Nokia today announced, at the WiMAX conference in Boston, that they are beginning their work on WiMAX ((802.16e) enabled mobile devices. Joining other hardware makers in the decision, Nokia plans to have super high speed base stations starting at 2.5 GHz band by 2007 and up to 3.5 GHz bandwidth by 2008. Nokia mobile devices are also expected to be available in 2008.

Nokia Flexi WiMAX Base Stations will be compact in size, power consumption, and physical effort as far as installing and running the WiMAX networks. Modularity will allow for easy capacity upgrades with traffic increase, rolling in; the 4G era.

Nokia’s announcement comes right on time, as Intel also just introduced their system-on-a-chip (SoC) WiMAX Connection 2250. Installed in a mobile radio that includes a broadband modem, the SoC enables high-speed broadband handsets to connect to both fixed WiMAX networks, and mobile ones like those enabled by Nokia's new Flexi base station model. Intel says its 2250 SoC is capable of handling a discrete WiMAX channel of up to 10 MHz bandwidth. With spectral efficiency at 1.9 bps per hertz, and you have a the theoretical maximum throughput approaches a whopping 19 Mbps. Intel SoC chips will very likely be powering Nokia WiMAX handsets.

Sprint will be using the same frequency for its WiMax deployment, by late 2007, which leads to the conclusion- that partnership is inevitable-between the two already amicable companies. The WiMAX IEEE 802.16e version is expected to be standardized later this year.

Via BetaNews