Reports says company ceasing development of base stations after Starent buy
Cisco is exiting the WiMAX radio access networks business, according to a story in FierceBroadbandWireless.com. The move had been expected since Cisco’s $2.9 billion acquisition of Starent Networks.
A Cisco spokesperson confirmed the WiMAX RAN exit to FierceBroadbandWireless.com:
“After careful review, our mobility strategy is to focus on providing a radio-agnostic IP end-to-end mobile multimedia services network. Cisco will continue to focus on the packet core and to also focus on investment in radio technologies such as femtocells and WiFi. As part of this decision, we have decided to discontinue designing and building new WiMAX base stations. We believe the best way for Cisco to serve our customers is by delivering value at the edge and the core of our customers’ networks.”
Starent views the future of 4G wireless as LTE, a competing technology to WiMAX, and some of the largest operators, including Verizon and AT&T, have announced plans to migrate their networks to LTE. Cisco entered the WiMAX business with its $330 million acquisition of Navini Networks in 2007. It has a significant WiMAX supply arrangement with Clearwire.
But the momentum — and money — are with LTE.
“It’s obvious now that mobile carriers are going to deploy LTE,” says Laurence Swasey, principal of Visant Strategies. “There are no economies of scale with mobile WiMAX. Mobile WiMAX never materialized like many thought it would. Cisco is just staying on top of where the market is going.”
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