A threat to landline’s indoor dominance

Mobile technology is moving into the LAN, but will "cordless quality" win converts?

By: Kirk Laughlin
America’s Network

Mobile and local area communications technologies are moving rapidly toward convergence, potentially spelling trouble for landline providers whose dominance inside commercial and residential buildings could be threatened.

Although makers of systems that enable roaming from the cellular network to the local area are clearly making strides, a series of hurdles, including issues surrounding QoS, security and handoffs, could hamper progress in the short term.

Service Pricing and Service Usage at Home

For many operators, the opportunity to realize lower operating costs and deliver higher-capacity bandwidth, both promising features of WLAN deployments, could be too good to pass up. "Wireless operators are viewing this as a way to drive adoption of mobile data services and dramatically reduce their cost of service delivery," says Ken Kolderup, vice president of marketing at Kineto, a mobile over WLAN (MoWLAN) startup. He says it costs mobile carriers about 4-cents a minute to support a cell network wireless call. That cost drops to around less than half-a-cent for a WLAN call.

Kineto’s solution appears squarely aimed at the momentum generated around landline replacement. Mobile subscribers use their wireless phones for more than 20% of their total home calling, and about 30% of mobile use is indoors.

Kolderup says that security and QoS are central features of a trial underway with a major U.S. cellular carrier.

The solution is based on installation of a new network element into the core of the mobile operator’s network, which links to a WLAN-enabled handset designed to roam between mobile and WLANs. While the network element is commercially available, the handset is not.

Cordless level quality

A major question that still has not been fully answered is how well MoWLAN handsets will perform. Kolderup anticipates "cordless level quality," which may imply improved coverage over indoor cellular coverage, but may leave landline loyalists underwhelmed.

Motorola, Avaya and Proxim are expected to release a WLAN-enabled handset some time next year. The first device released into the market will be based on the GSM standard, says Greg Fern, director of WLAN business at Motorola. "Handsets that have a Wi-Fi capability will become commonplace over time," says Fern. The new device would operate on both licensed and unlicensed frequencies.

At least initially, Kineto’s solution will work only with Bluetooth-enabled devices, which may be economically more appealing as Bluetooth chipsets are cheaper and make better use of battery power over the current class of Wi-Fi chips.

However, Texas Instruments, which joined Broadcom and Atheros Communications in announcing development of a Wi-Fi chip, contends that its chip manages to make better use of battery power.

Fern notes that, in addition to the convergence of mobile and WLAN, rising interest in IP telephony is generating another disruptive element in the in-building environment. "As we watch these trends develop, everyone is trying to anticipate how they will play out in the future," he says. IP-PBX switch environments, for example, include over 400 features that could generate revenue opportunities that don’t exist in circuit switch environments, adds Fern. Global spending on IP phone systems by enterprises surpassed $ 1 billion this year, doubling last year’s total, according to the the Dell’Oro Group. Traditional equipment vendors are among those likely to become more aggressive in the enterprise. Alcatel recently introduced a product that unites mobile phones with the IP PBX.

In announcing results from a recent WLAN survey of businesses, Sarah Kim, a Yankee Group analyst, reports "strong interest" in Wi-Fi telephony among companies deploying WLAN in the next year.

Kirk Laughlin
Executive Editor, Specialization: Wireless and Optical

email: [email protected]

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