WiMax Forum Opens Test Lab

SAN JOSE, Calif. and VANCOUVER -- WiMAX technology has taken a bold step onto the proving grounds this week in Vancouver, BC, and Malaga, Spain. During the WiMAX Forum™ quarterly members' meeting in Canada, several application demos -- ranging from Xbox wireless console gaming over WiMAX to WiMAX-based streaming media -- are being showcased. Half a world away in Spain, the WiMAX Forum Certification test lab at Cetecom has opened and begun testing some of the same equipment in use at the members' meeting in Canada.

"We're excited by the opportunity to show off the capabilities of WiMAX technology in Vancouver and prove that WiMAX is real," said Ron Resnick, president of the WiMAX Forum. "At the same time, the fact that much of the equipment running successfully in Canada is the same equipment going through certification in Spain is extremely encouraging and bodes well for the future of WiMAX and the advent of true personal broadband."

More than 400 participants from WiMAX Forum member companies are attending the event in Vancouver, where there have been keynote speeches from Nortel and KT (Korea Telecom). Also at the event, demonstrations from Nortel, Microsoft, Disney, Logitech, Cisco, AT&T, AudioCodes, Kencast, Ixia and Skype are running on a variety of WiMAX technology vendor systems from companies including Alvarion, Proxim, Redline and Wavesat. The demos, which support the message that WiMAX is real, represent the five key WiMAX application types: VoIP, streaming media, interactive gaming, Web browsing and file transfer/media download. The success of the demos indicates that WiMAX systems are efficient at running multiple classes of applications simultaneously.

WiMax Forum