Monday, 13 June 2005

Nokia and Intel Push to Get WiMAX Out this Year

Nokia and are stepping up their efforts and collaboration to make WiMAX a new standard in mobile broadband Internet access. Intel has been the driving force behind WiMAX, touting it as the long-distance broadband Internet sibling of Wi-Fi which it turned into a success with its Centrino chipsets for laptops. The support of Nokia, which has not always been a WiMAX believer, shows that the world's biggest mobile phone maker and one of the leading wireless networks makers also sees a future.

Interestingly, Nokia sees WiMAX demand from mobile telecoms operators, for which the Finnish firm is already building third generation mobile phone networks with, also, fast Web access. "There is interest from operators. It's still too early to tell who and what, but we (Intel and Nokia) are making sure it is working," said Tero Ojanpera, Nokia's chief strategy officer. "The key thing is to get the WiMAX standard ready," he said, adding that despite the additional research efforts from Nokia, it will be towards the end of the year before there is an open standard that can be used by all chip and mobile device makers.