Alvarion was given the highest ratings in an Infonetics Research survey of WiMAX equipment buyers at 21 global operators. Alvarion beat out Alcatel-Lucent and Motorola for the top spot. Cisco and Huawei closed out the top five vendor rankings.

The vendors were ranked on eight criteria: technology, security, management, price-to-performance ratio, pricing, financial stability, service and support and product roadmap.

Cisco received the highest ratings for four of the survey’s eight criteria including WiMAX technology. Huawei was listed as having the best WiMAX equipment pricing.

Infonetics found that not one vendor was rated strong across the board, implying that Cisco and Huawei are capable of closing ground on the top three.

“As the WiMAX market consolidates to a remaining handful of vendors and becomes more competitive, the perception of different aspects of the business will come under increasing scrutiny," said Infonetics Research WiMAX analyst Richard Webb in a report.

The survey was conducted in December 2009 and January 2010. Over half of the respondents already operated a mobile WiMAX network, 19 percent were in the process of deploying their network this year, while the remaining 24 percent of those surveyed were planning to launch their networks in 2011.