Nortel and LG Electronics have announced plans to work together to jointly develop and market WiMAX products.
This follows the January 2005 announcement of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between Nortel and LG Electronics to establish a joint venture for providing high quality, leading edge telecommunications equipment and networking solutions to Korea and other markets globally.
The companies’ global WiMAX strategy, announced today at CTIA Wireless 2005, the world’s largest wireless tradeshow, marries the power of Nortel’s carrier packet networking and OFDM/MIMO (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing/Multiple In, Multiple Out) leadership with LG Electronics’ mobile telecommunications and digital convergence expertise.
“This leverages the combined strengths of Nortel and LG Electronics to provide end-to-end solutions and investment in innovative technologies that will position our customers for greater success,” said Dave Murashige, vice president, Carrier Networks, Nortel. “We are focused on the continuing evolution of wireless broadband and its increasing role in communications networks.”
“Nortel’s and LG Electronics’ strengths will combine powerfully to deliver the future WiMAX vision,” said Jae Ryung Lee, executive vice president, Networks, LG Electronics. “With the advent of 802.16e, mobility solutions for broadband wireless will become possible, and Nortel is an acknowledged leader in networking
technologies that will be married with WiMAX access to enable that vision.”
Nortel and LG will develop WiMAX solutions based on the 802.16e standard and the WiMAX networking specification, currently under development within the WiMAX Forum. The companies are planning customer WiMAX 802.16e trials in the second half of 2006.
Nortel believes that the combination of OFDM and MIMO can be realized in 802.16e and WiMAX. These technologies provide greater spectrum efficiency, which is needed to scale wireless broadband systems for large numbers of users and high data throughputs. Nortel has invested in advanced development of OFDM
and MIMO for the past six years and has demonstrated the benefits and commercial feasibility of these technologies to more than 100 customers.
IEEE 802.16e is a point-to-multipoint broadband wireless access standard that will support fixed, nomadic and mobile wireless broadband connectivity without requiring direct line-of-sight access to a base station. In a mobile deployment, WiMAX-based solutions can deliver wireless broadband data with cost-effective macrocellular deployments.