Lucent Technologies today announced it was entering the WiMax market with an OEM deal with Alvarion, selling its BreezeMax line of broadband wireless gear in Lucent’s Accelerate next-generation wireless infrastructure portfolio.

BreezeMax is Alvarion’s 802.16e equipment line, which is going up for WiMax Forum certification later this year. Lucent plans to incorporate the technology on its common IP multimedia subsystem core, making it an access component along with its CDMA 2000 and Wideband CDMA technologies. IMS allows for convergence in the networks allowing cellular technologies to integrate with Wi-Fi and even broadband access networks.

While Lucent is a member of the WiMax forum, it has not developed its own WiMax product line as other vendors have chosen to. A Lucent spokesman said the vendor evaluated numerous potential partners and selected Alvarion as a preferred partner, and while it hasn’t ruled out developing its own product line or signing other OEM deals, it has no plans to do so at the time.

Fully certified WiMax gear is expected on the market in the latter half of the year, after vendors pass their WiMax-2004 lab trials and go through interoperability testing. The first WiMax chipsets began eking their way in to the market last month when Wavesat announced the first broadband chip, but the big chipset vendors Intel and Fujitsu have yet to bring out their silicon to market.

Alvarion vice president of marketing Carlton O’Neal said Alvarion believes its BreezeMax gear is already compliant with WiMax-2004 specifications. The real trial will be in interoperability, when Alvarion’s BreezeMax basestations are paired off with other companies’ CPE gear. Some modifications might be necessary, O’Neal said, but he doesn’t expect them to be major.

"We really need to see what happens later this year," O’Neal said. "But whether certification comes tomorrow or later, it doesn’t matter. We’re already shipping product."