Proxim plans to buck the standards

Given all that, you've not jumped into Mobile WiMax, and people like Nortel are jumping out of it. Does it actually matter to you whether the industry goes with Mobile WiMax or LTE?

[A very long pause] … No.

If LTE actually beats Mobile WiMax, it might actually be good for you. Mobile WiMax kit can also handle fixed WiMax, so you as a fixed WiMax vendor won't have a lot of people who have succeeded in Mobile WiMax getting into your space.

Yes, That's why I thought so long before answering.

If Mobile WiMax does take off, you might be in a position to get into that space. If it doesn't then fewer people are in a position to get into your space. A double edged sword.

Sometime in the long Proxim saga [Symbol lawsuit, entering WiMax, bankruptcy and sale to Moseley, snatched by Terabeam] the company said it was betting on municipal Wi-Fi. That fitted with Wi-Fi and WiMax backhaul. But municipal Wi-Fi didn't take off. A lot of the businesses you talk about, like surveillance, are just the wreckage of that, aren't they?

In municipal Wi-Fi there were two markets. The first was the Internet access market. That went under because it was a free market - services were supposed to be free. It always went to an RFP, and there was always a digital divide angle to it. That never panned out.

The other market, the public safety market, is still available today, and that is a big market for us. We've always focussed on that - and toned down the mesh aspect.  Video surveillance is huge.

So, free Wi-Fi was a bubble that burst, but there's still plenty going on in that area?

What about your products?

In the next six months, we will have refreshed our entire product line. 

In point-to-point, we recently launched a product in our Lynx range. We're taking the lessons we learnt in the wireless LAN space and applying them to point-to-point.  Carriers are using T1s and E1s and backhauling over wireless, but they say they will want to go with Ethernet a year or two from now, so the new product has T1 and E1 interfaces, and Ethernet interfaces already. So when the carriers switch from T1s and E1s to Ethernet, all you've got to do is unplug it and plug it into the Ethernet.

It also has software selectable radios. You can do 2.4 GHz or 5.8GHz in the same box. That is taken for granted in the wireless LAN world, but we are the only point-to-point product that combines these two features.

In WiMax, we've done high security, and we're also going to have high performance products.

In Wi-Fi , we're going to introduce 802.11n access point products over the next six months.