Equipment based on the 802.16e-2005 Mobile WiMAX standard advances toward certification this week with a plugfest at a Bechtel facility in Maryland.

According to the WiMAX Forum, multiple vendors will participate in the interoperability event, which is a precursor to lab testing to deem gear certified by the forum and keep WiMAX on track to have certified Mobile WiMAX equipment commercially available in the first quarter of 2007.

“It's a way for vendor member companies, the test vendors and the forum to try interoperability before going into the certification lab,” said Jeff Orr, director of marketing for the WiMAX Forum. The forum has two facilities for final interoperability and certification testing — Cetecom Labs in Spain, and the Telecommunications Technology Association's IT Testing and Certification Lab in South Korea.

Representatives from the WiMAX Forum and several of the companies participating in this week's Mobile WiMAX plugfest characterized plugfests in general as an informal yet critical step in the certification process, in part because the results of the plugfests are not publicized, and vendors get a chance to do a dry run and see where they stand on interoperability.

“Plugfests are like rehearsals of the actual show time, which is the certification process,” said Sai Subramanian, vice president of product management and strategic marketing for Navini Networks, a plugfest player.

Plugfests also can serve as a product development checkpoint for vendors at a time in the process when it's not too late to go back and retool.

“Different people interpret the standard differently, and you want to calibrate yourself and make sure you're interpreting the same way,” said Bernard Aboussouan, vice president of marketing and business development at plugfest firm Sequans.