Modem trial takes the fast track

By PETER GRIFFIN

American wireless technology company IP Wireless believes it has stolen a march on the major mobile vendors by basing its technology on a standard that the telecoms industry has largely ignored.

IP Wireless is running a trial of high-speed wireless modems with Walker Wireless and Vodafone, using patented technology based on the TDD (Time Division Duplex) standard, a subdivision of the Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS).

IP Wireless chief executive Chris Gilbert said mobile phone and infrastructure vendors had poured US$7 billion ($14.4 billion) into frequency division duplex (FDD), a technology standard that did not suit high-bandwidth uses such as mobile video and data delivery as well as TDD-based technology did.

Gilbert, with Motorola for 12 years, including as head of European infrastructure deployment, said the "sleeping giants" in the mobile industry were now launching capital expenditure programmes to justify their technology decisions.

He said the industry had come to realise that TDD systems made better use of radio spectrum because one channel, rather than two, was used for both upstream and downstream traffic.

The modems used in the Walker Wireless trial would soon shrink in size and eventually be bundled into mobile devices as a single chip.

They also take a mobile Sim card that allows network operators to look after billing and security.

In the United States, broadband provider Clearwire intends launching a service operating in the licensed 2.5GHz spectrum band based on the IP Wireless technology, with tiered pricing ranging from US$49 to US$230 a month.

The wireless modems sell for under US$400.

Clearwire intends using IP Wireless modems to set up a service in a major US city next year covering more than a million people and the systems is being tested in Canada by major carrier Sprint.

Gilbert said IP Wireless was six hours into talks with telecoms giant WorldCom when the accounting scandal broke that tore it apart.

IP Wireless has so far received over US$120 million in venture capital backing for its technology.

The IP Wireless modems will be at the centre of future tenders that Walker Wireless will pursue as part of the Government's Probe initiative aimed at delivering high-speed internet to all schools.

Walker Wireless and Vodafone have won the first contract, to roll out a wireless service in Southland.

The advantages of TDD over FDD in Wireless Data Applications