Cisco will buy its way into the incipient WiMAX market with an acquisition of privately-held Navini, according to a new report from ThinkEquity.

A spokesman from Cisco offered the obligatory “no comment.”

The ThinkEquity report says, “We believe such an acquisition would validate our thesis that WiFi and WiMAX belong together, just like enterprise and public networks (muni, cellular) are all blending/merging.

Motorola is the leader in this area now, but we believe Cisco will want to catch up with this type of an acquisition.”

The analysts note that AT&T has deployed Navini in several markets such as Florida, Georgia and Louisiana, and they talked up Navini’s beamforming technology as being a critical technological differentiator for Navini among other WiMAX system builders.