Who is Alvarion?

By raheem

I predicted in an earlier post that 2008 would be the breakout year for broadband wireless service. Seems to me, the broadband wireless market, or more commonly known as the WIMAX market is where WIFI was back in 2000. But unlike WIFI, WIMAX will have a larger market and lead to a whole roster of innovative products and services, especially helping to increase the number of people who can get on the internet.

This would be a good time to identify the players in the WIMAX market and you can guess that telecom equipment providers like Nortel, Lucent, Motorola, etc are the usual suspects. But there is also a trailblazer in this crew – its tiny Alvarion, an Israeli company that is the market leader in providing WIMAX equipment. Their website notes that they have “more than 3 million units deployed in 150 countries” and they had revenues of $160 million in 2006. They won the “Best of Wimax World” award in 2006 and they seem to be the preferred vendor for pretty much most of the wimax deployments around the world. Most recently AT&T Alaska picked them for a WIMAX deployment.

From a financial perspective, this company looks like a winner. They became profitable in 2nd quarter of this year and growth is strong. I figure, they will either get bought out by Cisco or the stock is going to continue to rise. Technically, Alvarion has proven their ability to deliver on broadband wireless. Current deployments deliver speeds up to 3Mbp for downloads 1 Mbp for downloads. Keep an eye on this one!