Cisco is buying its way into the WiMAX with its $330 million acquisition of Navini Networks, Richardson, Texas.

The company offers Cisco an instant product line of both WiMAX base stations (for both fixed and mobile wireless) as well as client radios. Navini has about 70 customers worlwide, though many of them have deployed the company's initial run of "pre-WiMAX" radio products.

But will Cisco be able to repeat with WiMAX the success it reaped in the Wi-Fi WLAN market after acquiring (for a whopping $450 million) wireless switch vendor Airespace?

It's going to be a lot tougher according to In-Stat analyst Daryl Schoolar. The buy does change the competitive landscape for Cisco rivals like Alcatel-Lucent and Nortel who now won't be bidding for business against a small, if well-funded, WiMAX startup. But by contrast with Wi-Fi, Cisco's own rivals are a lot bigger also, including Motorola and Nokia.

Schoolar also thinks, contrary to Cisco's insistence, that the WiMAX product line will conflict with Cisco's outdoor Wi-Fi mesh products.

Is this a good move by Cisco? Will Cisco leverage Navini into a dominant role in the WiMAX market as it did in Wi-Fi? Are you waiting with sweaty palms for the first mobile WiMAX clients?

Go to Cisco Subnet http://www.networkworld.com/subnets/cisco/ for more Cisco news, blogs, giveaways and more.