Nokia earmarks 2008 for mobile WiMax

Nokia does not yet see a business case for wide area coverage with WiMax

Nokia is holding fire on mobile WiMax until 2008 as it waits for the market to develop.

The company sees fixed WiMax (802.16d) as complementary to Wi-Fi hotspots, and will address the technology during 2006. But Nokia confirmed that it will not be getting into mobile WiMax (802.16e) until 2008.

"We are investing in WiMax but no-one knows how that market will develop," Mikko Salminen, director of fixed mobile convergence marketing at Nokia, told vnunet.com.

"We are waiting for at least a one per cent take-up by the market. Otherwise the market is dead."

Salminen explained that Nokia is usually early to market with new technologies, but that the company had started selling Wi-Fi systems three years too early in 1999/2000. The large scale market did not really start until 2003.

"Wide area coverage with WiMax from a cost perspective is tricky, and the business case is not there yet," said Robin Lindahl, vice president of radio networks marketing at Nokia.

"WiMax is not competing with 3G. It's a complementary technology best suited to Wi-Fi hotspots. Internet High Speed Packet Access is the best solution going forward because it can drive down operators' data costs."