Flash-OFDM finds its home

After years of testing its equipment in carrier trials and commercial pilots, Flarion has gotten the chance to showcase its Flash-OFDM technology in a countrywide rollout. Finnish carrier Digita has selected the Flarion-Siemens partnership to rollout the high-capacity data technology to sparsely populated regions in Finland in 2006 and to cover the entire country by the end of 2007.

While Flarion has launched commercial pilots for several carriers worldwide--including Nextel, which the carrier discontinued earlier this year, and T-Mobile in the Netherlands--the carrier before today had yet to announce a full commercial deployment. While the news of the Finnish network is definitely significant, Vice President of Global Communications Ronny Haraldsvik said Flarion has other large-scale commercial deployments underway in Europe, the respective carriers having chosen to keep them under wraps. Haraldsvik valued the Digita deal at $30 million to $40 million, and the remaining European deals are at least that value or greater, he said.

“We’re taking it one country at a time, but Europe is really cooking for us,” Haraldsvik said.

Business has picked up for Flarion since its partnership with Germany’s Siemens, which selected Flash-OFDM to target the 450 MHz frequencies European regulators are releasing to carriers. The Finnish government last week picked OFDM as the technology of choice for that band, beating out proposals from carriers advocating CDMA. CDMA has made headway in 450 MHz in several European countries, but many carriers are either seriously weighing or deploying OFDM for those high-propagation bands.

Haraldsvik said that in many countries the 450 MHz bands are only 4 MHz of spectrum, leaving room for only a single wideband channel. By opting for CDMA, carriers and governments are limiting themselves either to voice and narrowband data with CDMA 1X or data only with 1X EV-DO, Haraldsvik said. With EV-DO rev. A--which will add VoIP capabilities--still years off, Flash-OFDM is emerging as a prime candidate for the spectrum, offering voice and broadband data today, Haraldsvik said.