Vendors reveal slew of wireless deals

Despite the slow summer season there was no dearth of wireless next-generation deployment announcements coming from vendors this week.

Both Nokia and Nortel Networks revealed two new 3G radio access network deals, and Nokia turned up its UMTS network in Taiwan. On the core side, Ericsson completed a fixed-mobile convergence trial in Japan, and Nortel deployed its first mobile softswitch with Brazilian carrier Vivo. There was even activity on the applications front with Motorola deploying its Push-to-Talk-over-Cellular (PoC) solution in Portugal.

Ericsson’s trial with BB Mobile in Japan demonstrated direct handoff and service interoperability between a public WLAN network and BB Mobile’s Wideband CDMA network. The trial is a step toward insuring that IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS)-based services running off of a 3G network can extend over the public Internet onto a corporate or public wireless LAN. The two companies said submitting their results to the 3GPP as it revises its UMTS standards for release 8.

Motorola announced that Portugal’s Optimus would launch Motorola’s PoC over the UMTS network Motorola deployed for that carrier in 2004. In addition to network infrastructure and software, Motorola is supplying its V400p handset and a PoC software client that can run on other Symbian-based devices. Motorola said that the solution is meant to migrate to a full IMS platform and can be used as a foundation for other “push-to” service like push-to-text, push-to-view and push-to-video.

Nokia today announced an agreement with Latvia Mobile Telephone for deployment of the first commercial W-CDMA network in the Baltics. Nokia will supply its base station and radio network controllers as well as provide IP core elements including its Release 4 Mobile Switching Center (MSC). In Taiwan, Chunghwa Telecom turned the switch on its own Nokia W-CDMA network, going commercial with video calling, mobile video and music streaming services this week.

Nortel landed a $50 million contract with LaqTel to build a CDMA 1x EV-DO network in Trinidad and Tobago later this year. Further South, Nortel won its first softswitching deal with Vivo, announcing it will deploy Nortel’s Communication Server 2000 switch and media gateways to link Vivo’s five call centers throughout Brazil. Vivo is migrating all of its call center traffic to VoIP and has been deploying softswitch’s throughout its CDMA network to handle voice and data mobile traffic.