It's open season on open systems in Nokialand

Nokia is taking its open architecture campaign to the very limit with a proposal to open its base station technology to third parties.

The industry is already committed to open architectures to some extent, with handsets, base stations and core networks from different vendors all working together, but to allow mobile operators to mix and match base station components from vendors is entirely new.

If successful, the initiative would allow a company to build a third generation base station with radio equipment from one vendor, and other hardware elements from a second vendor or multiple vendors.

The company has set up a new unit, Nokia Access Modules, with a brief to drive open access standards forward, not just in base stations but in servers and gateway systems in 3G networks too.

It is also leading a working group to develop a carrier-grade version of the Linux open source operating system for IP-based mobile networks.

The move opens up a new market for Nokia products, but the company claims the base station move will boost the choice available to operators and allow them to cut the cost of building networks. For some vendors, however, it's a change too far, too soon.

Scott Wickware, director of UMTS product solutions at Nortel Networks, said: "The industry has to focus on interoperability between core networks and radio access networks, and between core networks and handsets."

"Further interoperability may come but I think we should focus on getting the 3G networks up and working first. That's hard enough," he added.

The base station move has been seen by some commentators as a possible prelude to consolidation. Few believe that the market will be able to support seven major mobile infrastructure vendors in the long term.

Some of the weaker players may start to buy components from other operators as a means to cut their Research and Development spending without exiting the market altogether.

Click here for a chance to win a mobile phone by entering our Gadget Showdown competition here: www.silicon.com/goto-gadget-forma