Aperto gets technology, financial boost from France Telecom

Second generation fixed broadband wireless systems received a boost with tne announcement that Aperto Networks is collaborating in technical and market development initiatives with France Telecom and that Innovacom, France Telecom’s venture capital subsidiary, has made an equity investment in Aperto.

Although no figures were disclosed, Innovacom typically invests $4 million to $5 million in equity funds from a $200 million floating account that includes investors other than France Telecom.

Aperto’s second generation fixed broadband wireless technology was key to the multiple agreements, the companies said.

“We believe, as does France Telecom, that these [second generation] systems are going to play important roles going forward concerning low cost, quality of service and non-line-of-sight wireless access systems,” said Frederic Veyssiere, Innovacom’s U.S. managing director.

Aperto has staked its corporate future on 2G technology and is “very active” in standards bodies moving that along. Standardization was “of highest interest” to France Telecom’s engineers in working out the collaborative agreement, said Alan Menezes, Aperto’s marketing vice president.

Although France Telecom has a widely scattered operations base in Europe, Asia and South America, it is not an indication that the U.S. market has evaporated – only that there is interest throughout the world, said Menezes.

“We’ve developed products for the 5.8 GHz U-NII [Unlicensed-National Information Infrastructure] band in the United States and Canada. We’re introducing the 3.5 [GHz] product, which is very important in Europe and Latin America and is also being auctioned off in some Canadian territories … and of course we have our 2.5 GHz [primarily U.S.] MMDS product as well,” said Menezes.

Nevertheless, the two companies are not targeting mainstream users. “We believe there is a pretty big potential in countries where the infrastructure is a little less developed than over in Europe or here in the U.S.,” said Veyssiere.

The two companies will work through engineering and R&D partnerships and will participate in joint field trials of the technology with unnamed operators, Veyssiere said. In each instance, he said, second generation fixed broadband wireless technology is an essential ingredient.

“With all these sub-5 GHz systems in the three bands where Aperto operates, it’s actually a crucial differentiator versus first generation services,” Veyssiere said.