Sending Sendo On Its Way UpPage 20F E B R U A R Y | 1 | 2 0 0 3
After struggling with technical and marketing chal-lenges over the past several years, free space opticaltechnology may be in for a refreshing change.
Whether used in homeland security, backhaul or Wi-Fi hotspot applications, FSO is finding a niche to call its own.
Proponents say the technology is easy to deploy and in-expensive, and interest is growing, especially in the wakeof the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks that revealed the lim-itations of existing broadband networks. Today, FSO isbeing used as backup to existing fiber infrastructure byFortune 500-level companies such as Merrill Lynch & Co.
But wireless carriers are the primary target for manyFSO firms that are looking to supply short-haul links asgrowing spectrum congestion makes traditional mi-crowave links too cumbersome. Plus, wireless operators
are being forced to cut down on capital expenditures,and FSO proponents say their technology is less costlyto deploy than the old-school T1 lines.
Remember Terabeam, the Kirkland, Wash.-based pi-oneer in FSO service? The company is mum about someof its latest projects because they involve classified workfor the Department of Defense. But after a hefty numberof layoffs the past two years, the company has alteredits focus slightly. Now it is primarily a gear vendor afterstints as both a service provider and equipment maker.The privately held company, headed by former AT&TWireless CEO Dan Hesse, is positioning itself to takebetter advantage of what could be some exciting up-and-coming applications.
See page 6 for the full story.
Beaming Out The Last MileFSO offers a viable alternative to costly T1 lines and could pay for itself in the long haul.
Wireless Hot In Arctic
What’s going on with wireless in the technologyhotbed of Sweden? Plenty,
and Wireless Week went there to check it out. Seewhat we found near the Arctic Circle and elsewhere
in the Scandinavian country. Page 16
www.wirelessweek.com
LNP Battle May GoBoth Ways
BY MARK ROCKWELLThey’re certainly not shy about opposing wireless
local number portability, but with the deadline formaking it available the major wireless carriers arepreparing for its inevitability.
With CTIA leading the lobbying charge, the big car-riers continue to press their case with the FCC that themandate of wireless number portability is an unneces-sary, intrusive “fraud on consumers,” in the words ofassociation President and CEO Tom Wheeler.
But at the same time, the Sprints, Verizons andAT&Ts of the world can’t sit idly by while LNP goesinto effect. The ability of subscribers to keep theirphone numbers when they jump from one carrier toanother is both a great fear and a great enticement tothe national wireless carriers. They see it as a powerfulcompetitive tool they don’t necessarily want to bewithout, even if they don’t want it in the first place.
6Broadband WirelessFree space optical technology has faced hurdles inthe past but could see the light of day with major
homeland security applications and backhaul potentialfor traditional voice and data carriers.
8Legislative efforts to boost wireless broadbandhave raised some eyebrows in the wireless industry,while new broadband deployments in Jacksonville,
Fla., could become an interesting test bed for the restof the industry.
F E A T U R E S D E P A R T M E N T S
For subscription information and changes call 800/446-6551
4 OpinionWhat’s the big deal about a Nancy Victoryparty? The real story lies under the surface.
10 Service ProvidersLarge carriers are linking arms to fight whatthey consider unfair local number portabilityrules, but they’re also figuring out ways touse the technology against one another inthe future.
13 NetworksAn RF gear player in Texas is aiming high witha planned phone service using satellites todeliver communications to airline passengers.
16 Foreign CorrespondenceA journey to the Arctic Circle uncovers someunexpected technologies just off the snow-mobile trails.
18 BusinessBurgers and broadband to go? 5G Wireless isproviding its Wi-Fi technology to McDonald’s.
20 HandsetsSendo may have switched platforms, but itsCEO says the company is well on its way toreleasing a new smart phone.
27 Wireless GearCheck out the latest and greatest networkand end-user devices.
28 By The NumbersFast facts about market trends and expectations.
29 Guest Opinion
30 FaceTime
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Senior Sales ManagerKay O. Christopher • (617) 630-3832
C O R R E C T I O NIn a story in the Jan. 1 issue of Wireless Week
about U.S. carrier capital expenditures, there wasan error about the cumulative capital expenditureon carrier networks since 1985. The correct capitalinvestment made by U.S. carriers from June 1985until June 2002 was $118,418,677,000, accordingto CTIA.
There are scandals and then there’sthe Nancy Victory spectrum cap“Partygate” or whatever the no-
toriously lemming-like Washingtonpress corps decided to dub it.
We’re talking about the newswire re-port that took what looks like a paper-work snafu and turned it into an un-substantiated inference that the direc-tor of the National Telecommunica-tions and Industry Association was in-fluenced unduly to recommend a lift-ing of the spectrum cap.
It’s the type of story that some in theWashington media love, all sizzle andno steak. The size of the alleged in-fluence (a party donation of about$480) and the connection with thewireless industry lobbyists who Ms.Victory believably describes as friends(not an unusual relationship in an areaas incestuous as the Beltway) madethe story somewhat laughable, but itgot attention nonetheless during a hol-iday-shortened news week.
So, what’s the big deal about an in-cident and a story that likely blew overfaster than an Oakland Raiders fanafter a three-day tailgating binge?From this end, the big deal is howmuch the media cover what goes on inWashington vs. how little attention ispaid to the actual substance of stories
that purport to “get behind the scenes”but in fact are simply pieces pander-ing to the public’s appetite for scan-dal.
For example, by focusing on the Vic-tory party and the alleged influence ofthose who participated in it the storiestotally ignored the broader issue at thecore of this whole affair: the spectrumcap and the industry’s campaign to getit lifted.
The wireless industry lobbied foryears–years, mind you–for spectrumcap relief. Should we believe that a$480 party (which I’m guessing does-n’t get you much more than a coupleof cases of Chardonnay, some barbe-cue and a couple of sponge cakes inWashington) is what moved Ms. Vic-tory to formulate a position in favor oflifting the cap?
In a fervor to dig up the next Enronwith as little real effort as possible, thenational news media and those whofollowed them on this story focusedtoo strongly on a single grain of sandwhile ignoring the beach where it lay.That is, the alleged influence scandalbecame the story, over and above thefar more interesting story of what thespectrum cap is, why it’s being easedand what the huge ramifications arefor taxpayers, customers and wireless
service providers.In a nutshell, that’s the type of re-
porting that tends to get the most at-tention out of Washington. Noted jour-nalist James Fallows described thephenomenon in great detail in his 1997book, “Breaking the News: How theAmerican Media Undermines Democ-racy.”And we see this type of coverageon a regular basis in wireless.
One of our competing publications(hint: it’s the magazine that touts itselfas a weekly but only published 51 is-sues last year) frequently runs con-trived “back room” angles on Wash-ington stories, which with some fre-quency result in letters to the editorthat complain rightly about slantedcoverage. This type of coverage wide-ly is regarded as a joke but it involvessuch serious matters as wireless healthissues or the move to realign 800 MHzlicense holders, which tend to grab theattention of readers in the industry re-gardless of how well the stories arehandled in print.
Yet, the steady stream of sensation-al story angles coming out of Wash-ington seems to have dulled the sens-es of the reading public–even the rel-atively focused public that follows aspecific industry such as wireless–to
a point where questions that should begetting asked about such stories aren’tbeing asked by enough readers.
Questions like, is there another agen-da at work when details of Nancy Vic-tory’s ethics filings get pushed underthe nose of the national media? Orwhen a wireless publication mischar-acterizes an industry group’s positionon a key policy issue?
Maybe that’s the real story.
Afterthought: If $480 is the goingrate for buying influence on majorWashington policy these days, put medown for $1,000. I’ve got a couple ofthings on my mind regarding publicschools and air pollution.
Party On, People
BILL MENEZES, EDITOR IN CHIEF
B A R B E D W I R E L E S S
In a survey by Siemens, 66 percent of respondents listed costas the top trait that attracted them to their phones, followedby ease of use (62 percent) and functionality (59 percent).Brand reputation was named by more than half of respondents,trailed by appearance (37 percent) and ‘personality’ (20 per-cent). What was the primary driver that led to your phone?
1. Price 2. Ease of use 3. Functions4. Brand 5. Appearance 6. ‘Personality’
To register your answer, go to WirelessWeek.com, scroll downand click on the SoundOff link on the right-hand side of the home page.
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From fog interference to the no-tion that it might fry passing pi-geons, free space optical tech-
nology has faced a number of techni-cal and marketing challenges as itstruggled to gain a toehold in telecomover the past few years.
That may be changing quickly as thebroadband wireless platform is seen asa solution with major homeland secu-rity applications and a possible role ascheap access and backhaul technologyfor traditional voice and data carriers.
Though proponents say the technol-
ogy is easy to deploy and inexpensive,the tech and distance limitations of thelaser-based access platform has ren-dered it a niche play in the minds ofmany investors, potential customersand industry experts.
“FSO definitely has some relativelylarge limitations,” says LindsaySchroth, Yankee Group’s broadbandaccess technologies analyst. “It’smeant for very specific applicationsthat require large bandwidth.”
But interest in the technology isgrowing, especially in the wake of theSept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks thatshowed the limitations of existingbroadband networks in severely dam-aged locations. Because existing wire-line and fiber infrastructure was dam-aged during the attack, Fortune 500-
level companies such as Merrill Lynch& Co. used FSO to set up temporarycommunications links from one build-ing to another in lower Manhattan.
Now that security concerns haveheightened the focus even more on re-dundant networks, Merrill and othersare using FSO as a backup to their ex-isting fiber infrastructure.
Kirkland, Wash.-based TerabeamCorp., one of the pioneering free spaceoptics service providers, was instru-mental in helping Merrill reconnect itsManhattan-area sites after Sept. 11.
Terabeam currently has a research anddevelopment contract with the Depart-ment of Defense’s Defense AdvancedResearch Projects Agency to developcomponents similar to what the com-pany currently has deployed, but can beused in different types of form factors.According to Terabeam’s Chairman,President and CEO Dan Hesse, some ofthese different form factors include mil-itary vehicles that will use Terabeam’stechnology as a mobile communicationsdevice. But to learn any more you needa security clearance. “Some of the thingswe can talk about and some we can’t
because much of what we do for themis classified,” Hesse says.
Nevertheless, Hesse is encouraged bythe government’s interest and the in-creased attention to spatially diversenetworks. In other words, before Sept.11 many companies thought that if theyhad a fiber link from two differentproviders they were protected in caseof a disaster. But in their post-Sept. 11thinking, enterprises now understandthat to be fully redundant they need twocompletely different technologies, suchas a wireline and wireless option. “Weare working with different departmentsof the U.S. government to ensure net-work diversity,” Hesse says.
But the government is only one facetof this growing interest in free spaceoptics. The primary target for many ofthese firms is wireless carriers that arelooking for short-haul links. Accord-ing to Steve Hane, vice president ofbusiness development from FSO firm
Lightpointe, U.S. mobile operators arebecoming more interested in usingFSO for backhaul. Two key reasons:Growing spectrum congestion is mak-ing traditional microwave links morecumbersome to use and operators arebeing forced to slash their capitalbudgets. “If you are trying to slashyour capex, reduce operating expens-es or are using microwave radios butgetting spectrum congestion, you willwant to look at free space,” Hane says.
According to Hane, FSO tradition-ally has been more popular with car-riers outside of North America, par-ticularly in countries where provi-sioning a T1 can be costly and diffi-cult to obtain. But in the past few years,U.S. carriers have been more open toFSO technology because of the eco-nomics – T1s aren’t exactly cheap andreadily available in all locations of theU.S. market, either. “We have heardfrom two major carriers that even
Lighting The Last Mile
Inexpensive and rapidly deployable, free space optics is finding itsniche as broadband link alternative.
BY SUE MAREK
C O V E R S T O R Y
fSONA Communications is designingcombination free space optical and Wi-Fi
systems to mitigate interference andimprove hot spot performance.
Wireless WeekFebruary 1, 2003 7
though they get good prices on T1s,the operating expense never goes awaywhereas with FSO, in time the tech-nology pays for itself,” Hane says.
Hane admits that FSO isn’t for everysituation and can be used in conjunctionwith traditional microwave backhaullinks. “This is complementary technol-ogy to microwave,” Hane says. “Mi-crowave is good with low bandwidthand FSO is more analogous to fiber.”
This type of positioning is exactlywhat Schroth believes vendors need todo, as opposed to trying to make FSOinto an all-encompassing transport so-lution. “I see FSO as more of an ac-cess product for carriers,” Schrothsays. “A good market for this technol-ogy is as a metro ring extension.” Butwhen it comes to wireless backhaul,Schroth has her reservations. “Theproblem comes with distance. The fur-ther you go the less reliable the linkbecomes. A lot of vendors will try to
tell you differently.”Hesse agrees that FSO isn’t a solu-
tion for every situation, but says thatas a veteran of the wireless carrierworld (previously Hesse headed upAT&T Wireless), he believes opera-tors never rely upon one solution; in-stead, they want to have a “number oftools in their toolbelt” and FSO is justone of many.
But Hesse says that the main reasonwireless operators are looking at FSO isbecause traditional T1s don’t get the jobdone anymore. Carriers are seeingtremendous increases in wireless trafficthanks to big bucket plans that encour-age subscribers touse their phonesmore. “The costtradeoff of T1smakes wireless startto look financially at-tractive,” Hesse says.
That can’t happensoon enough forcompanies such asTerabeam, whichhas undertaken sev-eral rounds of lay-offs in the past twoyears and will bedown to about 175people at end of thequarter from a peakof more than 500. However, the econ-omy wasn’t the only driver in the lay-offs: The company has altered its focusslightly, morphing into primarily a gearvendor after being both a serviceprovider and equipment maker.
Privately held Terabeam also is plan-ning to buy back shares from its 280investors, some of whom have beenpressuring the company to return cashto shareholders, and to refocus its ef-forts on the sale of its FSO equipmentto big carriers instead of providing net-working services.
That could position Terabeam andothers to take better advantage of whatcould be some up-and-coming appli-cations for FSO.
Another burgeoning area is Wi-Fihotspots. FSO firm fSONA Communi-cations has been pleasantly surprisedby how conducive FSO is to providingWi-Fi backup. “Wi-Fi and FSO workwell together because free space opticsproduces no interference,” says MichaelCorcoran, vice president of marketing
and sales andfSONA. “Weare designingcombinationWi-Fi, FSOsystems to mit-igate interfer-ence and im-prove hot spotperformance.”
Corcoran says the company is work-ing with two large companies to rollout Wi-Fi/FSO networks in the Unit-ed States and in Europe.
In addition, some FSO vendors areworking with ADC to incorporate FSO
with ADC’s cell site extension technol-ogy. According to Hane, ADC has aproduct that allows carriers to increasetheir capacity in a certain cell site by cre-ating a virtual cell site a short distanceaway and then using free space opticsto transmit traffic between the two sites.This scenario calls for a high-bandwidth,short distance link, which Hane saysmakes FSO the perfect technology.
But what has all the FSO vendorsespecially encouraged is the recent in-terest in FSO from incumbent carrierssuch as AT&T, Verizon Communica-tions, SBC Communications and oth-ers. AT&T is testing FSO systems as afiber alternative technology to linklocal customers to the company’s long-distance network. Hesse says all themajor wireline players are evaluatingFSO and he expects there to be a car-rier/FSO contract this year. “I can’tgive you any guarantees, but I’d bevery disappointed without a significantcarrier contract in 2003.
Hesse says it is expensive for carri-ers to trial technologies. He believes ifthey are willing to invest in a trial,there’s a strong likelihood they will pur-chase the technology.
Schroth remains skeptical. “It’s avery specific technology and not some-thing I see a major operator deployingin its entire network.”
But such niche deployments could beall that FSO needs to keep beaming. WW
Fiber
WDM,1550 nm, Multi-Lambda
GigE
1 Mbps
10 Mbps
100 Mbps
1 Gbps
10 Gbps
50 m 500 m 1 km 5 km+2 km
Distance from Metro Fiber Routes
Free SpaceOptics
DSLDSL
Pt-to-Pt RF
802.11/MMDS/LMDSBand
wid
th D
eman
d
Does FSO Technology Fit?Distance/Capacity Comparison
The orange arrows point toTerabeam’s Elliptica gearmounted to the roof of acounterterrorism vehicle thatthe Army’s National Automotive Center unveiled at last month’sNorth American International Auto Show in Detroit.
WASHINGTON—Recent leg-islative efforts to “jump start”the market for new broadband
services through wireless technologyhave raised some eyebrows here.
A bill, S-159, introduced by Sens.Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., and GeorgeAllen, R-Va., would open up 255 MHzof unlicensed spectrum, centering thatallocation in the 5 GHz band. The bill
is aimed at opening up space for thepolitical flavor of the month, namelyWi-Fi wireless LAN technology.
As the 108th Congress convenes,Wi-Fi also is being mentioned in manylegislative arenas, including recentSenate hearings on telecom competi-tion and from other senators. For in-stance, Sen. Conrad Burns, R. Mont.,chairman of the Senate CommerceCommittee, recently said spectrum re-
form would top his legislative list forthis session of Congress. Late last year,the FCC earmarked unlicensed spec-trum as the future of wireless. Andwhen you add the fact that Congressis increasingly frustrated by what itsees as a capsized Telecom-munications Act, wirelessbroadband is becoming an in-creasingly attractive tempta-tion for lawmakers these days.
But mobile wirelessindustry officials seethings differently.While they applaud thenew interest in Wi-Fi asan alternative to wiredbroadband solutions and seewireless bringing ever morecompetitive pressure to bear ona hide-bound wired market, theysee some danger in Congress’attention.
For example, the Boxer/Allenbill isn’t backed by any studiesshowing why 255 MHz is need-ed, why the allocation should belocated in the 5GHz band. “I’mnot opposing the effort” to
opening up more unlicensed spectrumor unleashing new wireless technolo-gy, says Steve Berry, CTIA’s seniorvice president of government affairs.
But Berry wants Congress to delvea little deeper into the issue to see what
the effects are before it moves on anylegislation. “No one took me at myword when I asked for 90 MHz” ofmore spectrum, Berry says.
Senators Allen and Boxer were setto begin promoting the bill in pressevents in late January, according to aspokeswoman for Allen. The bill stillis in the Commerce Committee, how-ever, and isn’t expected to get any of-ficial Senate action anytime soon, shesays. WW
Not All Jumping On Unlicensed Broadband Bandwagon
BY BILL MENEZES
AFlorida port city that’s moreSouth than South Beach is thesite of some new broadband
wireless deployments that could be-come an intriguing test bed for therest of the industry.
Separate consumer-oriented andbusiness-focused commercial deploy-ments in Jacksonville, Fla., by serviceproviders Clearwire Technologies andData Wave show that two networkswhich couldn’t be more different areslicing off pieces of the broadband ac-cess business that so far is dominatedby wireline incumbents.
Clearwire early last month launchedits mass market-oriented Internet ac-cess service, initially targeting areasof about 1 million Jacksonville POPsit believes are underserved by cableand DSL providers. The company uses2.5 GHz spectrum in the Instruction-
al Television Fixed Service band thatit leases from local license holders andoffers service plans with downstream
bandwidthup to 768 kilo-bits per second.
Leo Cyr, Clearwire’s presidentand chief operating officer, describedearly takeup of the service as goodand reiterated the company’s plan tolaunch other markets where it controls2.5 GHz spectrum once the Jack-sonville market confirmed the broadbusiness viability of a broadband wire-less acccess service.
At the same time Data Wave hasjumped into the broadband wirelessaccess field with an offering that isaimed at enterprise clients and is
based on unlicensed 2.4 GHz spectrumusing the 802.11a wireless LAN plat-form. The company covers a roughly
25-mile radius from down-town Jacksonville and de-ploys wireless accesspoints only as needed toservice specific cus-
tomers; adjacent ac-cess points thenserve as a sort ofmesh network to
expand coveragein a given areaas more cus-tomers comeon board.
Robert Dun-lap, DataWave’s presi-dent, says 11
commercial cus-tomers signed up in
the first two weeks following the prod-uct’s mid-January launch, taking band-width packages ranging from 1megabit per second symmetrical datarates–available for $275 per month–to5 mbps for $1,000.
Dunlap believes his company’s focuson the enterprise and its pricing rela-tive to the T1s available from local tel-cos–T1 equivalent bandwidth fromData Wave costs $350 per month vs.a telco or CLEC T1 costing in therange of $800 to $1,200–are criticaldifferentiators.
He also draws a line between his Wi-Fi-based network technology and thelower-bandwidth 802.11b networksbeing thrown up by public “hot spot”operators.
“802.11b is where everybody is. Asthese companies grow and put in hotspots, they’re going to find every-body’s going to be tripping on top ofthem, including the Domino’s Pizzanext door that might have a leaky mi-crowave.” WW
For Broadband Competition, Look At Jax
Wireless WeekFebruary 1, 2003 C O V E R S T O R Y
Boxer Allen
“I’m not opposing the effort.” However, “No one took me at my word when I askedfor 90 MHz.”
CTIA Educational Sessions – March 17-19
Special Interest Seminars
• Wireless Data University – March 16
• Mobile Entertainment Summit – March 16
• Latin American Conference – March 18
Co-located Conferences
• IEEE Wireless Communications and NetworkingConference - WCNC 2003 – March 16-21
• Microsoft® Mobility Developer Conference – March 18-21
Attend the Microsoft® Mobility Developer Conference—the premier developer event for building and bringingto market wireless applications for Microsoft Windows®
Powered mobile devices, including Pocket PC andSmartphone. Designed for developers, independent software vendors, wireless operators and IT profes-sionals, this three-day event will provide the tools and strategies to build and market mobile applica-tions, content and services. Register today atwww.MobilityDevCon.com/CTIA.
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WASHINGTON—While largewireless carriers link arms tofight what they say are unfair
local number portability rules, they’realso making plans to use that tech-nology against one another in thecoming months.
In a sort of “damned if you do,damned if you don’t” approach toLNP, carriers such as Verizon Wire-less, Sprint and AT&T Wireless quiet-ly are making plans on how best tomarket number portability to theircompetitive advantage, while trying tofight a rear-guard action to change therules that require them to use it.
Verizon, Sprint, AT&T and all larg-er wireless carriers are on track to meetthe FCC’s November deadline to im-plement local number portability ca-pabilities that allow their customers toswitch from one carrier to another
while keeping theirtelephone numberwith them. The FCCalready has delayedthe deadline fourtimes at the carriers’request, with whatmost consider thefinal delay grantedlast summer by anincreasingly impa-tient FCC.
Compliance isprogressing with alot of grumbling.LNP’s costs areheavy and, accord-ing to wireless car-riers and lobbyinggroups, unneces-sary to further com-petition along in analready-competitivemarket like wireless.Industry officialshave told the FCCthat the commissionwould be better off try-ing to impose fairer cross-market LNPcapabilities on wireless and wireline car-riers. A more level playing field betweenthe networks would make it easier for awireline carrier customer to change towireless carriers, instead of imposingmore stringent and separate LNP ruleson wireless carriers, they say.
In press briefings, petitions and let-ters to the FCC in January, CTIA haspressed the issue at the commission.It’s also raising the issue in public.CTIA President and CEO Tom Wheel-er says his final year at CTIA will bethe year “someone speaks up for theconsumer” about inequities in wire-less regulation, mostly in LNP.
Wheeler says the LNP issue will behighlighted and he wants to start reg-ulators on the path to reconfiguring thewhole regulatory landscape for LNPissues during his remaining12 monthsat the organization’s helm.
As things stand now, wireless LNPis “a fraud on consumers” and a reg-ulatory “shell game,” Wheeler says,because wireline carriers aren’t re-quired to port their numbers to wire-
less carriers unless there’s a wirelineswitch located at the same “rate cen-ter” as a wireless switch. Wireless car-riers have switches in only one ofeight wireline rate centers; Wheelercontends that 90 percent of wirelinecustomers who ask to take their tele-phone number with them to a newwireless account can’t do so.
FCC officials are a little cool to that ar-gument, though. “We’ll certainly lookat the issue. Their original approach wasthat they didn’t want local number porta-bility to apply to them. That seems tohave shifted a bit to ‘if it applies to us,we want to change it,’” says FCC wire-
less bureau chief Tom Sugrue.For their part, wireless carriers aren’t
giving up on the position that LNP iswrong and unnecessary, but are forcedinto being pragmatists. They general-ly say they on are on board to havewireless LNP operational by the Nov.24 deadline. “We’re ready for LNP byyear’s end,” says Dan Wilinsky,spokesman for Sprint PCS. “We think,though, that the money used to installLNP is better spent on network ex-pansion and service improvement.”
Verizon Wireless spokesman JeffreyNelson echoed those sentiments. “TheFCC has never done a cost/benefitanalysis” of wireless LNP, he says.
LNP is being lined up, however, as acompetitive weapon. Some wirelesscarriers won’t comment publicly abouthow LNP will be marketed to cus-tomers. But plans clearly are in theworks to use it as a competitive tool,however grudgingly. “Everyone isdoing business plans with this in mind,”says one carrier official. “I won’t com-ment on marketing. That’s proprietaryinformation,” says another. WW
LNP Turning Into The Snit That Won’t Quit
■ Infonxx will provide WesternWireless’ domestic subscribers withenhanced directory assistance servic-es, including movie information,stock quotes, weather forecasts, traf-fic updates, sports scores, live drivingdirections and other services.■ Motorola and Corbis created a newmultimedia messaging service thatgives wireless network operators theability to extend their existing offer-ing to include media products rangingfrom still digital imagery to motionvideo content. ■ Wireless Networks teamed withMarketlink Technologies to useMarketlink’s nationwide sales coverageto market and sell WN’s product lineto distributors, value-added resellersand end-users in the United States.■ One of the world’s largest open-space public wireless networks, withmore than 70 access points, is beingrolled out in South Australia’s capitalcity of Adelaide. The multi-cell net-work, named StreetWise, will involvethe installation of Cisco AironetSeries of Wi-Fi products around thecity, attached to roadside infrastruc-ture.
The new multi-mobile, ever-connected “Goers” don't just go places, they they go when they get there. They ride where function and fashion round round the curve and slam headfirst into lifestyle and attitude.
The Goers literally “go with it”. If it walks, crawls, rolls, slides, hops, hops, skips or flies, the Goer is on board packing enough laptops, PDAs, PDAs, cell phones and CDs to make Robocop look like a caveman.
They embody Body Glove - the spirit and the adventure.
WASHINGTON—The possibilityof satellite companies provid-ing wireless services is the first
test of the FCC’s new spectrum poli-cy, wireless carriers said on the eve ofthe FCC’s MSS ruling.
The FCC has been considering letting
Mobile Satellite Service use an Ancil-lary Terrestrial Component that wouldlet them provide wireless communica-tions services similar to PCS services.
Concerned carriers and organizationsfiled last-minute comments at the FCCsaying out of band emissions from satel-lite/ATC transmitters would cause harm-ful interference to PCS handsets usedby millions of terrestrial subscribers.
CTIA President and CEO TomWheeler said in a letter to FCC Chair-man Michael Powell that MSS/ATCservices would interfere with PCS serv-ices operating at 1990 MHz, primarilyin handsets operating in that band. Ad-ditionally, PCS receivers operating in the1990-2025 MHz band wouldn’t be ableto filter out such interference, he said.
Verizon Wireless concurred in an-other letter to Powell. The companysuggested putting an emission limit onMSS terrestrial operations and not per-mitting such services below 2010 MHz.
But there also was a deeper, under-lying tone to both letters, suggestingthat the credibility of the FCC’s newspectrum policy, with its emphasis onmore flexible spectrum and closer mon-itoring of interference, was on the line.
“In light of the Spectrum Task ForceReport that relied so heavily on a lack ofinterference as the basis for policy de-cisions, we respectfully submit that thefirst decision by the commission in thewake of the report should not be to dra-matically increase interference into ex-isting licensed and operating bands viathe grant of terrestrial usage permits tosatellite licensees,”Wheeler stated. “Theunacceptable degradation of service toconsumers of PCS services…is not inkeeping with the ‘interference temper-ature’ concept so recently put forth inthe Spectrum Task Force Report.”
Said Richard Lynch, executive vicepresident at Verizon Wireless: “Mycompany has already filed its objectionto such an action on the grounds itwould be inconsistent with the law andsound spectrum management policy.”
CTIA proposes addressing the in-terference issue by imposing strict outof band emission limits on such trans-mitters and ensuring adequate fre-quency separation between MSS/ATCand PCS users. WW
S E R V I C E P R O V I D E R SCarriers Fight MSS Over Spectrum Use
“The unacceptable degradation…isnot in keeping with the ‘interferencetemperature’ concept.”
Using a system that calls for tap-ping the infamous Iridium satel-lite network, an unlikely alliance
between a maverick Texas broadbandoutfit and a Belgian airline voiceprovider is trying to give U.S. airlinepassengers a cheaper, easier way tomake phone calls from 33,000 feet.
Problem is, not only will the duohave to market a service against well-entrenched competitors, it also mayhave to dispel lingering doubts about
the future of the Iridium constellation.That is, if an agreement even is fi-
nalized to use Iridium’s system. Aspokesman at Iridium said the satellitecompany has been in discussions withEagle Broadband about its plans, buthas yet to sign anything definitive.
League City, Texas-based Eagle,which has businesses ranging frombroadband RF gear to fiber-to-the-home residential broadband service,says it has completed field testing onsatellite phone equipment developedin partnership with Belgian aeronauti-cal communications provider Euro-GSM. The two companies hope to mar-ket the hardware, which uses standardIridium interfaces, and service to air-
lines, defense and corporate clients thatwant to lease capacity from Iriduim forwireless links anywhere in the world.
“If one looks at the size of the mar-ket for this type of product, and youconsider that over the United States atany point in time in the middle of theday there are approximately 4,500 air-craft in the air, that would translate intopossibly 10,000 or more worldwide,”says H. Dean Cubley, Eagle’s chair-man and CEO. “The market for thistype of product is enormous, and all
have the need for good communica-tions. It is an area that has been great-ly lacking in communication devicesthat will literally communicate fromanywhere in the world.”
Eagle has entered into a marketingagreement with Euro-GSM, giving itsBelgian partner exclusive overseasmarketing rights while sharing mar-keting efforts with Eagle in the Unit-ed States. Eagle will be testing theequipment with some of Euro-GSM’s
existing airline clients for the next three months and after that plans apublic product launch, Cubley says.
“We are looking forward to a verygood year going forward,” he says.“We have already gotten good indica-tions back from several of the majorairlines that this is something theywould be willing to at least try, if notimplement, and we anticipate field tri-als with two or more airlines in thisfirst quarter 2003.”
With a maximum 9600 baud dataspeed, the new air phone system stepsoutside Eagle’s usual broadband focus.But Cubley says it will improve air-line communications. “The capacityto service 100 passengers on an air-liner simultaneously with direct-dialtelephone service is certainly anachievable objective in itself,” he says.
Passengers would likely check thewireless Orb Phone handsets out fromthe airline before they boarded theplane. While pricing has yet to be de-termined, Cubley said cost per minute
for calls will come in “at a fraction”of the current $5 to $6 per minute ratecharged by the likes of Verizon Com-munications’Airfone.
Developing a product that relies onthe Iridium satellite voice system mightsound risky. Motorola developed andlaunched the $5 billion system with 66satellites in low earth orbit during 1997,but it foundered after just a couple ofyears due to its high embedded costs,the expensive clunky handsets needed
to use it and the rapid growth of ter-restrial wireless networks that effec-tively shrank the areas where Iridiumhad a competitive coverage advantage.
The system was bought by a con-sortium of private owners for a mere$25 million. After landing a contractwith the Pentagon to supply commu-nications links to the Department ofDefense, it re-launched in 2001 as Irid-ium Satellite LLC.
Late last year, the DOD renewed itsairtime contract with Iridium for an-other year. The original $72 million,two-year contract included options toextend the pact through 2005.
Cubley says Eagle is confident thesystem is viable for at least the next sev-eral years. Since the acquisition, the newownership has launched satellites to fillcoverage holes and provided backupsatellites to offer worldwide coverage.
continued on page 14
Texas Outfit Aims For Sky With Airline Phone
■ ArrayComm and LG Electronicssigned an agreement for LG to licensethe i-Burst Personal Broadband System.LG will manufacture and distribute thebase stations and wireless modems,with commercial product availabilityexpected in the second half of this year. ■ Wi-Fi public access solutions providerGemtek Systems and European wire-less Internet service providerNetCheckIn announced a partnershipthat will help health and hospitalityvenues such as hotels, conference andmedical centers add high-speed Wi-Fipublic access equipment and servicesto their main business. ■ Emblaze Semiconductor andRFWaves are working together to devel-op advanced wireless multimedia appli-cation platforms. The joint developmentincludes a consumer application plat-form that enables system design housesto develop short-range wireless videomonitoring applications such as videobaby monitors, home security systemsand other remote observation systems. ■ Linksys’ line of wired and wirelessnetworking hardware is being used inthe deployment of Home Networkingfrom Cox Communications.
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Wireless WeekFebruary 1, 200314
For that reason, “it is a new Iridium weare talking about here,” he notes.
“I believe if you look at the U.S. mil-itary’s decision to move with it, theyhave come to the same conclusion,”Cubley adds. “So we believe this is agood platform to build a product baseoff of, and we believe that the airlineindustry and military likewise have aneed for an in-plane communicationssystem that will support a large ca-pacity, as opposed to the very limited
system that has been developed overthe last few years.”
Eagle also is marketing the OrbPhone to military and other users forair and ground-based applications.That could include field communica-tions for rapid military deployments,communications for those traveling toremote parts of the world or links toremote construction sites, Cubley said.
But others still cast doubts on thelong-term viability of Iridium–or anybusiness based on it. While the U.S.military contracts did bolster the re-formed company, so the market forglobal satellite phone system for air-lines or otherwise hasn’t exactly sky-rocketed, according to Patrick French,a Frost and Sullivan analyst who tracksthe satellite industry.
“We haven’t seen enormous growthin subscribers or minutes,” he said. TheDOD contract is “a good chunk ofchange, but that is never going to buyyou satellites in the future.”
Then there is the issue of the LEO
satellites, which tend to have shorterlifetimes than their higher-altitude, geo-stationary cousins. The company nowbelieves its existing satellite mesh net-work will provide service through 2010or longer, giving it time to develop astronger revenue base to support futuresatellite replacement. But French ques-tions whether that revenue base will bedeveloped in time to start replacingsatellites before they burn out.
“The problem is, what happens oncetheir satellites start getting old?” Frenchsaid. “We have reservation that theywill be able to build up a big enoughsubscriber base or more importantly, asubscriber base that uses minutes reg-ularly enough, to be able to haveenough income to eventually replacetheir fleet when that time comes.”
Additionally, Eagle doesn’t have theonly satellite sky service: The BoeingCo.’s Connexion service providingsatellite-based broadband data serviceto airline passengers took off on itsmaiden voyage on Jan. 15, via a three-
month test aboard a regularly sched-uled Lufthansa route between Wash-ington’s Dulles International Airportand Frankfurt. While Connexion is fo-cused on data, not voice, a high-speedlink to laptops and other broadband-enabled wired devices could provecompetitive for the passenger dollar.
Meanwhile, within the next decadethere will be growing competitionfrom GPS/GPRS wireless phone serv-ices able to reach remote locations forground-based clients, French adds.
“The same thing kind of applies tothe current Iridium–they say ‘just waitto give us time to develop this,’ butwhat’s going to happen to cell phonesover the next seven or eight years?”French asks. “I can expect a lot moregrowth on that front and a lot morethings happening there than on satel-lite. So again, the longer they put it outin the future, the drawback is whatother technologies are going to comealong and take away some of that po-tential future market.” WW
N E T W O R K S
On one hand, youshould get this book for the 28,000 wirelessproducts it contains.
Eagle from page 13
H. Dean Cubley, Eagle’s chairman and CEO,sees a sizable market for airline commu-
nications via satellite.
Wireless WeekFebruary 1, 2003 15
BY BRAD SMITH
Can the individual parts of a wire-less network be too smart?That’s a question that some Wi-
Fi infrastructure providers are an-swering in the affirmative.
The theory is enterprises that deploya wireless LAN with multiple accesspoints run into problems such as cen-tral management, configuration, up-grading technologies and user authen-tication. The problems, these compa-nies contend, are due to too much in-telligence in the APs.
Symbol Technologies of San Jose,Calif., was the first to come out with asolution to this problem last year withits Mobius product line. Mobius is aWi-Fi switch that sits in a WLAN andconnects to dumb access ports, as wellas an existing Ethernet switch.
Several new companies are gettinginto the smart switch-dumb port Wi-
Fi business, among them Aruba Wire-less Networks, also of San Jose. Arubacame out of stealth mode in late Jan-uary to demonstrate its hardware/soft-ware technologies. The company saysits intelligent, centralized Wi-Fiswitching system will be availableabout the middle of the year.
One of Aruba’s founders, PankajManglik, says the current crop of smartAPs means that most enterpriseWLAN deployments are limited to thedepartment level. This means IT de-partments are losing control of theirnetworks because it is so difficult toadminister each of these separate is-lands, he says.
Aruba’s planned technology com-bines Wi-Fi network access and an airmonitoring system with high-speed gi-gabit Ethernet switching and packetprocessing technologies. This gives ITmanagers the ability to centrally con-trol thousands of wireless users whilereducing the cost of deployment, man-
agement and upgrading WLANs.Central management and monitor-
ing also mean IT departments can au-tomatically detect so-called rogue ac-cess points, the company says.
“Wireless security is a multi-facetedproblem that requires a holistic ap-proach that protects the network, thetraffic and the air space together,”
Manglik says. “We’re delivering all ofthis protection within a single systemthat centralizes control and simplifiesupgrades.”
When the time comes to upgrade aWLAN, an enterprise using the Arubasolution doesn’t have to upgrade eachaccess point because the job can behandled on the switch, the companysays. Another feature of Aruba’s sys-tem is it uses Power over Ethernet,which means power and data can becarried to each access port through aCategory 5 Ethernet cable.
Aruba isn’t the only one entering thisfield now that enterprises are becom-ing more interested in adoptingWLAN technology. Two other com-panies eyeing the field are BlackStorm, also of San Jose, and Trapeze,located in Pleasanton, Calif. Neitherhas made its plans public yet. Whichmay be a smart thing to do. WW
On the other hand,you should get it for
a simple way of doingbusiness better.
Either way, you should get this book.The new 2003 TESSCO® Solutions Guide has 28,000 great wireless productsintegrated with great supply chain solutions. Visit www.tessco.com/wirelessweekor call 866-817-5367 to get your free copy.
KIRUNA, Sweden—One of theworld’s most remote inhabitedregions happens to be one of the
hippest when it comes to wirelesscommunications.
In the northern part of Sweden–acountry the size of California and Ore-gon put together–residents brave win-ter temperatures that typically are inthe single digits and they see daylightfor about three hours a day. Recre-ational activities consist of snowmo-biling and ice fishing. Sounds sort oflike Minnesota, doesn’t it?
But even in a land of vast undevel-oped areas between cities, residents canmake a mobile phone call from back-country dog sleds and exchange photosvia a mobile phone using MMS andBluetooth, limited only by hands fum-bling in the frigid air or the bulkinessof a down-filled glove.
Invest In Sweden Agency, a govern-ment organization whose mission is toattract and facilitate direct foreign in-vestment in Sweden, sponsored a tourfor several major publications, in-cluding Wireless Week, in January–aperfect time to show off the region’sicy shores.
The tour started with dog sled trans-portation to the original Icehotel, ahotel that literally freezes its guests forthe thrill of it. (Believe it or not, oneof the tour guides managed to hold acell phone conversation while guidinga sled.) This year, the new thing in thevillage of Jukkasjarvi is the Ice Globe
Theater, which replicates Shake-speare’s Globe Theater in London. Inmid-January, workers hurriedly wereloading blocks of ice to build the the-ater, situated next to the Icehotel, so itwould be ready for the Jan. 23 pre-miere of “Hamlet.”
The region’s largest employer is ashort drive away to the LKAB mine,which used automation to cut its work-force in half and maintain productivi-ty without missing a beat over the pastdecade. For visitors from the UnitedStates, displacing workers with tech-nology may sound like a recipe forworker unrest. Not so in Sweden,
where government officials inthis social democracy fre-quently point out that workersembrace technology.
LKAB mine, which producesiron ore for use in steel struc-tures, uses underground anten-nas and base stations to sendvideo to personnel who remote-ly operate heavy equipment suchas loaders from their desktopcomputers in control rooms.With help from Swedish wire-less carrier Telia and technolo-gy provider Elektrobit, the min-ers have technology rivaling anyabove ground 3G system. Butcan you get cell phone coverage?Of course, answers a project
manager. For years, miners haven’t hadto think twice about making a cellularcall far below the Earth’s surface.
Such confidence in technology iscommon among Swedes. In the 1990s,the government helped employees ob-tain computers for home use, and PCsales rose. Wireless penetration is inthe 84 percent range. And rather thanstaging expensive spectrum auctionslike other parts of Europe, Swedenused a “beauty contest” approach. Ap-plicants had to promise extensive in-vestments in network infrastructureand coverage of 99.98 percent of thepopulation by the end of 2003.
■ Cramer Systems announced that3, the European 3G licensee backedby Hutchison, will use Cramer’s net-work inventory solution for 3’sSwedish network. 3 is using Crameras part of an agreement with Teleca,which will install and integrateCramer with other operations sup-port systems.■ Samsung Electronics, RoyalPhilips Electronics and DatangMobile Communications Equipmenthave formed a joint venture todesign and license core TD-SCDMAchipsets and reference designs formobile terminals and end-user gear.The first commercial handsets usingTD-SCDMA technology developed forthe China market are expected nextyear.■ Lucent Technologies and T-Mobile have launched a pilot projectin the Nuremberg, Germany, regionto test high-speed data servicesusing UMTS technology.■ Telus Mobility will begin offeringResearch In Motion’s BlackBerryservices and devices to enterpriseclients served by Telus’ CDMA20001XRTT network in Canada.
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Warming Up To Sweden’s Arctic Circle
Invest In Sweden Agency, a government organization whosemission is to attract and facilitate direct foreign investment inSweden, is trying to lure U.S.-based companies and others toset up shop in the Scandinavian country.
ISA executives insist starting a business here is not difficult.Rather than targeting startups, ISA typically talks to establishedU.S. companies interested in locating R&D facilities in Sweden.
Why should wireless companies be interested in Sweden? “Ifyou’re in the U.S. and in the wireless applications business, youcan go to Sweden and find out what’s going on here,” says ErikEnroth, ISA’s representative in New York. “It’s already estab-lished and you can pick up on ideas and … the future of manywireless applications really starts here.”
About 1,100 U.S. companies have offices in Sweden; ISA canclaim credit for about one-third of those locations, with SunMicrosystems’ R&D facility being one of the more recent. ISArepresentatives help answer questions and put companies in
contact with local officials in the region of interest. Sweden’s wireless penetration rate is fairly well-known in wire-
less circles, but working with U.S. businesses in general can bechallenging because many people are not aware of Sweden’s ITculture. And hearing Americans get Sweden mixed up withSwitzerland has become an accepted part of life for many Swedes.
Yet Sweden is only one part of Scandinavia, and groupshawking Finland’s Helsinki region and the U.K. markets ofEngland, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland also were wellrepresented on the floor of last month’s Comdex Scandinavia.
Many mobile solutions are developed in Helsinki, and it offersa ready-made test market. “The proof of the pudding is eatingit,” quips Pentti Pitkanen, president of Helsinki Region Marketing.
And while Invest-UK works with ISA, isn’t it competing for someof the same business as well? “We’re talking to a lot of the samepeople worldwide,” admits Aidan Liddle, project manager. But, headds, “there’s enough … for everyone.” —By Monica Alleven
ISA Works To Bring U.S. Business To Sweden
Even during Arctic Circle trips such as this,Sweden’s wireless coverage is no dog.
Wireless WeekFebruary 1, 2003 17
To demonstrate the northern region’stechnology, ISA arranged a snowmobilesafari to a remote cabin near the ArcticCircle where Swe-Dish Satellite Sys-tems staged a surprise conversation withSwedish wireless pioneer Östen Mäki-talo, now the senior vice president ofmobile business at Telia Sonera, live viasatellite. Swe-Dish supplies mobile satel-lite communications equipment and re-lated services for broadband applications.Some themes emerge after a couple dayswith the locals. If you live here, you musthave a strong will to survive and a ten-dency toward invention. Then there’s thespirit of cooperation among businesses.Surviving harsh winters means know-ing your neighbors very well and relyingon one another. But there’s also compe-tition, especially between the Swedishand Finnish, and it goes beyond the Er-icsson/Nokia battle, spanning sports, in-dustry, brainpower and more.
Cooperation is the impetus behindLulea-based InternetBay, a group ofabout 110 member companies thatstarted in 1999 when a lot of smallercompanies were struggling to grow.The group’s managing director, TageRoutuvaara, was born on the Swedish-Finnish border to a family of 10 chil-dren. “What I learned was that youfight, and cooperate,” he quips.
InternetBay founders decided topool their resources in hopes of posi-tioning the region as a world leader intechnology and products for mobileand fixed-network Internet markets.As one might expect, distance learn-ing and mobility are important here,
where driving 50,000 miles a year isnot uncommon.
Schlumberger Sema is one of themember companies. “I think it’s good.It has led to business for us,” saysMagnes Falk of Schlumberger Sema.“I think most people living up here re-
ally enjoy it and do not want to move.There are difficulties up here. The peo-ple who are living here … like this.”
Though having a more temperate cli-mate, the same may be said for otherparts of Sweden. Leif Pagrotsky, Swe-den’s Minister for Industry and Trade,
told a group gathered at ComdexScandinavia in Göteborg: “We have tofight hard. We have to stick our necksout, and we have to be daring … butwe need more. We need to encourageyoung people to study science andtechnology.” WW
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McDonald’s–home of the fastburger, fast service and fast In-ternet connection? That’s the
case in Sidney, N.Y., where the localMcDonald’s restaurant hired 5GWireless Communications to outfitthe fast-food haven with a high-speedwireless connection.
Using traditional 802.11b technolo-gy in conjunction with direct sequencespread spectrum, 5G Wireless set up aWi-Fi network in nearby Bainbridge,N.Y., and then provided surroundingbusiness customers with broadband In-ternet connection speeds. “We operatewithin the standard of Wi-Fi but wehave pushed it to some strong limits,”says 5G Wireless President and CEOJerry Dix. “Using our own technolo-gy, we are able to broadcast up to eightmiles, if necessary.”
5G’s service initially appealed to
Richard Dombrowski, owner of theSidney McDonald’s restaurant, be-cause it allowed the restaurant to trans-mit and receive e-mail messages fromMcDonald’s corporate headquartersmuch more quickly than traditionaldial-up service. However, there maybe an opportunity to offer the serviceto McDonald’s customers, similar tohow Starbucks has used Wi-Fi to seekmore revenue from its coffee-slurpingpatrons. “Now that we have high-speedInternet service, our plan is to offer itto our patrons as they dine with us,”Dombrowski says.
Yet Dix says the company’s businessmodel isn’t to become a hot spotprovider but to be a last-mile serviceprovider. The company selects an areawhere there are few broadband com-petitors, installs its Wi-Fi hybrid tech-nology, connects to the public networkand then resells that connection to areabusiness or retail customers. “We takethe connection off the public networkaccess points and eliminate the localloop charges,” Dix says. “We are thelast mile.”
The Bainbridge hybrid Wi-Fi net-work is one of three that 5G Wirelesshas established. The company also hasnetworks in Binghamton, N.Y., andLos Angeles. According to Dix, thecompany primarily is gearing its serv-ice to mid-size West Coast cities, thosewith populations of 250,000 or less.Dix says the system is profitable withabout 300 subscribers per system butthe technology can handle many moresubscribers. With direct sequencespread spectrum technology, 5G usesthree collocated radios, each of whichare capable of supporting250 clients for a total of750 clients per facility.The company charges$39.95 per month forservice and provides aminimum guarantee of512 kilobits per second ofbandwidth.
The company has hadearly success with its LosAngeles system, whereDix says there are pock-ets that have no other
broadband service. In Los Angeles, thecompany distributed about 60 or 70flyers detailing its service in mid-De-cember and by early January it had received 22 calls from potential customers. “We set up a network inL.A. because it is our headquarterscity,” Dix says.
“Whenpeople cometo town, we wantto be able to showthem how itworks.”
5G Wire-less’ livedemonstrationhelped to sell the city of Garden Grove,Calif., on the technology. The compa-ny just signed a deal with the city gov-ernment to provide the police depart-ment substations with wireless broad-band connectivity. “They had to showme this would work before I’d makea commitment,” says Charles Kalil, in-formation systems manager for the cityof Garden Grove. “We had an experi-
ence with another wireless companythat made a lot of promises and nevercame through.”
Kalil says 5G Wireless has outfittedtwo police substations with its Wi-Fitechnology; one is about one-quarter
of a mile awayfrom the
m a i ntower and
the other is 2.5miles away from the
tower, and both get data speedsof 2.5 megabits per second. “Iwas skeptical about the site that
was further away but we ended upwith the same results,” Kalil says.“Based upon that, we are going to pro-ceed with the next phase and deployseven more sites.”
Garden Grove police will use thesubstation access points to downloaddata and tap into the city’s network.According to Kalil, the big draw of the5G solution is the price. The alternativewas to install T1 lines, which wouldhave been more expensive than all the5G Wireless equipment, plus the tele-phone company also would havecharged a pricey monthly fee.
Once all police substations are out-fitted with the Wi-Fi gear, Kalil saysGarden Grove is considering installing5G Wireless’Wi-Fi equipment in othercity facilities such as the water treat-ment plant and fire stations.
Whether it’s police officers or Mc-Donald’s restaurant patrons, 5G Wire-less aims to use its unique Wi-Fi tech-nology to bring affordable broadbandconnectivity to niche markets. WW
■ Network components maker RF MicroDevices expects revenue and earningsto improve sequentially throughout thesecond half of this year, following asharp decline in results for the quarterended Dec. 31. RF Micro says its quarter-ly net loss was $5.2 million, comparedwith a profit of $3.5 million in the year-earlier quarter, while revenue jumped 45percent to $145.8 million. ■ Billing systems provider Convergyssays its fourth-quarter net incomedropped by 16 percent to 31 cents pershare, while total revenue shrank to$564.8 million from $590.7 million.■ Research firm IDC projects wirelessand mobile network infrastructure spend-ing will grow from $38.3 billion last yearto about $49 billion in 2007. IDC notesthe 2002 figure represented a 22 percentdecline from the previous year.■ A new report by iGillottResearch saysthe ability to remotely manage mobiledevices and applications is a major con-cern for IT managers at corporationsthat have deployed wireless solutions.The firm predicts remote device andapplication management will become ascrucial an issue for the mobile enter-prise in 2003 as security was in 2002.
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Shaking It Up With Burgers, Broadband
Police in Garden Grove, Calif., will use 5G Wireless’ Wi-Fitechnology to tap into the city’s network.
Wireless WeekFebruary 1, 2003 19
BY MONICA ALLEVEN
KISTA, Sweden—While Open-wave Systems struggles withthe rest of the industry during a
tough market, some fruits of its ac-quisition deals made during bettertimes are surfacing in this growingcity just outside Stockholm.
As part of its May 2001 acquisitionof SignalSoft, Openwave, based inRedwood City, Calif., acquired an of-fice here as well as SignalSoft’s Boul-der, Colo., headquarters. Kista, oftenreferred to as Europe’s wireless capi-tal, is home to startups such as NeoN-ode, which has developed a touch-screen handset it hopes will help makeit the No. 3 handset maker by 2007.Other tenants include Ericsson, Nokia,Intel, Spirea, CellPoint, MobilePosi-tion, Hewlett-Packard and IBM.
SignalSoft, one of the early develop-ers of enhanced 911 applications, gaveOpenwave a foothold in the location-based services arena. Driving work inthe LBS area is a European Union dead-line for member countries to have inplace by July 24 legislation that requiresmaking caller location informationavailable to authorities handling emer-gencies. While Europe is consideredbehind the United States in terms ofmandating E911 capabilities, executivesat Openwave’s Scandinavian operationexpect all or most of the countries willtake the mandate seriously and will balkat any delays sought by operators, saysJohan Othelius, area vice president oflocation services for Openwave and for-mer managing director at SignalSoft.
Openwave is working closely withpartner H-P in the European market tooffer a solution that will help opera-tors meet the EU directive. Open-wave’s solution includes its LocationStudio and Location Gateway.
But the mandate is not the only driv-ing force behind LBS. Providing waysfor operators to boost average revenueper unit is the other side of the equa-tion. Openwave has been working withservice providers such as Sweden’sTelia to launch new applications suchas FriendFinder, DateFinder and Col-leagueFinder. As one might expect, theapplications use LBS to allow sub-scribers to find friends, dates or col-
league who have agreed beforehand tobe found. In Telia’s case, pricing forservices is event-based.
As with other similar services,FriendFinder subscribers can designatea group, whereby pals who give theirpermission will pop onto the handsetscreen with their location. A search fora friend costs about 30 cents; the pricegoes up as more people are added.Members of the group also may makethemselves “invisible” by turning offthe search function for, say, a weekendif they don’t want another member ofthe group to know they’ve left town.
Privacy is a critical element to Open-wave’s strategy. “In all location serv-ices, it is crucial that end-user’s priva-cy is guaranteed,” Othelius says.
One of the more popular Openwaveservices for Telia was tied to “PositionX,” a TV show in which the Hunters(Swedish film stars) try to catch theFugitives. The wireless service, whichwas heavily marketed during the show’srun last summer, may provide someclues as to how AT&T Wireless’ SMS
service will fare with FOX Broadcast-ing’s “American Idol.” Starting Feb. 4,AT&T Wireless customers will be ableto vote for their favorite contestants
using SMS. Without a monthly messageplan, each text message costs 10 cents.The carrier at presstime had not yet re-vealed its MMS plans for the show.
In Sweden, the reality show “PositionX” ran during prime time each week-night, encouraging viewers to assist con-testants using positioning with their mo-bile phones. If they spotted a Fugitive onthe street, for example, they could senda message to the opposing team. Teammembers also had Sony Ericsson MMSphones and took photos of themselves.Each Friday evening live on TV, viewerswould vote out a Fugitive couple.
“They were selling a lot of phones.I am not allowed to say how many, butit’s a decent number,” Othelius says.The show itself was No. 3 just two tothree weeks into its run–ahead of No.5 ranked “Jeopardy!”
Openwave’s plans for LBS includerefinements to its Location Gatewayinfrastructure and continuing to workwith operators to launch new applica-tions. And “Position X” for 2003?That chase is still under way. WW
Scandinavian Openwave Chases LBS Business
The growing city of Kista is home to a science and technology center that courts
U.K.-based upstart mobile phonemaker Sendo isn’t letting a fewups and downs–like a last minute
operating system shift and a lawsuitwith Microsoft–get the best of it.
Sendo CEO Hugh Brogan says thecompany is working diligently to readyits smart phone for the market. Sendoalso wants to assure wireless carriersthat it’s switch away from the MicrosoftStinger operating system to the NokiaSeries 60 platform was the right movebecause Nokia was willing to give thecompany its platform’s source code,something Microsoft refused to provide.
In the United States, Sendo is hopingto renew its relationship with CingularWireless. Last year Cingular announcedit would be the first U.S. carrier to debutthe Z100, Sendo’s first smart phone andone of the first handsets to offer the Mi-crosoft platform. The phones were sup-
posed to hit the U.S. market last fall butnever made it because of Sendo’s op-erating system switch. Brogan would-n’t comment specifically on Sendo’scurrent relationship with Cingular Wire-less except to say that the company is“still busy working its way into the Cin-gular organization.”
Exactly when Sendo will release itssmart phone using the Nokia Series 60platform is unclear; however, Brogandid say the phone is being tested foruse in North America. “Our biggest is-sues are getting compatibility and in-teroperability on the AMR codec,”Brogan says. “We are continuing towork on that. I’m not in a position togive you a precise date, but things aregoing well and we’re nearing comple-tion of the testing.”
But getting the company’s smartphone into consumer hands is only oneof many challenges in the year aheadfor Sendo. Late last year, the companyfiled a lawsuit against Microsoft accus-ing it of having a “secret plan” to stealSendo’s knowledge and expertise to gainentry into the mobile phone market andthen, after driving the startup into bank-ruptcy, cut it out of the picture.
At presstime Microsoft had yet torespond to the Sendo litigation, but thelawsuit is not unlike other disputes thecompany has had with its technologypartners, some of which have accusedthe company of unfair competitionafter gaining insight into their tech-nology. And it’s exactly Microsoft’sreputation as a hardnosed competitor
that has some analysts questioning thelogic of Sendo’s involvement with thecompany in the first place.
According to Jane Zweig, CEO of theShosteck Group, Sendo accepted a dan-gerous clause in its agreement with Mi-crosoft when it gave the company own-ership of its smart phone intellectualproperty should Sendo go bankrupt.“This appears to be the key to Sendo’sdownfall. The clause essentially gaveMicrosoft an incentive to starve Sendoonce the important software develop-ment was done–leaving Microsoft witha royalty-free license to the intellectu-al property,” Zweig wrote in a recentShosteck Group briefing.
And Zweig isn’t alone in her asser-tion that the road ahead for Sendo willbe rocky. According to Andy Seybold,head of the Andrew Seybold Group,regardless of whether Sendo uses Mi-crosoft’s platform or Nokia’s Series 60operating system, Sendo will have dif-ficulty succeeding in the smart phonearena because it has no brand aware-ness. “If you can’t make phones andmake money, then sue somebody andmake money,” Seybold says.
Documents filed by Sendo in the Mi-crosoft lawsuit provide some insight intothe company’s somewhat perilous fi-nancial situation, which the companysays was due to alleged actions by Mi-crosoft, an investor in the company. How-ever, Brogan says business is going welland growing. “We have grown 200 per-cent this month compared to this monthlast year.” In particular, Brogan says the
company expects to announce several re-lationships with South American carri-ers in the coming weeks. “There’s a lot ofmarket segmentation in South Americaand that’s why customization is impor-tant,” Brogan says. And Sendo appealsto these carriers because it is willing tocustomize devices, something few man-ufacturers are doing for that market. In-stead, Brogan insists other manufactur-ers just sell carriers the same models theysell in North American markets.
But Brogan admits that sinceSendo’s debut in the handset market afew years ago, many other device man-ufacturers have become more focusedon customizing handsets for carriers.“Motorola is offering some degree ofcustomization but not as full of a de-gree as we are,” Brogan says. “Ourparticular recipe is working for us.”
Not everyone agrees. According toZweig, Sendo’s differentiated approachisn’t unique anymore. “Motorola isworking with their operators on per-sonalization of devices,” Zweig says.
In addition, Zweig believes Sendowill have a tough time getting a smartphone on the market without investingheavily in research and development.“The R&D required at this state of thegame is going to be tough financial-ly,” Zweig says. “It’s going to be chal-lenging to survive this, consideringwhere other vendors are in this.”
Criticism aside, Brogan is optimisticabout Sendo’s future as a mobilephone maker. “We’ve been shippingphones for about a year and a half,”Brogan says. “We’ve established ourbusiness. We’re operating in 40 coun-tries and we’ve produced a few mil-lion phones this year.” WW
■ Motorola’s outlook for 2003 glob-al handset sales–currently the maindriver of its overall performance– isaround 430 million to 440 million,up as much as 10 percent from thesluggish growth of 2002. Motorola’shandset unit sales in the fourthquarter jumped 27 percent to 22million, led by a surge in low-endmodels.■ Verizon Wireless and LG MobilePhones announced the availability ofthe new VX4400 handset for Verizon’s“Get It Now” network. The VX4400features a 65K-STN color internal LCDdisplay, blue backlit keypad and LG’ssignature color-personalized caller IDwith up to 10 different colors; userscan choose red for a spouse, blue forfriends and green for co-workers. Thephone sells for $200 with a two-yearagreement.■ Wireless chip developer SkyworksSolutions has unveiled itsGSM/GPRS 900/1800 handset radiosystem, which combines all of thenecessary circuitry into a single-chippackage that the company says isabout one-third the size of alterna-tive solutions.
B I T S
H A N D S E T S
“There’s a lot of market segmentationin South America and that’s why customization is important.”
Sendo: Still In Smart Phone Game
For updates to this story,visit www.wirelessweek.com.
Sendo’s Z100 is no longer but thecompany is preparing to roll out anew smart phone with the NokiaSeries 60 platform.
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After a period of time late last year when operators wereforced to slash their wireless service costs in an effort tostay competitive, January 2003 was a month where service
costs remained relatively unchanged. Only three of the marketsresearcher Econ One looked at in its study saw any change at all–San Francisco (0.2%), Los Angeles (0.7%) and Minneapolis (0.9%).
S T O C K S P O T L I G H T
If there’s a potential proxy for the business prospects in wireless, let’s hopeit’s the distributor channel. If so, the rally in Brightpoint shares over the pastseveral months could be a leading indicator of better things to come.
Brightpoint has soared from its near-term lows of less than $2 a share to atrading range periodically touching $9 a share by late last month, more thantripling its rise from the lows.
Besides possibly pointing to a brighter 2003 for wireless sales, Brightpoint’sperformance also could be a reflection of the company’s restructuring and thepossibility of a strong fourth-quarter earnings report. Brightpoint last yearstreamlined and reorganized in a quest to return to profitability, as well as tobolster its balance sheet by retiring a convertible debt issue.
The fourth-quarter earnings will be out Feb. 6. Stay tuned.
Average Monthly Cost of Wireless Service Across Four Usage Levels *
Top 15 Markets
January 2003
Jan 03 Dec 02 Change
Rank ($) Rank ($)
(%)
1.Boston $36.69 1. $36.70 0.0%
2.New York 36.24 2. 36.25 0.0
2.Philadelphia 36.24 2. 36.25 0.0
2.Washington D.C. 36.24 2. 36.25 0.0
5.Los Angeles 35.99 5. 35.75 0.7
6.Minneapolis 35.86 7. 35.54 0.9 H
7.San Francisco 35.83 5. 35.75 0.2
8.Pittsburgh 35.35 8. 35.36 0.0 L
9.Dallas 35.24 9. 35.25 0.0
9.Houston 35.24 9. 35.25 0.0
11.Miami 35.20 11. 35.21 0.0
12.Detroit 35.08 12. 35.09 0.0
12.St. Louis 35.08 12. 35.09 0.0
14.Cleveland 35.06 14. 35.07 0.0
15.Chicago 34.11 15. 34.12 0.0
Average $35.57 $35.53 0.1%
* 50, 200, 500, and 800 minutes of use per month, assuming 70 percent peak-time use.
Note: "L" denotes market with largest monthly cost decline; "H" denotes market with largest cost increase.
Source: Econ One Research, Inc. and providers' Web sites as of January 6, 2003.
Emerging E911:Using Position-
LocationTechnologies
Source: Telecom Trends International
Enhanced 911 services over wireless platformsremains a contentious and lingering issuethat providers continue to wrestle with,
and E911 system technologies that operatorspotentially may adopt address the problem in a variety of ways.
Providers are being driven by consistent regulatory deadlines and varying amounts ofindustry pressure, and over the short-term,their objectives with regard to E911 have beenprimarily determined by cost. However, costisn’t the only consideration on the table withcurrent E911 position-location technologies,as shown below.
Summary of Basic Characteristics of Position-Location Options
TDOA E-OTD A-GPS
Accuracy 70-300m 50-250m* 50-150m
Speed of Response 10s 10s 1-20s
Legacy Handsets? Yes No No
Handset Modifications No Software only GPS handset req’d
Network Modifications Yes Yes Yes
Standardized No Yes Yes*based on extensive carrier trials
B Y T H E N U M B E R S
Wireless WeekFebruary 1, 2003 29
The great ones have always said,“The best offense is a good de-fense.” With consumer fears about
fraud affecting online revenue oppor-tunities, businesses are giving seriousconsideration to this cliché as they faceone of today’s greatest challenges–curbing e-commerce subscriber fraud.
Online commerce has become amajor force for a number of globaleconomic markets as customers shifttheir buying activities from an offlineto online experience. But with everynew technology advancement, com-promise and risk lurks in the shadowsfor both buyers and sellers.
According to Gartner Group, one in20 Internet consumers suffered fromsome form of credit card fraud in 2001,while one in 50 suffered from identi-ty theft. And while convenience is driv-ing consumers to the cyber world, con-fidence in this buying practice is fleet-ing and could cripple online commercemomentum.
As online technology continues to be-
come more pervasive, supporting PDAs,laptops, mobile phones and PCs, we arenow beginning to see the tip of the ice-berg for damage that cyber criminalscan create. New mobile buying meth-ods will cater to impulse and last-minutepurchasers, as well as traditional buy-ers who will not only be buying goodsbut booking tickets and managing fi-nancial accounts and transactions. In thenew world of online and mobile busi-ness, consumers need reassurance thattheir “faceless” transactions are secureand that these “faceless transactions”will be safe, quick and reliable.
Online fraud is not just a problem forconsumers and government regulators.It crosses network operators, banks,department stores, credit card associa-tions, manufacturers, resellers, etc., allthe way down to the mom-and-pop of-fering vintage books over the Internet.
So what do we do? To be prosperous and a trusted provider
of online commerce transactions, busi-nesses and carriers must identify high-
risk applicants by checking for invalidand inconsistent data, verifying each ap-plicant’s information and identity, anddeveloping scoring models that workwith validation and verification tools toproduce a score indicating the likelihoodthat an applicant is fraudulent or risky.
We need solutions that deal withthese risks by quickly and seamlesslyassessing prospective sellers, buyersand transactions. This must be done sothat threats to consumer confidence arehandled at the right point in the process.
One way to screen for fraudulent use
is through online credit qualification andfraud screening. Prospective customersmust be quickly identified as profitableand legitimate. Another way is to morethoroughly check a customer’s identityto guard against identity theft. This oftenrequires posing “out of wallet” questions.
For businesses, these services arejust as important as any security meas-ures implemented in our malls, banks,theaters, sporting events, etc. to ensureprofitable and safe purchasing behav-ior. For customers and suppliers, theseservices are vital for providing a feel-ing of safety and confidence in the on-line transactions that are becomingmore and more a part of everyday life.
Robust fraud and identity managementsolutions will not come from as singlevendor, but through a growing list ofcomplementary relationships that joint-ly deliver the essential solutions to com-bat this pervasive and enduring problem.
Pamela D. A. Reeve is CEO ofLightbridge, a global provider of online and mobile business solutionsfor communications providers.
The “always-on” mantra in today’stelecommunications market hascreated a mass of new avenues and
devices enabling consumers to com-municate. At work a user might be avail-able on the office phone for voice calls,on a cell phone for both voice calls andtext messages and on a desktop com-puter for e-mail and instant messages.
To many, the flow of communica-tion has become overwhelming. Infact, the penetration rate of wirelessphones is approaching astronomicalnumbers in some countries. For ex-ample a recent J.D. Power surveyshows that 56 percent of U.S. house-holds have a wireless phone, and thegrowth of broadband, packet-basednetworks for both wireline and wire-less access continues to increase thereach of communications networks.
The industry has given users the “al-ways on” option, but what if they wantpeace and quiet without missing animportant communication?
Imagine the ability to limit access via apager or home phone during dinnertimebut routing critical calls to a cell phoneand all business calls to a specified voicemail. With the advent of presence andavailability management (PAM), carrierscan now offer end users this luxury ofcontrol. PAM enables subscribers to man-age their presence on communicationsnetworks in a way that protects their pri-vacy and allows for total control.
The idea of presence management grewout of Instant Messaging, the immediatedelivery of short text messages to avail-able people on a user-maintained list. Thekey elements that made IM successful arethe immediacy of the communication andthe ability of the end user to manage their‘presence’in regard to others.
PAM takes the concept a step further,incorporating the IM concept of com-munications management into new de-vices and networks. In addition, userscan consolidate their availability acrossmultiple networks into one profile and
redirect communication attempts fromone network to another automatically.A buddy list can be expanded to in-clude not only individuals but also con-tent such as media and advertising,therefore expanding the revenue op-portunities for an operator without de-veloping backlash from the user.
In early 2000, the Presence and Avail-ability Management Forum (www.pam-forum.org) was formed to extend IM con-cepts into other forms of communicationbeyond that of simple text messaging.
The group needed a model for manag-ing presence information and availabili-ty requests that would give the end userthe ability to control applications that re-quest availability while also allowing theoperator to maintain that information forprivacy and accessibility.
The PAM Forum has released its 1.0version of the specification and isworking toward a revision of thosestandards. The specifications devel-oped within the PAM Forum representa model for maintaining and distribut-ing presence and availability informa-tion as well as securing and protectingaccess to the information.
Clearly, consumers are hungry forcontrol over when, where, how and bywhom they are communicated. Ratherthan keeping users “always on,” PAMoffers the flexibility to manage com-munications so a user is “always avail-able,” but not “always on.”
George Hallenbeck is president andCEO of Evolving Systems, a provider ofoperations and enhanced services soft-ware to communications industry clients.
Curbing Online Identity Theft And Fraud
PAMELA REEVE
GEORGE HALLENBECK
G U E S T O P I N I O N
A S E C O N D T H O U G H T …The Ultimate Communications Control
Wireless WeekFebruary 1, 200330 F A C E T I M E
The San Diego TelecomCouncil announced its newexecutive team, includingMarco Thompson of WindRiver Services as chairmanand Martha Dennis ofWindword Ventures as pres-ident. Jeffrey Belk, seniorvice president of marketingfor Qualcomm, was namedvice president of marketingand programs; LindseyBurroughs, vice presi-dent/general manager forCox Business Services, wasnamed vice president ofspecial projects; PattiLazard, director of busi-ness development forKPMG, was named vicepresident of membership;and Cathy Pucher, directorof Americas wireless com-munication sales for TexasInstruments, was namedvice president of outreach.
•Donald Schrock plans to
retire as executive vicepresident and group presi-dent of Qualcomm CDMATechnologies in Augustafter a 35-year career inthe semiconductor industry.Sanjay Jha was appointedpresident of QualcommCDMA Technologies.
•SnapTrack appointed
Kamil Grajski to seniorvice president and generalmanager of the Qualcommsubsidiary. He formerly held
the position of vice presidentof engineering for SnapTrack. He replaces BretSewell, who resigned to pursue other opportunities.
•Bjorn Kirchdorfer joined Navini Networks as
executive vice president of commercial operations.He previously was a vice president with IP Wireless.
•Les Hamilton joined Danger as senior vice presi-
dent of worldwide operations and manufacturing.He joins Danger from GX Networks UK, formerly XOCommunications Europe and Concentric Network,where he headed the Network Services Division,based in London.
O N T H E M O V E
THOMPSON / WIND RIVER
BELK / QUALCOMM
SCHROCK / QUALCOMM
GRAJSKI / SNAPTRACK
Even though he flies an antique bright-yellowairplane for fun, David Simpson doesn’t thinkhe has his head in the clouds when it comes to
putting wireless technology to good use. He’s on amission he calls “personalized spoken audio.”
Simpson, 45, has a telecom background with 20 yearsat Verizon Communications and its predecessor com-panies. He also has spent a lot of time behind the wheelof a car, where he thinks too much of the time is wast-ed. It was while he was at Verizon that he got the ideathat “windshield time” could be more productive if driv-ers could receive personalized audio content, similarto books on tape but using a wireless network.
He went to work in business development for Au-dible Inc., a leading provider of downloadable spo-ken audio from the Internet, which wanted to expandinto wireless and telematics delivery. The dream was
to deliver personally valuable content, such as break-ing news stories about a company or issue the userwas interested in.
“Carriers need to understand that they hold a fran-chise in wireless that is at least as important and veryclosely related to what the cable business and broad-casters had before in terms of delivery of informa-tion,” he says. “My passion is to find ways for carri-ers to bring this service to their customers.”
Campbell, who lives in Chatham, N.J., says peoplewould be interested in receiving a wide swath of in-formation through their wireless phone, including trav-
el, financial, retail and customer contacts. The key, hesays, is to make it personalized, so that it is pointcastand not broadcast. Most people aren’t interested in hear-ing all the news headlines, but find one or two to bepersonally relevant.
One company Campbellthinks is on the right trackis a Pittsburgh, Pa., firmcalled Evoxis, which has aplatform for customized,spoken information. Evox-is is an application serviceprovider targeting business-to-business financial, healthcare and government.Campbell says the Evoxisservice allows users to setprofiles and alerts so thatmobile sales workers get a phone call when there is anews announcement about a client company.
“When they walk in the door, they know what hashappened,” he says. “Clients and suppliers need tohave a close relationship and this helps that.”
Other users might get an audio message detailing amanagement change at a company the user owns stockin.
Unfortunately, Campbell doesn’t get a lot of timenow to evangelize about personalized audio. A down-sizing at Audible led to his departure 18 months agoand he now is a partner in a consultancy called Mor-ristown Three, which focuses on early and growthstage technology companies. None of his clients nowoffer personalized wireless audio, but Campbell stillpleads his case whenever possible.
He also saves some time to fly a 1946 Piper Cubtwo-seater airplane, sometimes call the “plane thattaught American to fly.” Every year he tries to fly toa Piper Cub rally held in Lock Haven, Pa.
With luck, his ideas for wireless content will takewing too.
—By Brad Smith
Flying High With Personalized Audio
O F F B E A T
Maybe it’s that some businesstravelers want to emulate JamesBond, or Maxwell Smart.
Whatever the reason, wirelesstechnology has crept into luggagevia a Bluetooth-enabled attachecase from Samsonite.
The company’s Hardlite 625model is under the final stages ofdevelopment in Europe, where it
will debut commercially later this year. An embed-ded Bluetooth module enables users
to perform such tasks as trackingthe case. Other future apps mightinclude the use of Bluetoothinstead of paper or plastic lug-gage tags.
“Samsonite is a company that’salways looking for the next stepin travel,” a spokeswoman says.
Can the shoe phone be farbehind?
Luggage Goes Wireless
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