Dec 16, 2010 2:13 PM,

Mobile control solutions a major part of Verizon LTE strategy

By Susana Schwartz

The $56 million contract between Verizon Wireless and Bridgewater will focus on broadband transaction growth

In pushing its 4G business strategy heavily to gain wireless market share, Verizon Wireless is backing up the hype with heavy investments in technology—a major part of which will be “mobile control solutions” for service control, application and policy control, as well as subscriber data management (SDM). Today, it was announced that Verizon Wireless will pay approximately US$ 56 million for Bridgewater support of the carrier’s network expansion. The “frame agreement” revolves around a commercial model that drives licenses based on transaction growth. That means revenue for Bridgewater will correlate to the amount of broadband data consumed by Verizon customers. In essence, the licenses bought will be based on the number of simultaneous transactions, as opposed to the number of provisioned subscribers.

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For Bridgewater, this is a significant step forward, as it represents a big commitment after its seven years of working with Verizon Wireless. If it leads to extensions into other access networks and services brought to market by Verizon Wireless, it could mean more revenue possibilities, as with Verizon Wireless’ plan for machine-to-machine applications and other innovations they will plan to bring to both their 3G and 4G networks.

“Service portability is critical for a company like Verizon Wireless, as they want to support the same services across 3G an 4G and guarantee the same experience for those services as they evolve their LTE network, which will initially have a narrower set of services and less devices,” said Ed Ogonek, president and CEO of Bridgewater Systems. “They will want to integrate the two over time and guarantee to customers a seamless experience over a wide range of devices and service capabilities.”

As that integration takes place, all new programs in Verizon Wireless will be managed through the Bridgewater contracting vehicle. “This an important milestone that reinforces Verizon Wireless’ commitment to us on a go-forward basis,” said Ogonek.