Femtocells

All bets on wireless – for now

Doug Mohney — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 16:51:55 -0400

If you are have some spare change to invest, or you're building a name in Washington D.C. for future career options, wireless is the place to be at this moment.

Since the dot.bomb bubble, venture capitalists have been acting more like they should when it comes to investing in telecommunications firms. VC now look for a longer term play of five to seven years once they invest, steady growth with revenues and profits, solid management and an understandable business model - no more of this crap of raising $20 million with a PowerPoint presentation and a smile.

In tight times, VCs circle the wagons, figure out which children can stay in the lifeboat, cut off funding to those who can't, and invest in those companies that have a good to excellent shot at profitability once the storm clears. Better still if they can find profitability during the storm.

FMC/femtocell play Kineto Wireless took in $15.5 million in funding last week, including a "strategic investment" from Motorola. You know Moto has to have serious belief in Kineto to give them money after all their tribulations this past year. Expect FMC/mobile UC players to continue to build business; everyone has their own personal cell phone, everyone uses it for work, everyone wants to keep personal and business calls seperate.

WiMAX is another area attracting funding. Sure, everyone has heard about the in-progress $3.5 billion capitalization of Clearwire once the Sprint/Clearwire merger passes through the FCC, but Altair Semiconductor closed $22 million in Series C round funding in late September. Fabless Altair is using the money to expand its global operations, as well as to continue development on WiMAX and LTE chipsets. There are a couple of other VC announcements in the pipeline, regardless of where Wall Street goes in the next two weeks.

And I suppose a number of people will owe thanks to FCC Chairman Kevin Martin if two different proposals to free up spectrum for public use go forward. This week, Martin came out bullish on using "white spaces" - the open spectrum between TV channels - in an open and unlicensed fashion. The FCC's Office of Engineering and Technology (Uber-radio-geeks) put five prototype/proof-of-concept "white spaces" devices through their paces to see if gizmos could be built to conduct spectrum sensing (i.e. what TV channels are in use, which aren't, use the ones that aren't being used), and the results have been satisfactory.

Round two comes with last week's FCC report on AWS-3 spectrum; basically, it's a band that sits next to T-Mobile's network. The FCC would like to auction AWS-3 with the stipulation that the winner would dedicate resources for free national wireless broadband access. It's an interesting idea and main cheerleader M2Z Networks says it would provide the national treasury with a dedicated yearly revenue stream in exchange for use of the spectrum to sell a higher-end (faster speed, no porn filters) for-pay service.

Of course, neither white spaces nor AWS-3 usage are sure things. The National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) is determined to crush any perceived threat to the use of "its" spectrum, while T-Mobile is likely to fight AWS-3 for the potential for it to interfere with its services.

- Doug

WiMAX left dongling out there!

Tue, 07 Oct 2008 21:21:09 -0400

By Carl Ford

Going to WiMAX World last week gave no comfort to the wireless weary.

Good friends point to Apple's 3G iPhone, the iStore and the specs on Advanced LTE. They say, "The future is going to be great."

However, the need for speed is based on a device that has the computing power of laptop and not just a cellphone/iTunes player. The issues that make LTE appealing can be considered minor in comparison to the CPU needed for compressing video on the fly.

That said, to be on the WiMAX side of the equation you have to believe that WiMAX will be the home of strong processing applications. Walking WiMAX World, I was looking for things that would catch my imagination - new applications that need computing devices.

If you look at the Intel Developers Forum website, you can see lots of these devices. Asia has a good number of them and they are great to look at, but they were not at WiMAX World (with the exception of Flyvo).

So if you don't have a compute device to showcase a cool app, what was the so-called compelling driver for WiMAX?

Unfortunately, the show floor answer is Fixed Wireless Substitution, with an architecture featuring "Femtocells" and dongles [Dongle - the stick form factor thing you put into a USB port to add functionality to a laptop or other mobile device].

The unexciting end result was either a base station for your computer or a dongle into a USB port. There I was looking for innovation and seeing a box and a stub? And the Femtocells guys were only talking backhaul substitution. No triple play. No killer app.

Don't get me wrong, WiMAX has a play as a substitution/green field for wireline replacement, but the sales process and projections make it look like it is competing with Subscriber Line Carriers [SLC] systems for DSL. I did not even see a value proposition for a switch to WiMAX from Metropolitan Ethernet.

So what about the apps? In South Korea, WiMAX's oveseas cousin WiBro has not been winning peoples hearts with sexy video-based apps. The government is allowing (boring) VoIP to occur to help gain market share.

With voice as the moneymaker, the only one talking about VoWiMAX at WiMAX World was Cedar Point. Everyone else was talking up a game about engineering better coverage. Cedar Point was the only one with a story about how to gain customers and make money with a full service offering.

I am not saying you can't just offer Internet access. Nor am I saying that data networks can't be profitable. However, history shows that the voice network has been the most profitable, and fixed wireless substitution offerings should have voice as a basic and fundamental integrated application.

So bundle the dongle with a soft client. Show a femtocell that enables a SIP service. The beauty of VoIP is that it's not hard, and the beauty of an open-standards WiMAX network is, like the Internet, anyone can do it. It's a matter of focusing on the customer and not the technology.

- Carl

Broadsoft acquires product line from Genband

Dan O'Shea — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 09:46:22 -0400

VoIP application company BroadSoft announced that it acquired fellow vendor Genband's M6 Communication Applications Server and related assets. The product formerly was the heart of vendor VocalData, which Genband acquired during a buying binge it carried out over the last few years. Genband had acquired VocalData, Tekelec's Taqua unit and other firms, but has since spun off Taqua and now divested the VocalData product and assets.

Genband more recently has turned its attention toward media gateways, femtocells and other products, while Broadsoft specializes in VoIP apps. The deal will help Broadsoft expand its customer base in the carrier VoIP applications market. The two companies also will partner on network transformation projects.

Related articles
Genband announced a deal with Integra Telecom at Nxtcomm. Genband report
Broadsoft has been making its apps more webby. Broadsoft report

Sprint eyes nationwide femtocell availability

Dan O'Shea — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 09:57:33 -0400

Sprint Nextel has a reputation for launching innovative services before other wireless carriers, an approach that usually gives it an early market edge though sometimes only briefly. Now more than ever, as the company tries to do everything it can to recover from a troubled merger and poor market performance, we can expect Sprint to look for that market edge again by sticking to it innovation guns. The carrier said this week it will expand its Airave femtocell pilot program to make the home base stations available nationwide over its network, with sales of Samsung fentocells set to begin Aug. 17.

Sprint was one of many carriers worldwide conducting femtocells trials or limited pilot programs. It's broader launch will test the viability of femtocells at a time when wireline telcos continue to lose landline market traction. However, Sprint also will take an economic risk in charging for both the femtocell and the service, rather than subsidizing the femtocell.

For more:
- check out this coverage at Telephony

Related articles:
Femtocells have been heading toward a tipping point. Femtocell report
Femtocells might also be on Comcast's agenda. Femtocell report

Comcast spreading its WiMAX wings

Dan O'Shea — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 09:20:06 -0400

It was reported last week that the venture capital unit of cable TV provider Comcast, along with other firms, had been part of a $12.6 million seed investment in WiMAX-related start-up Cartiza Networks last year. It is not apparent how much of the round came from Comcast Interactive Capital; and, while the investment seems like old news, Cartiza has not said much more about its plans since then. The Littleton, Mass., company is believed to be developing content delivery and management technology for use over WiMAX networks.

A Comcast official also recently said the company is planning to use femtocells in conjunction with its WiMAX offering via the Clearwire venture. The femtocell plan and news of the Cartiza investment came to light not long after Comcast and other cable TV providers committed to invest in the new Clearwire WiMAX venture with Sprint. While Comcast's original residential wireless play with Sprint fizzled, it seems the cable giant now feels WiMAX is the right wireless path to take into customer homes.

For more:
- see this story about the Cartiza investment at Multichannel News
- read this Editor's Corner at FierceBroadbandWireless

Related articles:
The new Clearwire venture was announced in May Clearwire report
Comcast added 639,000 voice customers in Q1 Comcast report