Woosh under keen overseas eyes

By PETER GRIFFIN


The Woosh Wireless boardroom has played host to several international guests in the past few months, says chairman Rod Inglis.

The research and development head for Softbank, one of Japan's major broadband providers, has visited.

Other delegations from United States operator NextWave and a British broadband venture headed by PCCW have also been in town to check out Woosh's network.

All are keen to see the IP Wireless equipment being used by Woosh in action as they prepare to launch their own trials of the technology.

And more international scrutiny is likely when Woosh goes live in a couple of months with its voice over internet protocol (VoIP) telephone offering in direct competition with Telecom.

Pricing is yet to be released, but Inglis, who spoke to the Herald over a VoIP connection with little discernable difference, said its voice debut would be cheaper than Telecom's existing monthly line rental charges, which were bumped up by $6 a year a few weeks ago.

"All customers will need is a little box we call the Home Gateway. It has a couple of Pots [plain old telecoms services] connections and an ethernet connection," he said.

That box is used with the IP Wireless modem and the customer's existing telephone to make the connection. A Woosh phone number system will also be introduced.

"Say an immigrant wanted to sign up. We could even equip someone with their local number from China," added Inglis, who sealed an interconnect deal with Telecom this month making the voice service possible.

Woosh will not release figures on take-up of its wireless broadband service, which has been in the market for a few months.

Inglis said the figures had been good in Auckland, where direct sales and sales through Dick Smith outlets have been strong. Sales through partner Vodafone had been slower.

"People haven't yet got their head around buying a modem from a mobile phone store."

Woosh had been swamped by high demand in Southland, where it is operating off the back of winning a Government broadband tender there.

But the Woosh launch has revealed some network issues.

"Gaming is impossible, it's virtually worse than 56[Kbps]. This latency does affect web browsing to some extent I think, because compared to Jetstart, loading local pages is noticeably slower," one user wrote at www.unixathome.org.

Another poster, who appears to be a Woosh employee, claimed sales staff had been instructed not to sell Woosh to gamers, a high-use market segment.

Inglis admitted online gaming over the Woosh network was hampered by network "latency". But he said further software upgrades would shorten delays.

Trevor Woods, an engineer at Broadcast Communications who has contributed to digital receiver standards authorities, said Woosh was entering uncharted territory launching voice services using technology developed solely for data transfer.

The IP Wireless technology is based on a variant of wideband CDMA known as time division duplexing (TDD), which Woods said had been developed as a high-speed data overlay for voice networks, but was not designed to deliver voice.

"You still don't have the maturity of good old switched circuit voice - the heritage of which is about 50 years. They still have to terminate that call on Telecom's network. There's a clash of standards there," he said.

But documents leaked to the Herald reveal an independent analysis that endorses Woosh's business plan.

"The development of a voice offer will drive both uptake and revenues, allowing Woosh to offer 40 to 50 per cent discounts on business data and voice access and 30 per cent discounts to residential data users if it can acquire a 20 to 25 per cent share of the overall market," the report read.

A decrease in the cost of modems to bring installation costs more in line with DSL was also considered viable.

"Our modelling suggests that Woosh could absorb the difference in [access equipment] price without destroying their economics, and are merely being cautious in the early stages."

In the run-up to Christmas, Woosh appeared to be doing just that, selling their modems for $199.

With a VoIP telephony service Woosh was also tipped to offer a toll-bypass service "where superior economics would enable it to gain a significant share of national and international calling".

Woosh may also benefit from a couple of strategic appointments. Telecom's head of consumer marketing, Sandra Geange, defected to Woosh last year, seeking a more "entrepreneurial" environment.

Geange, who is general manager of sales and marketing, believed adding voice would make Woosh easier to sell.

"[Broadband is] quite a difficult sell because it's new. Everyone knows about making a phone call."

Former Lion Breweries employee Gary Neil, who has been working at European pay TV, telephone and broadband operator UGC, is Woosh's new chief financial officer.