How is Nortel fitting WiMax into its technology strategy? The transition from 3G [third-generation wireless] to 4G is interesting to us, because the 4G technologies, including WiMax, are based fundamentally on MIMO/OFDM [Multiple Input Multiple Output/Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing] technology. Nortel spent the last seven years pretty much inventing that technology. It's a logical fit.

Nortel knows how to operate in a carrier ecosystem, so WiMax is the way to go. We have trials with 802.16e equipment [using the mobile WiMax standard] this fall, and Sprint Nextel expects to have networks up and running by this time next year.

Sprint is using Nortel gear? Sprint will use a lot of different gear. Our trials are with network carrier infrastructure gear in Asia and North America.

So how will Nortel's WiMax affect the large business user? Let's say our vision of the 4G world pans out. We see 4G accelerated, and its cost per bit is one-tenth of what 3G can provide. It's very economically feasible. The base station design, the spectral efficiency -- all of those are very superior to 3G from a data services perspective. That's pretty exciting.

So suddenly there's this concept of high-performance, pervasive broadband. It changes the enterprise's view of the broadband wireless network. Today, they view it as the cell phone with some added features on it. Tomorrow, they start to think about it as, maybe, a logical extension of [the] enterprise infrastructure. So applications that heretofore have lived principally inside the enterprise in the LAN or have leaked out through a VPN suddenly become mobile applications.