Alcatel and Intel have expanded their strategic alliance on WiMAX, entering into a new joint development agreement. The companies have committed to work closely together to expedite the delivery of end-to-end residential, nomadic and ultimately mobile WiMAX solutions based on the IEEE 802.16e standard. Under the expanded agreement, the companies will share engineering and customer lab resources to develop, integrate and conduct interoperability testing for Alcatel's WiMAX network infrastructure solutions and Intel's next-generation WiMAX client silicon meant for wireless devices. Both companies will also actively cooperate to influence and accelerate the standardization, development, implementation and the promotion of the IEEE 802.16e standard.
The companies expect to begin field trials in the first half of 2006, with commercial network deployments starting mid-2006 using user devices based on Intel's next-generation chipsets. These WiMAX networks will seamlessly support the first Intel Centrino mobile technology based notebooks.
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- Earlier this month, Alcatel announced an OEM agreement to resell Alvarion's WiMAX-ready solution based on WiMAX 802.16-2004 ("Rev d") standard. Financial terms were not disclosed.
- As a first positive market recognition of this new OEM agreement, both companies also disclosed today that Alcatel has been selected to run several WiMAX pilot deployments in Europe. Among those, one will be delivered to TDF (the French broadcast service provider) and RATP (the Paris public transport agency) in France.
