SOMA adds software partnership for broadband wireless system

Consumer electronics software vendor Zentek Technology Group has joined SOMA Networks’ family of third-party software development partners for fixed broadband wireless IP voice and broadband access products. The partnership is part of SOMA’s belief that there can never be enough third-party applications to run on its wireless networks, said Greg Caltabiano, senior vice president of Worldwide Markets for SOMA.

“We will write the applications for our system that are maybe the minimum necessary or seed applications, things that will get service providers and third parties to understand what can be done,” said Caltabiano. “But we want to set up the ecosystem in such a way that it’s not dependent on us writing those applications.”

Zentek will bring technical expertise in digital television and wireless applications and focus on creating advanced services such as multimedia messaging that combines voice, e-mail and video; remote control of home appliances, home security systems and home environment controls; broadcast streaming and multimedia entertainment features.

SOMA is following “very much the mobile paradigm rather than the DSL paradigm” by delivering third party applications that give service providers more than just a pipe to the home, said Caltabiano.

“SOMA has attacked the wireless access problem from a full systems perspective” that goes beyond resolving obvious problems like line-of-sight to building more sophisticated voice-over-IP capability that takes advantage of fixed broadband wireless’ last-mile capabilities, he said.

“It’s very important for the revenue side of the operator’s business case to be able to offer toll-quality voice,” he said.

Once that’s guaranteed, it becomes equally important to be able to offer added features on top of that voice.

“There are different classes of applications,” Caltabiano said, noting converged telephony applications that become possible with a pure IP system. “We’re not the ones who will think of the variations on this that will be successful. We want to set all the hooks into the system that allow that to be built.”

Zentek, and other companies like it, will be able to grab those hooks, Caltabiano added.

“There are many different types of things that companies like Zentek are interested in,” he said.

Because SOMA’s consumer premises equipment is Linux based, “applications can reside partly in the network and partly in the box” and allows always-on applications to be running without being on a PC, Caltabiano said.

“This is another thing companies like Zentek are very excited about,” he said.