Mobile broadband company, Flarion said on Wednesday it had developed high-speed mobile data technology with about five times as much capacity as today’s fastest wireless networks.
Spokesman Ronny Haraldsvik said Flarion’s new product, Flexband is being tested by an operator it already works with. But Flarion doesn’t say who their parter is and it doesn’t say exactly what Flexband is supposed to be.
Flarion says the Flexband leverages the company’s BeaconTone architecture, and opens the possibility of delivering Gigabyte rates to mobile subscribers throughout the cell coverage area at $10 cost. BeaconTone technology enables subscriber devices to continuously monitor in-band interference and instantaneously select the optimal carrier to deliver maximum bandwidth and performance.
Deployed, the network will be able to sustain 6 Mb/s of throughput over a 5 MHz channel, while a 1.25 MHz channel would support a 2.5 Mb/s sustainable sector throughput, degrading only to 800 kb/s at the cell’s edge. It would allow for broadcast IP video, Flarion officials said.
In a fully supported 5MHz Flexband multi-carrier system voice calls increase to 186 per sector and data rates increase to 15.9Mbit/s peak and 6Mbit/s sustainable, which Flarion says delivers the industry’s highest data capacity, supporting over 600 subscribers.
Flexband is said to be more efficient for delivering services such as video-on-demand to phones because it can support five times more simultaneous users than rival technologies.
If live network tests prove these claims true, then – say the press reports – the New Jersey company could potentially threaten Qualcomm’s dominance.
Meanwhile, Nortel and Qualcomm have completed the industry’s first end-to-end calls using HSDPA — High Speed Downlink Packet Access — on a commercial network and handset equipment. The companies said the calls, using Nortel’s commercially-available UMTS Base Transceiver stations, demonstrate the capability to commercially deliver a new era of “supercharged” mobile services.
Flarion has publicly announced only a single OEM deal with Siemens AG for the use of its Flash-OFDM kit in the 450MHz band (see Flarion Flashes With Siemens). They are making further inroads into the OEM network market, with Motorola and Nortel Networks flagged by analysts as likely vendor partners.
Motorola has previously teamed with Flarion on a public safety project in Washington, D.C., prompting speculation of future closer ties between the two companies (see Moto’s Flarion Call? and Flarion & Friends Get Gov’t Gig).
Guess who else wants to use 450 MHz? Qualcomm, of course.
“If Flarion were to get a major operator to do this, then you’ve got another competitor that has a legitimate chance at taking market share in future networks,” said an industry observer in Unstrung.
Flarion’s version of OFDM uses two channels (like duplex cellular), and can support an average data rate of around 1.5 Mbit/s for users in a standard, PCS-sized cell site, while using only 1.25 MHz of spectrum. This makes it approximately four or five times more spectrally efficient than comparable 3G technologies, such as CDMA2000 or UMTS — and cheaper to implement, according to Unstrung.
Providers including Vodafone and T-Mobile are testing earlier versions of Flarion’s technology — known as FLASH-OFDM — but they have not committed to using it widely for commercial networks. Cisco says WiMax could potentially be a challenger to 3G for some high-speed data applications, but expects mass market acceptance of the technology is up to four or five years away.
“The biggest fear that any operator has with 3G today is that a customer will be sitting down and streaming CNN and music throughout the day to their device,” said Haraldsvik, who added that heavy video usage could cripple these networks.
Qualcomm’s answer to video is to build a 700 Mhz network dedicated to mobile video. Their MediaFLO network is capable of carrying up to 100 channels, with as many as 15 of them streaming live video. Qualcomm’s shared resource for U.S. CDMA2000 and WCDMA (UMTS) operators, will carry content in the nationwide 700 MHz spectrum (UHF TV channel 55). Qualcomm plans a one-way broadcast service for mobile users. Qualcomm is investing $800 million to launch the national cellular TV service in 2006 over its own spectrum, wholesaled to all wireless carriers to resell and package video services to their customers.
Flarion claims a six-fold improvement to wireless speeds at the outer edges of cellsites, where mobile signals are weaker. But in order for Flarion’s technology to gain wide usage, many big mobile phone and network equipment makers would need to agree to support its technology, analysts said.
Who’s that going to be? And where’s the spectrum coming from? Sprint/Nextel/Clearwire have the 2.6 Ghz band wrapped up.
Cisco Systems and T-Mobile have invested in Flarion, but Germany’s Siemens is the only big-name vendor it has announced as a partner. Motorola’s four top target markets include the United States, China, India and Western Europe. But Motorola may WiMaxize their Canopy line. 802.20 doesn’t go above 3.5GHz and doesn’t do unlicensed band.
Nextel’s commercial trial of Flarion in North Carolina is apparently going well, but they are reportedly halting the service this June. Nextel/Sprint now expects to use Sprint’s Qualcomm-based network for fast data. Sprint is a member of the WiMax forum and reportedly prefers a “standardized” solution.
A Comcast or Time/Warner deployment could change all that. So might a Motorola or Siemens partnership.
The IEEE 802.20 “Mobile Fi” solution, is said to borrow many concepts from Flarion, but it appears to be years behind Mobile WiMax (IEEE 802.16e).
That standard could be ratified next month at Disney World. While the fixed (802.16-2004) WiMax certification process now won’t start until this summer, mobile WiMax (802.16e) appears to be on the fast track, with initial products expected in 2006.
TeleCIS Wireless, a fabless semiconductor firm based in Santa Clara, California, for example, has a strategic alliance with Samsung and KT Corporation, for developing mobile wireless broadband chipsets. We are very interested in WiBro and mobile WiMAX, says David Sumi, vice president marketing of TeleCIS Wireless and also secretary of the WiMAX Forum. TeleCIS s first product will be a dedicated 802.16 WiMAX-compliant fixed access chip. This will be followed rapidly by a dual-mode — fixed and mobile — WiMAX chip for notebooks, PDAs, handsets and other devices. Following that, we will introduce a tri-mode product for fixed and mobile WiMAX, plus the WLAN 802.11-a, -b and -g protocols, all in a single chip.
By delivering both 802.11 WifFi and 802.16 ‘Fixed and Mobile WiMax’ in a single chip, TeleCIS Wireless may provide viable broadband everywhere, anytime.
Flarion also provides wireless broadband anywhere. Right now. Flexband, boosting the capacity several times, could make the economics even more compelling. Maybe T-Mobile will bite.
