In an announcement today, Finland’s Nokia announced that plans to make its Flexi WiMAX Base Station available to commercial mobile phone operators by the end of 2007—and that the company plans to start selling WiMAX-capable mobile phones to consumers in 2008.
“As the world is going wireless we believe the Nokia Flexi WiMAX Base Station offers broadband operators an easy and trusted way to offer wireless Internet connectivity to their customers anytime, anywhere,” says Ari Lehtoranta, Nokia’s Senior Vice President of Radio Networks. “Nokia is a strong believer in having a multiradio strategy that gives operators a future-proof solution and the flexibility to choose different technologies as they evolve.”
Nokia plans to start selling Flexi WiMAX Base Stations operating in the 2.5 GHz band by the end of 2007, and in the 3.5 GHz band in the first quarter of 2008. The units will be compact and lightweight, enabling flexible indoor or outdoor installation, with no air conditioning requirement and low power consumption. The equipment would enable mobile providers to offer WiMAX high-speed wireless services to customers…so long as they have compatible gear. Nokia plans to solve that problem too, by introducing WiMAX-capable handsets
Nokia, Samsung, and Motorola are all backing the WiMAX, which is an open standard high-speed wireless data technology offering mobile devices broadband data and Internet services. Unlike most in-place 3G data services, WiMAX connectivity doesn’t suffer if a mobile network is under significant load from voice callers. WiMAX competes with other wireless broadband technologies like EV-DO and UMTS.
