dual mode

Kineto gets more funding, more attention from Motorola

Lynnette Luna — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 18:17:34 -0400

Kineto Wireless raised $15.5 million and announced Motorola has become a strategic investor in the fixed-mobile convergence company. The company's unlicensed mobile access (UMA) technology is the basis for dual-mode cellular/WiFi offerings such as T-Mobile's Hotspot@Home service. Kineto's technology is also one of the key technologies used in the radio access network (RAN) gateway approach for femtocell architectures.

Motorola's investment is a part of a broader commercial relationship with its Home & Network Mobility business. Kineto's existing investors -- Oak Investment Partners, Sutter Hill Ventures, Venrock, Seapoint Ventures and InterDigital--also contributed in on the round, and NEC, which recently announced a strategic investment in the vendor, is being counted in the total as well.

For more:
- read Unstrung

Related articles:
NEC makes strategic investment in Kineto Wireless
Japan's SoftBank to launch 3G femtocells in January

Gartner warns corporations about investing in WiMAX too early

Lynnette Luna — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 01:45:45 -0400

Gartner Research is cautioning corporations about investing in WiMAX technology. It is advising that businesses hold off on any investments until the technology is more widely deployed across the U.S. and until vendors make more dual-mode (cellular/WiMAX) devices. Gartner says that WiMAX will remain a niche technology serving more rural markets as a DSL alternative and significant coverage from Clearwire, which is merging with Sprint's WiMAX business, will take several years. Clearwire has said that its WiMAX rollout will be a on a market-by-market basis with 2010 or even 2011 delivering a reasonable footprint in the majority of the top 200 markets. Article

WiMAX coming later to Centrino 2

Lynnette Luna — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 02:15:14 -0400

Intel plans to ship its highly anticipated Centrino 2 mobile laptop platform this week, but one key feature that will be missing is the dual-mode WiFi (802.11n)/WiMAX module. That feature, said an Intel spokeswoman, won't ship until sometime later this year--likely in time for commercial WiMAX launches from Clearwire and Sprint.

The platform that will be introduced today will include what Intel calls enhanced WiFi capabilities, and it's assumed that means the Draft 2.0 802.11n standard.

Centrino 2.0 is the fifth generation of Centrino technology. PC makers such as Fujitsu, HP, Lenovo and Toshiba are reportedly planning to launch new notebooks concurrently with the release of Centrino 2.

Intel, as you remember, invested $1 billion in the new Clearwire WiMAX business, which includes Sprint, cable companies and Google. Intel is hoping WiMAX incorporated in the new platform will do the same thing incorporating WiFi did, spur adoption. However, Clearwire's rollout will be on a market-by-market basis with 2010 or even 2011 delivering a reasonable footprint in the majority of the top 200 markets.

For more:
- read Network World

Related stories:
Intel: July launch for next-gen WiFi/ WiMAX platform. Intel story
Intel to re-enter mobile-phone market. Intel mobile-phone story

Sprint's Xohm taps Mformation for remote device management

Lynnette Luna — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 00:28:13 -0400

Sprint's WiMAX division announced a deal with device management software company Mformation Technologies to deliver device management capabilities for new Xohm-branded WiMAX-enabled mobile devices. Sprint plans to use Mformation's software to remotely manage the WiMAX devices on its network. The operator is commercially launching WiMAX in Baltimore in September.

Device management will be critical for Sprint, and likewise Clearwire, which is merging with Sprint later this year, to enable a number of devices to come onto the WiMAX network, regardless of whether they were purchased via Sprint or an external retailer that has no affiliation with the operator. Sprint's goal is to allow a plethora of devices--ranging from Internet tablets to telematics consoles--to operate on the network in an open access manner.

Matt Bancroft, chief marketing officer with Mformation, noted that while the device management software is optimized for WiMAX devices such as data cards and dongles, it also must support the many dual-mode CDMA/WiMAX devices that will run on the network because WiMAX won't be ubiquitious for some time. Given the sparse coverage, it's likely that much of the device management processes will occur via CDMA initially.

Bancroft added that the wave of devices that come to market next year will require additional device management capabilities that aren't available today, but that device management capabilities will catch up.

In June, Mformation and Bridgewater Systems announced their intention to integrate Bridgewater's service control and subscriber data management solution with Mformation's service manager to enable WiMAX operators to automatically detect, provision and manage WiMAX devices over the air using industry-standard IP and OMA DM protocols.

For more:
- check out this release

Related stories:
Sprint: 'We're creating a platform for innovation.' Open access story
WiMAX forum predicts 133 million users by 2012. WiMAX story

Huawei announces plans for 700 MHz

Thu, 03 Apr 2008 07:59:56 -0400

Chinese vendor Huawei Technologies announced its products for the 700 MHz band will become available in the first quarter of 2009 as the vendor makes its big push in the U.S. market.

Huawei said it will provide network solutions for UMTS, CDMA and LTE technologies for the 700 MHz band. Multi-band operation will be supported with concurrent operation in the 700 MHz, 850 MHz, Advanced Wireless Services and 1900 MHz spectrum bands.

Using software defined radios, the base station portfolio will support dual-mode operation for CDMA + LTE and UMTS + LTE technologies, allowing operators to carry out smooth network evolution from UMTS or CDMA to LTE, said Huawei.

In an interview with FierceBroadbandWireless, Charlie Martin, CTO-Wireless, said Huawei plans to become an aggressive player in the U.S. market. "The U.S. market is very strategic for us," he said. "Our goal is to be the premier vendor in the world. We can't do that without the U.S. We are totally committed to this marketplace."

Martin said its win last summer to deploy CDMA EV-DO networks for Leap Wireless was an important way to get the vendor's foot in the door of the U.S. market. Huawei so far has completed phase one with Leap, deploying three markets. It is now embarking on a bigger deployment in the second phase since the deployment includes Chicago.

Huawei has gained momentum in Europe, inking deals with carriers including Telecom Italia, Vodafone's Spanish unit, China Mobile's Pakistani unit and New Zealand Communications. In January, Huawei won a contract from O2 Germany to install some 8,000 base stations. This is the second contract Huawei has racked up in Germany in as many months; in December T-Mobile International engaged the Chinese firm to provide next generation packet switched core networks infrastructure in five European countries: Germany, the U.K., Austria, the Netherlands and the Czech Republic.

"Our value proposition is high quality and innovation," Martin said. "We are spring boarding off of what we've done in other countries to bring them to the U.S."

Interestingly, Huawei is not targeting WiMAX in the U.S. as it missed out on a deal with Sprint since the vendor hadn't arrived in the U.S. market in time. "We view WiMAX as different from CDMA and LTE in terms of the fact that WiMAX is a good alternative for emerging markets and alternative operators," Martin said.

The U.S. infrastructure market has historically been a difficult one to crack given the fact that infrastructure deals have been largely wrapped up, business cycles are longer and the business development process requires that vendors spend a lot of time marketing their wares, Martin said. But the 700 MHz and AWS bands are providing new opportunity.

"Last year vendors told us it wasn't the right time to talk," Martin said. "Now they want to talk. They aren't guaranteeing anything, but they definitely are ready to talk."

To find out more about Huawei's 700 MHz plans:
- read this release

Related articles:
NextWave, Huawei trial mobile WiMAX Report
Huawei scores again with O2 Germany Report

Hesse: Sprint still talking to Clearwire about tie-up

Mon, 03 Mar 2008 06:59:57 -0500

During the company's dismal fourth-quarter earnings call on Friday, Sprint Nextel CEO Dan Hesse said some sort of partnership with Clearwire may still come to fruition.

"We have had wide ranging discussions with Clearwire on potential relationships but no final agreements have been reached," Hesse said during the call.

Although Hesse said he'd talk more about Sprint's WiMAX plans at a later date, he did say the company's soft launches at the end of last year in Baltimore, Washington, D.C. and Chicago offered "confidence in the performance of the technology." He also noted that while Sprint's core business is management's top priority, Sprint has an "enormous asset--nearly 100 MHz of un-utilized spectrum--and the opportunity to have a three-year head start with our Xohm service, true wireless broadband with multi-megabit speed." He also said the company later this year plans to introduce dual-mode CDMA/WiMAX devices.

For more about Hesse's WiMAX comments:
- read the company's fourth-quarter transcript on Seeking Alpha

Related articles:
"Simply Everything" is no Digital One Rate Editorial
Sprint should not have bought Nextel Report

3GPP adds 3G support to UMA standard

Thu, 28 Feb 2008 06:59:56 -0500

The 3GPP standards group has approved a specification update that will see 3G support added to the UMA/GAN standard. This move should help developers of UMA-based 3G dual-mode handsets and femtocell products with their delivery plans to mobile operators considering the commercial deployment of FMC services.

According to Stéphane Téral, an industry analyst with the market research firm Infonetics, the addition of 3G support is an important step in supporting in-home 3G service delivery. "Operators and vendors alike have recognized the need for standardization to drive mass-market femtocell network deployments."

Qualcomm and NXP have both made recent announcements about their involvement in the dual-mode UMA handset market, while Motorola, Ubiquisys and Netgear are already working with operators (e.g. O2 and Telia) on testing femtocells.

For more about the 3GPP's specification:
- read this article from TMCnet
- take a look at this report from 3G.co.uk

Related articles:
UMA out of favor at Telecom Italia Report
T-Mobile USA introduces nationwide UMA services Report

ALSO NOTED: $690.9 million committed to wireless startups in September; Alltel launches WiFi hotspot service; and much more...

Thu, 11 Oct 2007 06:59:51 -0400

> According to the latest report from Rutberg & Co., some $690.9 million was committed to wireless startups in September. Article

> FCC delays 700 MHz auction by eight days. Article

> Alcatel-Lucent and Sagem Communications said they are developing a commercial femto cell base station platform for UMTS/HSPA networks. Article

> Meru Networks has certified the "secure and seamless" interoperability of a wide range of new dual-mode and WiFi phones. Article

> Alltel launched WiFi hotspot service. Article

And Finally... PCWorld reveals the ugliest products in technology history. Pics

Letter to the Editor: Let's get muni-WiFi and WiMAX players together

Mon, 10 Sep 2007 09:03:31 -0400

Lynnette Luna’s suggestion, “Let's get muni-WiFi and WiMAX players together,” (Fierce Broadband Wireless, August 23, 2007) sounds sensible enough. However, to mix the National Football League and Gertrude Stein: Upon further review, there’s no there there.

Why? Two reasons. First, for at least the next few years, i.e., the length of time that a network installed today can reasonably expected to remain in place, Wi-Fi will remain the wireless technology of choice for client connections. Second, aside from client connections, specific technologies don’t matter.

Let’s examine each of these assertions.

According to Xirrus, there are more 300 million WiFi clients in the world today. This number is growing rapidly, with at least 20 million new clients shipping each quarter. Shipments are likely to accelerate with the advent of dual-mode WiFi/3G handsets. In-Stat forecasts that more than 200 million dual-mode WiFi/cellular handsets will have shipped by 2010. For example, Apple alone is expected to ship more than 1 million WiFi-equipped iPhones in the first two quarters after its introduction.

With WiMAX largely passing 802.16d by, the only truly viable WiMAX technology is 802.16e. Yet, a leading WiMAX market research analyst recently told me that only about 60,000 802.16e client devices had been shipped, in total, through the end of Q1-2007.

Compared to the installed base of WiFi clients, that’s rounding error. In a game where the score is 300 million to rounding error, 300 million wins. The power of WiFi’s installed base will trump whatever technical advantages that WiMAX may (or may not) have for client connections.

The situation for WiMAX clients is unlikely to change anytime soon. The August 24, 2007 edition of Fierce Wireless reports that Current Analysis analyst Peter Jarich talked about how he believes Sprint may have set itself up for trouble because of its “inflated” expectations for WiMAX. Jarich says that Sprint can't control the electronics industry, so consumers may be disappointed when they don't find WiMAX-embedded MP3 players or gaming devices available right away.

It should be noted that better in-building penetration is NOT one of WiMAX’s advantages. Operating in roughly the same spectrum as WiFi (2.5 GHz for WiMAX versus 2.4 GHz for Wi-Fi) and using the same encoding (OFDM), WiMAX’s ability to penetrate buildings is roughly the same as Wi-Fi’s. The higher power of the licensed band will offer a slight advantage to WiMAX but it’s the equivalent of penetrating one additional wall – hardly an elixir for indoor penetration ills.

But, even if WiMAX isn’t widely used for client connections, won’t it dominate the connections beyond the client link into the core of the network? In a word, no.

For sure, WiMAX will be one of the technologies used for various forms of backhaul. However, it will not dominate that field because, aside from the client connection, the specific technology employed simply doesn’t matter. Anything that gets the job done will suffice.

Consider for a moment your cell phone. You may know that it connects to a cell tower using CDMA or GSM. But, do you have any idea what kind of technology is used to backhaul that cell tower? Do you care? Of course not! Further, if you needed to know or care, you probably wouldn’t use a cell phone.

The same applies to wireless data services. WiFi will be the pipe to the client. What’s behind that pipe does not and must not matter to the user. If it doesn’t matter to the users, muni wireless network operators, whether municipalities themselves or service providers providing service to municipalities, are free to choose whatever technology offers the best combination of features, performance and price for the application.

In some cases, especially where the network operator holds a license for spectrum, the choice will be WiMAX. In many other cases, the network operator will find that other wireless technologies, including the myriad proprietary offerings on the market, will better suit their needs. This will be especially true in cases where the operator does not hold a spectrum license or does not want to use licensed spectrum for this particular application.

Given that WiMAX will not be widely used for client connections and that it is only one of many good backhaul choices, it is hard to build a compelling case that municipal leaders should expend the effort needed to enter what would inevitably be protracted negotiations with Sprint or Clearwire to tailor their WiMAX networks to meet municipal needs. A far better use of time and effort would be for civic leaders to examine building and operating their own wireless network for city use (and NOT for residential access!) or working with service providers whose business models support anchor tenancy by municipalities and Wi-Fi client connections. -Bert Williams

Bert Williams is the vice president of marketing with Proxim.

Kyocera, PCTEL collaborate on CDMA/WiFi handsets

Sun, 25 Mar 2007 20:01:35 -0400

Handset maker Kyocera Wireless and PCTEL announced plans to collaborate on voice call continuity (VCC) solution for dual-mode CDMA/WiFi handsets. The dual-mode phones will be capable of seamless handoff between WiFi and CDMA networks and will incorporate Kyocera's CDMA voice, user interface and SMS features with PCTEL's VoIP, SMS over IP, single-number roaming and active-call handover functionality. VCC is the standard used to bridge WiFi and CDMA and exploits SIP in both handsets and networks. As Dean Bubley, founder of Disruptive Analysis recently noted, there hasn't been much interest in VCC or SIP-based CDMA/WiFi dual-mode devices to date, and the situation isn't likely to change soon. In the U.S. market, Sprint Nextel is the only CDMA operator with a WiFi hotspot strategy. The enterprise market holds more promise, but operators in general are still assessing the market for dual-mode devices and whether VoIP over 3G or services like femtocells are a better option.

For more about Kyocera and PCTEL's CDMA/WiFi handset initiative:
- read this release

Metric: WiFi phone market continues to grow

Tue, 14 Feb 2006 19:01:37 -0500

The worldwide WiFi phone market jumped 76 percent between 2004 and 2005 to $102.5 million. It is projected to more than double in 2006 as enterprises steadily, if slowly, continue to deploy VoWLAN, according to Infonetics Research's latest report. Healthy VoWLAN growth is projected through 2009, when WiFi phone revenue will reach nearly $1.9 billion. VoWLAN is making its initial presence in the enterprise, but will eventually become popular with consumers too, and has potential for enormous growth as part of a VoIP service bundled with broadband connections.

Infonetics' Richard Webb says: "The enterprise telephony market is undergoing a transition from circuit-based to packet switching, because organizations have extensive data networks that can potentially be used for telephony, eliminating the need for separate voice and data networks.... Voice makes wireless LANs more desirable and mobility makes VoIP more valuable; it is natural that they are converging into a powerful enterprise mobile voice solution."

Other findings in the report:

WiFi phone units grew 112 percent between 2004 and 2005 and will grow 158 percent in 2006
About 2/3 of WiFi phone revenue came from single-mode WiFi VoIP handsets in 2005 and about a third from dual-mode handsets; by 2009, dual-mode handsets will make up 3/4 of total revenue
52 percent of dual-mode WiFi/cellular handset revenue came from Asia Pacific in 2005, 25 percent from North America, 21 percent EMEA, 2 percent CALA
802.11e QoS was standardized in late 2005, and will generate a new round of product releases and renewed promotion of real-time applications such as VoWLAN and video over WLANs

The report is titled "WiFi Phones Biannual Worldwide Market Share and Forecast."

For more on the report and its finding:
- see Infonetics' Web site

Metric: VoWLAN phone market grew 76%

Tue, 31 Jan 2006 19:01:35 -0500

The worldwide WiFi phone market grew 76 percent between 2004 and 2005 to $102.5 million. It is projected to more than double in 2006 as enterprises continue to deploy VoWLANs (see "Today's Spotlight"), according to Infonetics Research's latest report. Healthy VoWLAN growth is projected through 2009, when WiFi phone revenue will reach nearly $1.9 billion. VoWLAN will initially be an enterprise application but will soon become popular with consumers, too and has potential for enormous growth as part of a VoIP service bundled with broadband connections.

Other findings in the report:

WiFi phone units grew 112 percent between 2004 and 2005 and will grow 158 percent in 2006.
Roughly two-thirds of WiFi phone revenue came from single-mode WiFi VoIP handsets in 2005, about one-third from dual-mode handsets; by 2009, dual-mode handsets make up 3/4 of total revenue.
52 percent of dual-mode WiFi/cellular handset revenue came from Asia-Pacific in 2005, 25 percent from North America, 21 percent from EMEA, 2 percent from CALA.
802.11e QoS was standardized in late 2005 and will generate a new round of product releases and renewed promotion of real-time applications such as voice and video over wireless LANs.

For more on Infonetics study:
- see this press release

Trend: VoWLAN poised for take off

Tue, 23 Aug 2005 20:01:36 -0400

More and more people are making voice calls over wireless data networks, and as technology develops further, VoWLAN is going to experience exponential growth. These are the conclusions of two research groups -- Frost & Sullivan and Infonetics Research. Of special importance is the increasing number and sophistication of dual-mode handsets, which allow customers to switch between cellular and WiFi networks. In 2004, worldwide revenue from dual-mode handsets reached $6.7 million and totaled $54.7 million from all WiFi VoIP handsets, according to Infonetics. F&S said that dual-mode handsets would help mobile providers increase revenue per user and reduce customer churn, because allowing customers to switch between WiFi and mobile phone networks effectively increases coverage.

The debates over which standards and technologies to use for VoWLAN need to be settled first. Fourteen major phone vendors and telecom operators push unlicensed mobile access (UMA), but this is problematic as a long-term solution because it does not fully support SIP, which is used for VoIP, push-to-talk, and messaging. It is also not aligned with Internet protocol for multimedia subsystems (IMS) for creating converged networks. QoS is also an issue, but many see 802.11e effectively addressing it since it would prioritize voice over data communications and would also help in interoperability. 80211e will be ratified later this year.

F&S predicts that revenues for the European VoWLAN market will increase from €6.6 million in 2004 to €1.9 billion in 2010, an annual growth of nearly 160 percent.

For more on this latest vote of confidence in VoWLAN:
- see silicon.com's report