Cisco stopt met Wimax
Nadat eerder deze maand Alcatel-Lucent bekend maakte de ontwikkelingen Wimax op een laag pitje te zetten, volgt nu Cisco. Is dit het begin van het einde aan Wimax?
Cisco has confirmed that it will exit the WiMAX access network market, which it entered when it acquired Navini Networks in 2007. The company will now focus, as it does in all other wireless infrastructure sectors, on the IP core, plus transport and, after the Starent purchase, the evolved packet core. This leaves its only access network activities at the miniaturized end, in femtocells and Wi-Fi access points.
The move is logical, freeing Cisco to sell its core network products to WiMAX operators alongside any vendor’s RAN, as it does at Clearwire and others. It is something of a mystery why Cisco broke with this tradition and thought it would like to play in the WiMAX RAN, and with hindsight this has proved an aberration that has been quickly put right, with limited negative impact for the IP giant. But that does not detract from Navini’s value as an acquisition – it was just purchased by the wrong vendor, to whom it would never be truly strategic. In the hands of an access specialist, it could have delivered major competitive value, especially as the technology where it was strongest, beamforming, is finally coming into its own in the WiMAX market (and in LTE, to which another acquirer might have adapted some Navini technologies too).
Navini was touting the benefits of beamforming plus MIMO before this combination was incorporated into the 802.16e WiMAX standard as options, and even before WiMAX itself. Beamforming, which enhances range and data rate by targeting signals accurately, was at the heart of the firm’s proprietary platform, RipWave, which was then migrated to the WiMAX standard and supported various mobile broadband operators such as Australia’s Unwired and the US’ Xanadoo. In combination with MIMO smart antenna arrays and OFDMA, beamforming was part of the trio of technologies that would underpin 4G systems and break the limitations of capacity and data rate of existing networks.
bron: Rethink Wireless
