What types of vendors are involved?
Vendors include baseband silicon makers, chipset vendors, component manufacturers, along with base station and customer premises equipment makers, and carriers. Intel, for example, plans to incorporate a mobile WiMAX chipset into its Centrino wireless package, which today supports only Wi-Fi connections. The WiMAX addition is expected in 2007. Intel also pitched in $600 million this summer to fund WiMAX start-up Clearwire, which raised an additional $300 million from other sources, mainly Motorola, which has its own line of customer premises equipment and base station products. Clearwire, founded by Craig McCaw of McCaw Cellular, is upgrading its expanding U.S. network to support mobile WiMAX. Sprint Nextel in August became the first U.S. cellular provider to announce plans to deploy a nationwide mobile WiMAX net in the licensed 2.5GHz frequency band. The carrier says it will begin offering mobile WiMAX services next year.
