Cisco Exiting the WiMAX Base Station Market

Posted Fri, 5 Mar 2010 16:28:41 EST by Philip Solis

Let me get my umbrella out first . . . the media will be cloudy with a high chance of impending-doom-for-WiMAX stories.
OK.  Is this really a bad thing for the WiMAX ecosystem?  No.  This is good for the WiMAX ecosystem and good for Cisco.
This is good for the WiMAX ecosystem because:

  • Cisco was not aggressive in marketing its WiMAX base stations that it acquired from Navini
  • There is one less WiMAX base station vendor - more opportunity for Alvarion, Huawei, Motorola, Samsung, ZTE, nd other smaller players
This good for Cisco because:
  • WWAN RAN was outside of Cisco's core competency
  • Cisco was not getting any significant business - likely because Cisco is not known for WWAN RAN
  • Staying outside of the WiMAX/LTE political game (however unreasonable it all is, it still does exist) is the smart thing to do
On the last point, it's not that Cisco ever chose sides, but rather simply the possible perception that could exist since they did not have any LTE base station products, and it would not have made sense to go up against the giant WWAN RAN vendors in that area.