Nortel's wireless broadband broadening coverage

Nortel's wireless broadband broadening coverage

Zatni Arbi, Contributor/Jakarta

A fellow IT journalist from Thailand commented that Nortel
Networks had the best booth in the exhibition hall of the 3G
World Congress and Exhibition 2004 in Hong Kong last month.

I concurred with her. There were more participants this year
compared with two years before, but this vendor's well-designed
booth stood out as the most user-friendly.

There were around seven display desks, each showing a
different technology and attended to by people who knew what they
were talking about.

That was in itself quite impressive, as this telco vendor is
more than just knee-deep in each of the advanced wireless
technologies today -- GSM, GPRS, EDGE, CDMA2000 1x, CDMA2000 1x
EV-DO, UMTS, Wi-Fi, WiMAX, you name it.

Talking about size, Nortel is no small player. First, it has
the U.S. as its installed base, with Verizon Wireless as its
major customer. And then, with 20% market share in China Unicom's
infrastructure, it is also a major player in China, where
virtually all telco vendors have rushed in to grab a chunk of the
1.3 billion-people marketplace.

As we all have heard, the number of mobile users in China has
just surpassed 320 million, which this still leaves a lot of room
to grow.

Down under, Telstra is also using Nortel's products and
services to upgrade its CDMA2000 1x networks, which were built in
2002, to its data-optimized CDMA2000 1x EV-DO 3G networks.

Once the upgrade is completed, city dwellers can enjoy 300
kbps to 600 kbps Internet access speed from their Telstra
networks.

This company is also aggressively penetrating Europe with its
CDMA 450 MHz technology. "Most of the CDMA 450 MHz networks are
used to provide DSL services," said CDMA Networks president
Richard Lowe.

The good thing about the European market is that the old
Nordic Mobile Telephone (NMT) analog networks also used the 450
MHz frequency band, so no additional license was required when
the network was upgraded to CDMA.

One of Nortel's most significant advances in Europe so far is
Eurotel Praha's CDMA 450 MHz broadband network, which provides
the Czechs with wireless broadband Internet access.

Interestingly, while countries such as India, Thailand,
Pakistan and Vietnam were repeatedly mentioned as the Greenfield
hotspots in Asia Pacific, Indonesia seems to be just a small
speck on their radar screen. Fortunately, it is a growing speck.
Esia, the CDMA-based fixed wireless operator, is one of their
major customers here. Nortel has also completed a trial run with
PT Wireless Indonesia in the effort to bring 3G CDMA2000-1x EV-DO
wireless data service to the people of Jakarta.

Too bad, there is still no news yet as to how soon the service
will become commercially available to us.

Broadband DSL

One of the technologies showcased at Nortel's booth was the
Broadband DSL, which was in reality the CDMA2000-1x EV-DO over
the 450 MHz network. The service can bring data and voice
services to customer terminals at broadband speed (153 kbps and
up).

Depending on whether the frequency band is licensed and how
much the license fee costs, the Broadband DSL can be an
alternative that is hard to beat.

CDMA services usually utilize the 800 MHz radio frequency band
(as used by Esia), 1900 MHz (as used Telkom Flexi and StarOne in
Jakarta, West Java and Banten provinces as well as PT WIN) and
2100 MHz.

The lower 450 MHz frequency band has the benefit of giving
better propagation. This translates into the need for fewer cell
sites and therefore fewer base transceiver stations, resulting in
a lower investment requirement.

In terms of voice quality and data-carrying capacity, there is
no difference, however. The great efficiency is one of the
reasons Nortel is pushing the CDMA 450 MHz so strongly all over
the world.

By the way, in the CDMA infrastructure market, Nortel is just
behind market leader Lucent Technologies. Its competitors include
companies such as Motorola, Samsung, Alcatel and Ericsson.

Wireless mesh network
The broad range of the skills that Nortel Networks has under its
roof is also being demonstrated in Taipei, Taiwan.

Taipei's Mobile City (M City) Project has chosen Nortel's
Wireless Mesh Network to provide city-wide broadband coverage.

Taipei has a population of 2.6 million people and covers an
area of around 272 sq km. The operator, Qware, is expecting that
around 10,000 access points will be available in buildings, MRT
stations and other locations in the city by the end of next year.

Nortel's Wireless Mesh Network is similar to the traditional
cellular telephone architecture, where each cell is served by a
base transceiver station (BTS).

However, while the BTSs in the traditional cellular
architecture are linked to the central hub with cables, in a mesh
network one BTS may be linked wirelessly to the BTS in the
adjacent cells.

Therefore, there is no need to hard-wire cell interconnection.
The result is a more scalable network that is much cheaper to
expand. Gone is the issue of right of way and the need to dig up
roads and pavements to bury the cables.

Nortel's Wireless Mesh Network is basically a modified
Wireless LAN (WLAN). Any 802.11 wireless-capable notebook or PDA
will be able to access the Internet via this network, even when
the user hops from one cell to another. Thus, a major benefit to
the users is that they can roam much more easily. Conventional
hotspots based on Wi-Fi technology will not offer such a level of
mobility and convenience.

Exciting times

Once again, it is clearly an exciting time for those of us who
have been wishing for better data access wherever we go. The
technology options are plenty and the vendors are competing
fiercely against each other for market share.

What is needed now is a more conducive and more transparent
regulatory environment. The telco vendors say: "We just want a
level playing field," while we, the users, say, "What we want is
ubiquitous, affordable services."