IP Wireless brings UMTS to 450 MHz

IPWireless today announced it has developed UMTS basestation and terminal technology for the 450 MHz band considered an alternative 3G and rural access technology in many established and developing markets.

So far, CDMA technologies have dominated deployments in 450 MHz frequencies in Eastern Europe, Latin America and East Asia. But as the spectrum gets more attention from carriers because of its extended coverage, vendors have been optimizing their technologies for those lower frequencies. Flarion recently unveiled a version of its Flash-OFDM gear for 450 MHz, but before IPWireless’ announcement today, no GSM-track technology had been targeted at the band.

IPWireless Vice President of Marketing Jon Hambidge said many of license holders in the 450 MHz bands are already GSM providers and are looking to expand into those new frequencies with the same access technologies they’re using over their 3G and DCS spectrum. “Pretty typically, GSM operators want to stay with 3GPP technologies,” Hambidge said, “but they want to expand into 450 because of its much larger coverage.”

Hambidge said many operators will want to use 450 MHz to extend UMTS to rural and suburban areas, where a denser 1900 MHz or 2010 MHz solution is unnecessary as well as take advantage of the unused spectrum being freed up across the globe. While there is still no GSM technology for 450 MHz, Hambidge said it won’t be an obstacle for most carriers, except those few that only own 450 MHz licenses.

“If you look at the countries where this is available, broadband is the major driver,” Hambidge said. “Carriers are using the spectrum more for data card and broadband services with voice eventually layered on with VoIP.”

The 450 MHz products actually uses the same Time Division-CDMA (TD-CDMA) baseband chip technology used in the all of IPWireless’s other products, but it includes a new generation of enhancements including a multiband modems incorporating 450 MHz, 1900 MHz and 2010 MHz and 2500 MHz on the same chipset and a band expansion feature that allows a basestation to expand from a single 1.5 MHz carrier to an entire 10 MHz band as spectrum becomes available and without upgrading the infrastructure. Those two enhancements solve both of the major problems a carrier would face moving into 450 MHz, Hambidge said: the ability to roam back and forth from its traditional GSM network and the ability to expand into new 450 MHz channels as they’re vacated by their current analog radio occupants.

While IPWireless will build the initial reference design base stations and data cards for carrier trials, the 450 MHz line will be the first in which IPWireless will commercialize only the core technology, relying on its OEM partners like UTStarcom to supply the actual infrastructure and terminals. In doing so, IPWireless plans to standardize its chipsets selling its TDD and FDD-based technology over the same multi-band chips.