Nokia marks WiMAX milestone with Flexi base station

Nokia announced the Flexi WiMAX Base Station, an innovation that will revolutionize the way broadband wireless networks will be built while minimizing operating and capital expenditures for broadband wireless operators.

Operators will benefit from the small and modular design of the Flexi Base Station, which can optimize the costs of siting and operating WiMAX infrastructure. The compact size and light weight design of the base station modules minimizes the space needed, power consumption, and physical effort to install and run high quality WiMAX networks, and uses existing or new base station sites efficiently. It can be installed both indoors and outdoors and does not require air conditioning. Furthermore, its modularity will allow for easy capacity upgrades as traffic increases.

The Nokia Flexi WiMAX Base Station will be commercially available for the 2.5 GHz band at the end of 2007 and for 3.5 GHz in 1Q 2008. WiMAX-capable Nokia mobile devices are expected to be available in 2008.

“As the world is going wireless we believe the Nokia Flexi WiMAX Base Station offers broadband operators an easy and trusted way to offer wireless Internet connectivity to their customers anytime, anywhere,” says Ari Lehtoranta, Senior Vice President, Radio Networks, Nokia.

Nokia is a founding and active member of the WiMAX Forum and the standardization process for the mobile WiMAX standard IEEE 802.16e-2005.