Nokia and Alvarion to Settle OEM Agreement

It seems that Finnish cell phone manufacturer Nokia is more and more interested in WiMAX. After announcing its partnership with Intel for accelerating development, adoption, and deployment of WiMAX technology, now rumor has it that it is negotiating an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) agreement with Alvarion, one of the world's leading providers of wireless broadband solutions and specialized mobile networks.

The agreement is likely to involve the integration of Alvarion's WiMAX equipment in Nokia's infrastructure, and would enable Alvarion to consolidate its position on the mobile communications market. Even if Nokia has recently lost a large part of its infrastructure market share, it is still one of the world's largest cellular infrastructure suppliers. An OEM agreement with it will allow Alvarion to gain access to a large share of the mobile communications infrastructure market and also to know-how in mobile communications.

Other major issues likely to be tackled by this agreement are that of base stations and wireline communications. Intel already has a cooperation agreement with Alvarion for base stations, and although it's clear that at this moment Nokia is focusing solely on mobile WiMAX, it cannot be ruled out that it will wish to expand its cooperation with Alvarion in the future to the field of compact cellular base stations and wireline WiMAX.

At this stage, Nokia is not involved in wireline communications, but it can be assumed that it will wish to supply equipment for a convergence of wireline and wireless communications. In theory, at least, Nokia might be interested in including wireline WiMAX in an agreement with Alvarion. It's CEO, Zvi Slonimsky, recently told investors that he foresaw great potential for Alvarion in Europe over the next year, which might refer to an agreement with Nokia, and given that closing of the mobile WiMAX standard is not expected before the end of 2006, it's not impossible that the OEM agreement to be settled will also include wireline WiMAX.