By W. David GardnerInformationWeek
The companies include Intel, which has been a leader and major backer of the high-speed wireless technology, as well as Alcatel-Lucent, Cisco, Clearwire, Samsung Electronics, and Sprint Nextel.
The OPA said it expects another six to nine companies will join the organization. Companies with WiMax expertise or interest like Google, Microsoft, Motorola, Nokia, Nortel Networks, Qualcomm, Telefon, L.M. Ericsson, and Time Warner Cable are conspicuous by their absence from the OPA lineup.
"The OPA will advance a competitive and open intellectual property rights model, thus stimulating a larger WiMax industry that supports innovation through broader choice and lower equipment and service costs for WiMax technology, devices and applications locally," the group said in a statement (PDF) on its Web site.
The OPA said it will follow the lead of the IEEE 802.16e standards group and the WiMax Forum in establishing the alliance. The OPA noted that it plans to establish an independent third party "patent referee" of intellectual property.
With the bitter intellectual property disputes between Qualcomm and Nokia as a backdrop to the establishment of the OPA, the organization hopes to set up a system for royalty payments that will encourage companies to enter the market with products and services unfettered by threats of voluminous litigation. A Qualcomm spokesperson said the company, which already has a substantial patent portfolio in wide area wireless technology, won't be joining the OPA, according to the Wall Street Journal.
WiMax is being deployed in fits and starts, with several fixed WiMax deployments in place while the most-coveted mobile WiMax is just beginning to be rolled out, primarily in rural areas. Sprint and Clearwire have teamed up to launch the largest WiMax deployment.
See original article on InformationWeek
0 comments:
Post a Comment