Alcatel-Lucent's Next-Gen Wireless Direction
>> Alcatel-Lucent readies for the next-gen mobile
Alcatel-Lucent sees opportunities in both cellular and wireless mobile communications
John Blau
IDG News Service
December 11, 2006
infoworld.com
Mary Chan [former Lucent], president of the wireless business group at newly merged Alcatel-Lucent, isn't choosing sides in the prickly debate about next-generation mobile communication networks.
"One thing is certain," Chan said in an interview at last week's Telecom World conference in Hong Kong. "With the next generation, we're going to see all-IP networks capable of providing voice-over-IP and high-speed data throughput."
Alcatel-Lucent has a foot in both the cellular and wireless camps -- and sees opportunities for both. The company aims to be at the forefront of this convergence by offering IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem) technology as "a fundamental architecture for service transformation," Chan said.
The buzzword in the cellular community is LTE (Long-Term Evolution), which, as its name suggests, builds on existing cellular technology. The wireless camp supports a mobile version of WiMax, based on the IEEE 802.16e standard.
Both technologies will be based on OFDM (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing) and offer speeds up to 100Mbps.
What could differentiate the two systems at the end of the day is not so much the technology as the type operator that favors the one or the other, according to Chan.
Cellular operators view LTE as an evolution of their 3G (third-generation) mobile broadband systems and, as such, are likely to deploy the technology where they have existing infrastructure. Some may choose to use mobile WiMax to plug the holes.
New Internet operators, including some of the existing Wi-Fi service providers, are expected to deploy mobile WiMax.
Regardless of the radio technology, "ubiquitous coverage will be a key success factor," Chan said.
That remark can be interpreted as a word of warning to numerous mobile phone operators that have pared down their 3G (third generation) rollout to save on costs and have seen Wi-Fi operators both big and small pick away at their mobile data business. ###
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