Airespace collects VoWLAN partners

Airespace, a developer of managed wireless LAN solutions, has followed up an earlier partnership with NEC to enable voice-over-wireless LANs by adding two more VoWLAN partners, SpectraLink and Vocera.

The company also said that its WLAN system is the first one to receive voice quality certification independent testing firm, The Tolly Group, a significant achievement for both Airespace and the fledgling VoWLAN market.

"The VoWLAN market didn’t knock anyone’s sock off in 2002, but voice is quickly becoming one of the required elements to address if you’re planning a corporate wireless LAN," said Jeff Aaron, senior marketing manager at Airespace.

In regard to the new partnerships, Airespace has completed compatibility testing with SpectraLink, a company that already has many wireless enterprise voice deployments in vertical markets such as healthcare and education. It also has been certified for compatibility with products from Vocera, which offers server software and wearable instant communication badges for corporate users that make it easier for them to reach one another throughout a corporate network without requiring usage of phone numbers.

The NEC partnership, announced last spring, is a marketing, sales and support agreement that matches Airespace’s products with NEC’s IP PBX and VoWLAN handsets.

The Tolly Group certification came after the testing house was commissioned by Airespace to conduct the evaluation of the Airespace 4000 Wireless Switch and 1200 Access Point. Testers found that the Airespace solution effectively maintained voice connectivity while roaming between access points and sub-networks, with a very low latency of 31 milliseconds. End-to-end network latency was about 3000 microseconds, and both results were well in the range of voice standard requirements.

In scalability tests, Tolly testers had a single Airespace access point supporting up to 14 simultaneous voice conversations, also considered within standards. Aaron said Airespace has successfully tested scalability in up to 90 simultaneous conversations in its own in-house testing.

Kevin Tolly, president and CEO of The Tolly Group, said in a statement, "Airespace passed all of the real-world performance and reliability tests we threw at their products."

Though the VoWLAN market is still young, and such architectures primarily are being deployed privately by healthcare, education and government entities, Aaron said he expects carriers to move into the market, deploying such systems for enterprises as a managed service offering.