Proxim splits its bets on Wi-Fi, WiMAX

Proxim Wireless Corp. sees opportunity in both Wi-Fi and WiMAX technologies, WiMAX due to its increasing momentum around the world and Wi-Fi due to its wide and expanding market presence.
The company, headquartered in San Jose, Calif., said it has shipped more than 1.5 million devices to more than 200,000 customers around the world.
Proxim CEO Robert Fitzgerald told analysts at a recent investment conference that despite the recent gloom in the municipal Wi-Fi space, the technology remains promising due to its ability to help network operators offload traffic. The technology can also aid in-building coverage through dual-mode, cellular/Wi-Fi devices.
Proxim’s WiMAX deployments, meanwhile, showcase the technology’s viability in various settings.
In a deployment in Parantins, a town of more than 100,000 on an island in the Amazon River, service provider Embratel used the company’s WiMAX technology to provide Internet connectivity for a university, two public schools, a community center and a primary healthcare center. In another case, Proxim’s WiMAX products were selected by Canadian energy company Nexen, which needed network access for a “digital oil field” involving the transmission of security and surveillance, remote monitoring and maintenance information, as well as Internet access for field-service employees.
“Given the high profile of Sprint and Clearwire, the industry movement has picked up here and in the rest of the world also, because the momentum is there,” said Milind Bhise, director of product and channel marketing for Proxim.
Bhise said that the technology is gaining traction in both licensed and unlicensed forms, with wireless Internet service providers looking at various flavors of the technology depending on their spectrum position.
“If they do not have access to licensed frequencies, they can still go on with pre-WiMAX that operates in unlicensed bands. There’s a lot of traction there as well,” said Bhise.
Although WiMAX can be seen as competing against HSPA and other types of high-speed, nextgeneration network technologies, Bhise noted that wireless operators have in the past offered more than one network technology at once-for example, running both TDMA and UMTS networks.