Bridgewater’s software to help wireless Internet make money

(Telephony) Former Nextel executive Mike Ozburn has taken his past experience launching and managing Nextel Online and has applied it to his new position at Bridgewater Systems. He and the company have created a network solution for wireless companies that want to maximize network proficiency while increasing their ARPU.

The company’s NetProfile Carrier Edition (CE), which the company plans to demonstrate at the CTIA Wireless 2001 show next week, can be called a management tool, Ozburn said.

“The software treats any IP-based service and manages those resources, giving customers the ability to set profiles of how they want services,” he said. “It also re-establishes points of control for all Web-based services, making it easier for wireless carriers to add and edit offerings.”

In addition the software counts all transactions at the granular level, so carriers can bill for each one, giving them the ability to grow revenue streams as traffic grows on the network, he continued. The CE software theoretically would sit between a carrier’s WAP gateway and the particular wireless Internet service it offers.

Wireless service providers have had business and network infrastructure concerns when it comes to the wireless Internet. This profile-based solution is designed to let wireless service providers add new data and content services to their network quickly, while also making some money from the new services sooner rather than later, Ozburn said.

“At Nextel, our focus was on how to make money with wireless data…carriers now need a framework within which to start knowing what exactly it is that customers want,” he said.

At this point, wireless carriers are struggling to determine how to make money with the wireless Internet and whether they are constrained by WAP gateways and billing systems that have not been built to provide accurate transaction reporting, Ozburn said.

The company currently is talking to wireless carriers and wireless ASPs.