Eighteen new member companies have joined the WiMax organization, the effort to develop a wireless broadband infrastructure.
The new members include 802.11a pioneer Atheros, as well as Andrew Corporation, China Motion Technologies, Compliance Certification Services, LCC International, News IQ, Powerwave Technologies, Redline Communications, RF Integration, RF Magic, SiWave, SiWorks, SR Telecom, Stratex Networks, TowerStream, TurboConcept, Wavesat Wireless and Winova Wireless.
“We are delighted to have a group of the industrys marquee companies joining, and their participation will accelerate the momentum of WiMaxs efforts,” said Margaret LaBrecque, the WiMAX president, in a statement. “Just as the Wi-Fi Alliance achieved initial success by creating industry consensus around a common specification, WiMax has proven with its expanding membership and progress designating initial system profiles that it is poised to drive the development of cost-effective, industry standards-based products.”
The WiMax group said it will focus its efforts on a single physical layer, the 256 OFDM physical layer, which operates in the 2.5-GHz and 3.5-GHz licensed bands and the 5.8-GHz unlicensed band.
By the end of 2003, WiMax will have developed conformance test plans, selected certification labs, and be ready to conduct interoperability events for equipment vendors in 2004, said Gordon Antonello, chairman of WiMaxs 2 to 11-GHz Technical Working Group and IEEEs 802.16d task group.