NextWave wins first MXtv trial

TAIPEI -- NextWave Wireless has received its first bite on its new WiMAX TV platform, announcing Tuesday that Taiwan’s Global Mobile will deploy NextWave’s V5 base station and accompanying MXtv platform in the capital city.

Based on NextWave’s Time Division-CDMA multicast TV technology, which it acquired with its purchase of IPWireless last year, MXTV incorporates broadcast and multicast TV components into a standard WiMAX base station, allowing it to transmit the same video component over the same spectrum to multiple users or operate in a one-to-one unicast mode. NextWave has been gaining industry support for the technology with partnerships with Huawei and Alcatel-Lucent, but the Global Mobile trial is its first announced deal with a WiMAX operator.

Global Mobile is one of six operators to win WiMAX licenses in the crowded Taiwanese market and therefore may be looking for applications that can distinguish it from its competitors. Its eventual network is part of the government’s ambitious M-Taiwan project intended to blanket the island nation in mobile broadband coverage.

In addition to V5 base station, Global Mobile will use NextWave’s other Access Service Network (ASN) gateway as well as use NextWave WiMAX chips and its PacketVideo media players in handsets. The latter is key to the trial, since MXtv will only work on NextWave’s own custom WiMAX platform. NextWave, however, has said it is submitting MXtv technology to the WiMAX Forum in hopes of making the technology standard in future WiMAX releases.