Time Warner Cable is working with Sprint Nextel, BridgePort Networks, and Siemens to roll out a dualmode cellular/VOIP phone service to subscribers, according to Light Reading.
Sprint announced the completion of its acquisition of Nextel for approximately $6.5 billion this week. Sprint-Nextel and four cable operators announced this April that they will test-market a quadruple play with video, voice, data and cellular in seven markets in the United States. The pilot service will be available in Portland, Oregon through Comcast, in Raleigh, North Carolina, and Austin, Texas through Time Warner.
Comcast and Time Warner’s cable unit, the two biggest U.S. cable operators, teamed with Cox and Advance Publications in November to form the venture with Sprint, the No. 3 U.S. wireless provider. The companies committed $200 million to the project.
According to Light Reading:
Time Warner’s dualmode service will allow cellular calls to jump from Sprint/Nextel’s cellular network to the Time Warner VOIP network when the user comes in range of a WiFi connection on its broadband network. The reverse happens when the user goes out of range of the WiFi network.
Sources say the MSO will be the second U.S. operator, behind T-Mobile USA , to bring a dualmode service to market.
Time Warner Cable’s chief technology officer Mike LaJoie has big plans for his company’s hybrid fiber coax plant. The Sprint Joint Venture is likely to play a major role. Whether the JV will expand outside the house into city-wide wireless clouds is still not clear.
Comcast & T/W might be unfairly characterized as pole dancers. Sprint could use cable for Mobile WiMAX basestations and backhaul in this marriage of convenience. But the real agenda may be turning Mobile WiMAX into a “closed garden”. Wireless cable.
Time Warner spokeswoman Maureen Huff says her company will begin offering wifi voice service on a trial basis in Austin, Texas, and Raleigh, N.C., “probably in the third quarter.” (See Light Reading: Cable Firms, Sprint in Fixed/Mobile Deal).
Bridgeport’s network convergence gateway and Siemens’ IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) solution will manage the dualmode calls.
Bridgeport’s gateway allows a single phone number to be used. Bridgeport estimates that 30 to 40 percent of Time Warner subscribers’ cellular calls can be converted into VOIP calls, which can be delivered at about a third of the cost.
The Siemens converged network features:
- Intelligent Address Book – Stored on the Siemens IMS/FMC subsystem and, therefore, accessible on all networks, contact information may only need to be entered once and is available to all end devices – mobile phones, PDAs, desktop phones and laptops. The application is secured to prohibit other subscribers from accessing it.
- Roaming Button – Allows a subscriber to receive calls and messages on the device that he or she is currently using. The roaming feature can be enabled or disabled based on presence and availability information.
- Call-and-Share – Data and voice work together with this feature. While calling from home to a friend with a mobile phone to explain directions, for example, a subscriber could also sketch a route on a city map and send the instructions to the friend’s mobile phone during the conversation.
“The cable companies will have a very competitive wireless offer because they’re going to get the cost benefit of some 35 to 40 percent of the calls that they can deliver over their own infrastructure at lower cost than the wholesale purchase cost from Sprint,” said Bridgeport marketing VP Sanjay Jhawar, in Light Reading.
Siemens VP of NGN Networks Dana Rasmussen says the converged solution his company is building for Time Warner could be used with any cellular provider. Rasmussen was hesitant to talk about Time Warner’s specific rollout plans for dualmode service. He declined to say whether Siemens engineers were working directly with Sprint/Nextel engineers.
Sprint/Nextel spokeswoman Melinda Tiemeyer says dualmode phone service is a likely product of her company’s joint venture with the cable guys, but, she says, the service probably won’t roll out until 2007.
Another standard, Unlicensed Mobile Access, has been developed by Kineto Wireless. Kineto has teamed with Wi-Fi network integrator Boingo Wireless to ensure full interoperability between Boingo’s Wi-Fi and Kineto Wireless’ (UMA) system.
UMA allows converged cellular-Wi-Fi services to over 30,000 hotspots globally,” Steve Shaw, director of marketing at Kineto told EE Times. But UMA only works with GSM phones. Sprint is a CDMA player.
The new Motorola A910 (below), the Nokia 6136 and Samsung’s T709 handsets can connect to the Internet via WiFi and can be used as a normal cellular phone using UMA.
UMA merges GSM and Wi-Fi. That could be useful for T-Mobile hotspots or with Cingular/SBC hotspots. They use GSM. Wi-Fi delivered telephony would not use cellular minutes and it could reach indoors when cellular has problems.
US carriers have reportedly lost more than five million telephone customers to cable rivals Time Warner Cable, Comcast and Cox Communications over the last year. More than 1 million customers now use VoIP services developed by Sprint Nextel in tandem with cable companies. Sprint has forecast that some $1 billion will be generated by VoIP services by 2009.
Sales of Wi-Fi enabled cellphones will be booming by 2010, according to a study by market research firm In-Stat. They predict that 132 million will be in use by 2010.
BlackBerry Connect currently enables devices like Palm 650 or Nokia phones to get push email. But it only works with GSM devices. Now CDMA carriers will also be adding BlackBerry capability and BlackBerry will add WiFi, too.
Comcast Interactive, the internet arm of cable giant Comcast, has bought out Seattle-based digital media services provider, thePlatform, reports PaidContent. Their Platform Media Publishing System is used by cellular companies and other entertainment and enterprise customers. It can publish digital media anywhere – over any network, to any device. Sprint Nextel plans to acquire still more spectrum in the 2.5GHz band in order to give the company a nationwide footprint, reports Light Reading.
They may crush broadband wireless competitors like a bug.
Perhaps not incidently, the Oregonian newspaper, owned by Advance, editorialized against “Net Neutrality” – without disclosure. What sort of journalism is that? The non-credible kind, it appears. The monopoly kind.
Poynter says news organizations should care because without net neutrality, they could be shaken down by telcos for additional fees to guarantee “preferential delivery” of their content via the telco’s “pipes.” But that’s the voice of the newsroom – not publishers. Advance, apparently, has their cut.
Related DailyWireless articles include; Roaming WiFi Phones, Cable Makes Its Move, Hurricane/Tsuanmi Satellite Access, The Cloud Talks, Nokia & Motorola UMA Phones, WiFi/Cellular Roaming Near?, Cell/WiFi Calls Tested, Cell phone with WiFi Roaming, Boingo + Birdstep = Roaming, $39 WiFi Phone?, ZyXEL WiFi Phone Wins Award, Cingular: WiFi Inside, Cable Going Mobile?, Voice Over WiFi Mutates, Roaming With VoIP and WiFi/Cellular Voice Roaming.
