The WiMAX Forum announced today it has selected its standardization test lab and provided a certification roadmap that marks July 2005 for the launch of the WiMAX Forum Certified program.
The WiMAX Forum selected Cetecom Spain as its official certification laboratory, achieving a critical milestone toward enabling the commercial availability of WiMAX Forum Certified products.
Acting as an independent body, Cetecom will test and certify WiMAX Forum member companies' products to ensure they meet WiMAX Forum conformance and interoperability standards.
"Since January 2003, the WiMAX Forum has been committed to driving growth and innovation in broadband wireless access through industry standards," says WiMAX Forum President Ron Resnick. "Preparation of the test lab is the last step in the process before we begin accepting equipment for certification. The lion's share of work has been done – we are in the home stretch."
The WiMAX Forum says the selection of Cetecom is the culmination of a rigorous 12-month review process. Cetecom was chosen for its extensive range of testing and compliance services, which includes experience in wireless technologies such as GSM/GPRS, EDGE, W-CDMA, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.
Headquartered in Spain, Cetecom has affiliate regional labs that will allow WiMAX Forum members worldwide to easily access the testing facilities.
Vendor equipment will undergo extensive testing by Cetecom to ensure it conforms to WiMAX profiles, as well as the IEEE 802.16-2004 and ETSI HiperMAN standard. Cetecom also will make certain it is interoperable with other WiMAX Forum Certified equipment. Certified products are critical to the ubiquitous deployment of broadband wireless access because they enable a mass market by driving price and performance to levels unachievable with proprietary equipment, the forum explains.
In its press release issued today, the WiMAX Forum notes the technology has gained significant momentum over the past two years, "particularly in the last nine months when the organization set mid-2005 as the target date for launching the WiMAX Forum Certified program."
Since that time, WiMAX Forum profiles were selected, the IEEE 802.16-2004 standard was completed and silicon manufacturers began sampling their products.
This footnote about the mid-2005 target date for launching the WiMAX Forum Certified program likely was added in light of recent reports in Information Week and Telephony magazines that said there will be a delay in the testing, certification and commercial availability of WiMAX products. The WiMAX Forum last week disputed those reports, saying mid-2005 has long been the expected date for WiMAX product certification to begin.
"Put simply, to characterize certification as 'delayed' is inaccurate," Kendra Petrone, Edelman's public relations contact for the WiMAX Forum, wrote in an e-mail to xchange last week, as reported in an xchange online story last Friday. "For the past 9 months, the WiMAX Forum has targeted mid-2005 to begin certification, and they are on track to do just that. It's interesting these reports have come about this week, because the WiMAX Forum has been gearing up to announce a major milestone related to certification in the next couple of days."
While the WiMAX Forum initially did say it would be testing for WiMAX certification in the summer of 2004 and there would be plugfest then, it was clear by the middle of last year that the forum wasn't hitting those dates, says Carlton O'Neal, vice president at broadband equipment vendor Alvarion Inc., one of the first members of the WiMAX Forum. "So as summer approached last year, the forum said ‘'it's going to be early next year now.' But did the forum ever come out and say ‘what does early '05 mean'? No one ever gave dates, so as we got in '05, everybody waited for dates to be published." O'Neal adds that "everyone knew it was kind of squishy" as far when WiMAX certification testing and product availability would occur.
The WiMAX Forum today laid out its certification roadmap to clear up the obvious confusion over when WiMAX testing and commercial availability of certified products is expected.
