NextWave And Alcatel-Lucent Collaborate On The Development Of WiMAX Broadcast Solution
San Diego -- NextWave Wireless Inc. recently announced that it has entered into a strategic agreement with Alcatel-Lucent to develop advanced WiMAX broadcast solutions for mobile operators worldwide. Under the Agreement, Alcatel-Lucent will integrate NextWave's recently announced MXtv technology into its WiMAX solutions portfolio, based on the 802.16e-2005 (Rev-e) standard. The two companies plan to perform a series of interoperability tests with Alcatel-Lucent's commercial WiMAX infrastructure starting in the second quarter of 2008.
Designed to provide WiMAX mobile network operators with a cost-effective and spectrum-efficient solution to tap into the expanding market for mobile TV and broadcast services, MXtv provides fully-integrated broadcast and unicast of voice, data and rich media over each individual stream. To complement the inclusion of its MXtv technology into Alcatel-Lucent's WiMAX network platform, NextWave‘s MXtv technology has also been integrated into its low-power, Wave 2 compliant NW2000 series WiMAX subscriber device System-on-a-Chip (SoC). The NW2000 series SoC is currently being integrated into a wide range of devices with certain device availability planned for second half of 2008.
MXtv technology is a breakthrough mobile broadcast and multicast solution that allows WiMAX operators to deliver a broad range of rich and personalized multimedia services including mobile TV, interactive services and digital audio without having to invest in new spectrum or additional network infrastructure. Supporting 30 fps QVGA and WQVGA content, with MXtv technology implemented in a 10 MHz channel, WiMAX operators can offer up to 45 broadcast channels, streaming at 300kbps, in a pure broadcast overlay WiMAX network and up to 20 broadcast channels in a hybrid mobile broadcast and broadband offering, and still have more than 55 percent of their mobile broadband capacity remaining for other services. Complementing MXtv technology is PacketVideo's (PV) MediaFusion platform, an end-to-end server-client software solution that seamlessly integrates multimedia services. MediaFusion supports unicast, "networked group" multicast, broadcast and background services such as personal video recording, music, streaming personalized radio, and social networking, with an innovative discovery engine that can drive a number of highly targeted advertising business models. PacketVideo is a wholly-owned subsidiary of NextWave Wireless.
"We are thrilled by the opportunity to collaborate with Alcatel-Lucent to develop new and highly advanced mobile multimedia offerings on their advanced WiMAX platform," said Allen Salmasi, CEO of NextWave Wireless. "User demand for mobile broadcast services is rapidly expanding and we believe that the exciting new applications offered through this alliance will provide mobile operators a unique ability to deliver the key differentiating feature of 4G networks, rich media content such as live television, movies and music ondemand, real-time video streaming and conferencing, radio, multi-player gaming and many other interactive streaming applications to mobile devices – anywhere, anytime. Given the expected advertising revenue from a wide range of live and cached rich media content delivered to mobile devices, we believe that MXtv will significantly drive network operator's ARPU and minimize churn with more sticky applications," Salmasi added.
"The shared goal of our collaboration with NextWave is to accelerate the mass adoption and delivery of highperformance end-to-end WiMAX solutions for NextWave and Alcatel-Lucent customers," said Philippe Keryer, President of Mobile Access Division of Alcatel-Lucent. "Integrating NextWave‘s MXtv technology with our industry-leading WiMAX network solutions and strengthening our OPEN CPE program with such new services will be a win-win for mobile network operators and most importantly provides millions of their subscribers with a compelling user experience."
To further drive the acceleration of WiMAX services at the device layer, NextWave's next-generation family of ‘No-Compromise' WiMAX semiconductors has integrated the required hardware accelerators to support MXtv technology. NextWave's fully integrated Wi-Fi/WiMAX SoC with advanced 65-nanometer CMOS process technology has incorporated numerous innovations to improve performance, and reduce power consumption. It is also designed to support bandwidth-intensive mobile multimedia applications such as video conferencing and video streaming as well as Quality-of-Service (QoS) sensitive applications such as Voice-over-IP (VoIP). In addition, NextWave's next-generation RFIC, also available in 2008, is designed to support seamless operation and roaming across worldwide WiMAX frequencies, with either TDD or FDD operations, and profiles.
Technical demonstrations of NextWave's mobile WiMAX semiconductor and MXtv technology will be offered at NextWave's booth at the upcoming CTIA Wireless 2008 conference (April 1-3, 2008) in Las Vegas. Visit NextWave Wireless in Booth #5265.
SOURCE: NextWave Wireless Inc