Glenn, You are doing the industry a service by taking the vendors to task in the use of the WiMAX mark. Looking back to the Wi-Fi early days, few in the press sought to distinguish between what really was Wi-Fi vs. unlicensed in general. That drove me nuts as I considered it a journalistic integrity issue
About WiMAX, it is my understanding that the WiMAX Forum(tm) has trademarked only the "WiMAX Forum" and "WiMAX-Certified," but not the WiMAX name alone. I also understand that they have little problem with the term "pre-WiMAX," but are not supportive at all of terms like "WiMAX-like," which is being bandied about by some. The reason is that phrases such as WiMAX-like are being used to describe products that can never be WiMAX-certified(tm), such as single carrier products or even DSSS proprietary versions of 802.11b. For the record, you should know (and I confirmed this with Carlton), our use of the term "pre-WiMAX" refers to our BreezeACCESS VL unlicensed 5GHz OFDM PmP solution. We say "pre-WiMAX" because it was introduced obviously pre-cert and because the product does have much of the central "goodness" of WiMAX, such as high capacity and NLOS ability through use of OFDM. We do not pretend nor say that the VL is or will be WiMAX and any customer familiar with the issue would validate that we are clear about this. In doing so, do we borrow from the goodness of the WiMAX? Yes, certainly, but we do not think we do so in a misleading or abusive manner. In fact, integrity in such matters is a central corporate value and any examination of how we report financials, press releases about customer business, and product specs will prove this to be true. Frankly, we are most often accused of being too conseravtive in these things (and many of us internally have even argued this), but in hindsight and the wake of scandalous debris from the pop of the "Bubble," our conservativeness would appear to be ahead of its time. The term we reserve for BreezeMAX is to say it is our "WiMAX platform." That is neither misleading or abusive since that is in fact what it is. Such a phrase says nothing about its being a WiMAX-certified product yet, only that it is the solution platform we intend to lead us into the WiMAX generation and that it was built from the ground up explicitly for this purpose. It is not a re-conditioned version of our proprietary products, OFDM (which we have been shipping for almost 3 years now) or otherwise. For the BrezeMAX base station, we currently use our own internally-developed ASIC we have been working on for years to conform with the OFDM subset of 802.16a. BreezeMAX also has some FGPAs to support any soft tweaks that may be needed to conform with WiMAX defined profiles. And, of course, none of this is happening in a vacuum since Alvarion is one of the companies central to profile definitions and was a leading player in the creation of 802.16a (we are also the vendor that enabled harmonization with ETSI HiperMAN, which was a vital step required to create global acceptance). I hope this clears up a few things and this concludes my public onlist comments on the issue as it relates to Alvarion. Keep up the good work Glenn, especially in holding all of us to a standard of truth that serves the industry and public well. Respectfully, Patrick Leary Alvarion, Inc. -----Original Message----- From: Glenn Fleishman [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, June 21, 2004 4:38 PM To: Moebius Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: [BAWUG] Re: WiMAx and BreezeMax Moebius <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> on 6/21/04 at 4:33 PM wrote: >Also the Current Breezemax equipment doesn't use the Intel chipset.. You >don't have to do business with intel to be part of the WiMax community. That's part of the subtext here, surely. The Alvarion folks were waiting for Intel to pony up the WiMax chipset, and it's delayed until 2005. Intel can hardly carp about Alvarion selling equipment that Alvarion is committing to -- contractually, based on what I've heard -- to upgrade to WiMax certified standards no matter what it takes even if Intel wants to believe they control the WiMax mark, which they don't. I'll be curious whether the WiMax group actually issues standards for pre-WiMax labeling. Will they say "no, not at all, can't say, have to say 802.16a or nothing else" or will they allow claims if the company's put in writing a commitment to upgrade all software, firmware, and hardware (as necessary) to WiMax when it ships? -- Glenn Fleishman seattle . washington unsolicited pundit . glennf.com columnist . seattletimes.com/practicalmac daily wireless networking news . wifinetnews.com _______________________________________________ BAWUG's general wireless chat mailing list [unsubscribe] http://lists.bawug.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless This mail passed through mail.alvarion.com **************************************************************************** ******** This footnote confirms that this email message has been scanned by PineApp Mail-SeCure for the presence of malicious code, vandals & computer viruses. **************************************************************************** ******** _______________________________________________ BAWUG's general wireless chat mailing list [unsubscribe] http://lists.bawug.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless
