Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) – currently planning a US$650 million acquisition of rival Nortel’s CDMA and LTE access mobile assets – has become the latest major network infrastructure vendor to scale down its focus on WiMAX technology, according to Unstrung. The publication cites Mark Rouanne, head of radio access at NSN, as stating that the vendor has “already shifted a part of our resources away from WiMAX to HSPA+ and LTE” due to an acceleration in customer demand for the mobile technologies. Rouanne tells Unstrung that the vendor is “looking for our suppliers and partners to deliver what we would have done ourselves in-house.” A later article from Unstrung claims that Alvarion is one of those partners. Rouanne was, however, keen to point out that NSN is not exiting the WiMAX market altogether. “We’re not stopping, cancelling, or getting out of the market… We still have a strong offering in WiMax.”

The retreat from WiMAX by the world’s second-largest mobile network vendor follows a much earlier move by market-leader Ericsson, back in 2006. Late last year Alcatel-Lucent chose to cease future investment in mobile WiMAX (although continuing to develop fixed WiMAX as a ‘wireless DSL’ technology) and instead devote such resources to LTE technology. Even NSN’s acquisition target – Nortel itself – exited the mobile WiMAX business in January this year. Other vendors such as Huawei, Motorola, Samsung and ZTE continue to invest in-house R&D resources to mobile WiMAX.