And you may ask yourself
How do I work this?
And you may ask yourself
Where is that large automobile?
And you may tell yourself
This is not my beautiful house!

Letting the days go by/water flowing underground
Into the blue again/after the money’s gone
Once in a lifetime/water flowing underground.
– Once In A Lifetime

IPWireless, a CDMA data-only network, is being bought by NextWave Wireless for $25 million in cash and $75 million in stock, reports RCR News.

IPWireless’ TD-CDMA technology was selected by New York City to provide key pieces of the city’s new public safety wireless network. Northrop Grumman is the prime contractor. Sprint Nextel and Transvideo Communications will provide the spectrum for the system, with Cisco providing IP switches and routers.

The firms say IPWireless’ technology lends itself for use with the 700-MHz band that the FCC will auction off this fall. IP Wireless utilizes a simplex frequency and CDMA technology rather than OFDMA typically used by Mobile WiMAX.

“IPWireless and NextWave will work together to expand IPWireless’ product portfolio to incorporate WiMAX and/or Wi-Fi technologies for those service providers and equipment vendors that require such solutions,” said Allen Salmasi, chairman and CEO of NextWave.

IPWireless has also demonstrated their own flavor of mobile television, TDtv.

Based on the Multimedia Broadcast Multicast Service standard, it has not been rolled out by any carrier, but has been tested in Europe. TDtv is said to enable up to 50 channels of TV for mobile phones, or 15 higher quality QVGA channels via existing 5Mz of unpaired 3G spectrum.

New York’s wireless network will utilize 10 MHz of licensed spectrum in the 2.5 GHz band. The five-year deal is valued at $500 million, using IPWireless’ TD-CDMA to create a citywide network for public safety. Spectral efficiency was one reason Northrup Grumman said they chose the IPWireless rather than WiMAX, said Jon Hambidge, vice president of marketing for IPWireless.

“Intel has been pretty clear that an operator needs 30 MHz to operate a mobile WiMAX system, because neighboring sectors have to be on different frequencies or they will cause interference with each other,” Hambidge said.

Intel disputes that claim, saying OFDMA and scalable channelization, used by Mobile WiMAX, allows adjoining sectors to work without interference on the same frequency at the same time while providing more efficient spectrum utilization than TD-CDMA. An FDD scheme (with two channels) is used by cellular operators.

For mobile television applications, MobiTV and WiMAX provide both unicast and broadcast while a tweaked 802.16e setup from Japan Radio Company (JRC) and Runcom recently showed HDTV video at 30Mbps.

NextWave sells WiMAX chipsets through its NextWave Broadband subsidiary, and has gotten into the deployment of Wi-Fi networks through the $13.3 million acquisition of Go Networks. The company is also involved in the delivery of mobile video to cellphones through the acquisition of PacketVideo.

Privately held IPWireless, says its technology has been deployed commercially in more than a dozen countries, including the Czech Republic, New Zealand, Germany, South Africa, Sweden and the United Kingdom.

NextWave bid for PCS spectrum in the 1990s, but declared bankruptcy when they couldn’t make the down payment. The company’s spectrum licenses were held up in courts for years. NextWave eventually sold off its spectrum licenses, and has been using the proceeds from that sale to fund its new efforts in the wireless industry.

Nextwave won $115 million of spectrum in the FCC’s AWS auction last year. They now own spectrum covering 247 million Americans in most of the country’s major markets, along with the 2.3 GHz WCS band and 2.5 GHz BRS/EBS spectrum. The AWS licenses (in the 1.7/2.1 GHz bands), cover 63 million people.

New York City’s Huge Safety Net utilizes IP-Wireless with Northrup Grumman the main contractor. It could be a contender for the Justice Department’s nation-wide Integrated Wireless Network (IWN), a multi-billion dollar contract to provide wireless communications to 80,000 federal law enforcement officials.

The $10B IWN competition pits General Dynamics against Lockheed Martin to build and operate the nation-wide, 700MHz federal radio network. The broadband component could be IP-Wireless, EV-DO, Flarion/Qualcomm or Mobile WiMAX.

“Dual use” broadband wireless technology in the IWN contract, may give the infrastructure advantage to Verizon (General Dynamics) or Sprint (Lockheed Martin), in this fall’s commercial 700 MHz auction. Sprint, however, has recently said it’s not going to bid on 700 MHz frequencies.

But Verizon certainly will. Verizon is said to have largely formulated the FCC’s Ninth Report and Order (which stipulates that 12 MHz of the 24 MHz be designated for broadband, and that a single licensee should be awarded this spectrum). With — in effect — a subsidized infrastructure from the Fed’s IWN project, Verizon could hardly loose.

Democrats may not be as sanguine as the FCC’s Martin and Tate. They may want more Net Neutrality. More than a “walled prison”. More than monopoly control of devices, applications and access.

“This is the last large auction of prime spectrum in the foreseeable future,” said Michael Calabrese at a Save Our Spectrum Coalition news conference last week (see DailyWireless: Consumers to FCC: Democracy Now!).

Qualcomm, which bought Flarion for $600 million last year, is a contender in the 700 MHz marketplace. IPWireless has been somewhat overshadowed by rival Flarion (below), says Unstrung.

Flarion/Qualcomm, with lower frequency 700 MHz base stations, reportedly delivers sustainable sector throughput of 2.5 Mbps, with a consistent 800 Kbps at the cell edge. IP-Wireless in New York City, by contrast, is installing some 400, high frequency (2.5 GHz) cell sites. Each provides 7.5 Mbps of data in a three-sector arc.

Washington DC’s public safety EV-DO network, also at 700 MHz, spans nearly 2,500 square miles, and reportedly provides 3.1 Mbps (peak), with an average region-wide throughput of over 352 Mbps (using similar 1.25 MHz duplex channels as Flarion).

Flarion/Qualcomm and EV-DO use two 1.25 MHz channels. Mobile WiMAX proponents claim that makes beamforming and MIMO more problematic (and expensive) compared to the single channel (OFDMA) solution of IEEE 802.16e (Mobile WiMAX). CDMA-based IP Wireless doesn’t offer beamforming or MIMO and isn’t optimized for voice or handoff. Mobile WiMAX is. Alcatel-Lucent has a Mobile WiMAX solution, as does Nokia.

Which system is superior? IP-Wireless, EV-DO, Flarion and Mobile WiMAX all have their supporters. Sprint says Mobile WiMAX has a ten-to-one cost/performance advantage. Let’s say they’re right. Then add another ten-to-one cost advantage with 700 MHz (for rural users). That’s asymmetric warfare.

The feds make a big deal about interoperability — but they don’t walk the talk. Washingon DC’s incompatible 700 Mhz safety nets include one using EVDO (Lucent’s safety network) and one using incompatible Flarion technology (WARN). New York City has their $500M, city-wide network (at 2.5 GHz using IP Wireless), while New York State has a $2B public safety network using 700 Mhz, Project 25 radios. None of these networks are interoperable.

Meanwhile, Sprint and Clearwire are building out nation-wide, Mobile WiMAX networks. No interoperability problem there. A 700 MHz Mobile WiMAX network could even penetrate walls.

Most officers will probably continue to carry Nextel iDEN cell phones so they can communicate with people off their network — same as it ever was.

Hey, Rudy — What About the Radios?

Posted by Sam Churchill on Monday, April 9th, 2007 at 9:23 am.