Ericsson has joined the WiMAX Forum(TM) as a principal member.

Ericsson's experience and leadership in broadband and wireless technologies will strongly contribute to the existing competence of the forum.

Ericsson is a strong believer in open standards. "WiMAX ensures interoperability of the open IEEE 802.16 standard for broadband wireless access. It is a natural part of an operator's Ethernet broadband offering and can also serve as transmission backhaul," said Karl Thedeen, Vice President, Product Area Wireline.

The fixed broadband wireless access market has until now been fragmented by different proprietary technologies. WiMAX will bring an open and widely accepted standard to that market.

A WiMAX Forum Certified(TM) broadband wireless access solution would fit well in Ericsson's existing portfolio of fixed broadband and WLAN solutions. Once available, Ericsson plans to offer WiMAX as part of the Public Ethernet offering and as a complement to DSL. WiMAX technology is optimized for fixed or nomadic broadband wireless access and targets a different segment than 3G that combines mobile broadband & telephony as well as fixed usage. As the leader in communications, Ericsson is driving the evolution towards an always best connected vision.

Ericsson is playing a leading role in standardization. Through the WiMAX Forum(TM) we can drive open standards to ensure openness and interoperability for the consumer by defining and verifying an interoperable subset of the standards developed in IEEE 802.16 and ETSI HiperMAN.