The WiMax Forum is running its third, week-long public Mobile WiMax PlugFest in Sophia Antipolis, France through Saturday. It’s a gathering of Forum member companies to test their wares for interoperability under the IEEE 802.16e-2005 standard before the products are officially tested for certification.
33 vendors (or 34, depending on the source) are taking part. Aperto Networks called participation “crucial to our success” in a statement released today, saying that without the plugfest it could not “ensure interoperability with our growing ecosystem of partners.”
Vendor participants include SOMA Networks, Telsima Corporation, Airspan Networks, Alcatel-Lucent, ApaceWave Technologies, Aperto Networks, Beceem, Fujitsu, GCT Semiconductor, Inc., Intel Corporation, Motorola, Navini Networks, NEC Corporation, Nortel, PicoChip, POSDATA, Redline Communications, Samsung, Sanyo, Wavesat, XRONet and ZTE Corporation, plus a number of test equipment makers like Anritsu, Agilent and Azimuth Systems.
Earlier this week, plugfest participant SEQUANS Communications announced it had a Mobile WiMax Wave 2-Ready ExpressCard Design, which it demonstrated at the Taipei Summit/Asia Pacific WiMax Conference and Exhibition. A Wave-2 PC Card using MIMO technology was also announced this week by Cameo Communications, using chips from plugfest participant Runcom Technologies.
Research firm Marvedis has launched a web site called WiMAXCounts to serve as an ongoing database tracking WiMax deployments around the globe. It covers 100 WiMax operators already, and they expect to add 150 more by the first quarter of 2008.