many other smaller companies, Proxim is hoping to extend its industry reach and its royalty revenues through opening up its intellectual property, Qualcomm-style. Lucas compares the situation to the early days of Wi-Fi, when pioneers such as Proxim, Aironet (now Cisco), Symbol and Breezecom created reference architectures to help jumpstart the market.

Proxim's own Intel-based base station and CPE products--labelled Tsunami MP.16--will be, initially at least, mainly targeted at the enterprise, which Lucas feels has been under-represented in the WiMAX world so far, but where she expects rapid uptake because corporates have "less complex business model issues than operators".