Vendors Show WirelessHD Products at CES

WirelessHD, currently comprised of Intel, LG Electronics, Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd. (Panasonic), NEC, SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS, SiBEAM, Sony and Toshiba, completed the development of the WirelessHD specification for high-definition baseband video transmission between consumer products in the home.


WirelessHD or "WiHD", is a wireless high definition digital interface standard operating in the unlicensed and globally available 60 GHz frequency band. First generation implementations are aiming to achieve rates up to 4 Gbps, while the core technology promises theoretical data rates as high as 25 Gbps over short ranges of under 10m. Target applications include televisions, HD disc players, set-top boxes, camcorders, gaming consoles, adapter products, as well as other source devices.


The WirelessHD group also includes 40 Early Adopter and Promoter companies as well as technical support with regards to content protection for WirelessHD 1.0 from the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and technical support for DTCP content protection from the Digital Transmission Licensing Administrator (DTLA).


At CES in Las Vegas, SiBEAM, a start-up based in Sunnyvale, California, announced that its WirelessHD-based transmitter and receiver chipsets, and its WirelessHD Development Kit will be made available to select customers in the first quarter of 2008. The chips are implemented in CMOS.


Panasonic is using the SiBEAM chipset in a wireless High Definition (HD) Audio/Video transmission system based on the "WirelessHD" standard. The system enables HD video transmission in uncompressed format between a television and other AV equipment like a Blu-ray Disc player without quality deterioration.http://www.wirelesshd.org/

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Motorola Shows WiMAX Desktop Device

Motorola introduced its WiMAX CPEi 100 device

-- a single data port, 2.5 GHz "plug-and-play" WiMAX solution. It is designed to sit on a desktop and serve as the interface between a computer and the WiMAX network. The product is expected to be available in 2008 for WiMAX operators who have systems in the 2.5 GHz band.


"Performance and ease-of-use are essential to motivate consumers to upgrade to higher performance wireless broadband technologies, "said Fred Wright, Motorola senior vice president, Cellular Networks and Broadband. "The CPEi 100 provides that experience and enables WiMAX operators to offer a home device that consumers can install and setup in only a matter of minutes."


Motorola noted that it currently has 15 WiMAX contracts and more than 57 WiMAX engagements in 38 countries worldwide, including 44 active trials.http://www.motorola.com

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NSN to acquire Apertio for Subscriber Data Platforms

Nokia Siemens Networks agreed to acquire Apertio, a provider of open real-time subscriber data platforms and applications, for around EUR 140 million. The deal is expected to close in the first quarter of 2008.


Apertio will provide the new generation architecture and open real-time subscriber data platform for Nokia Siemens Networks' portfolio.
Nokia Siemens Networks said the acquisition will enable it to build on its position in the converged core.


Apertio's software application suite, Apertio One, delivers a single, open, subscriber-centric architecture for current and new generation networks. The suite includes Apertio One-NDS (Network Directory Server), Apertio One-HLR (Home Location Register) and Apertio One-HSS (Home Subscriber Server). The company is privately held, and headquartered in Bristol, UK, with offices in Chicago, Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, and Beijing.


Apertio's customers include Orange, T-Mobile, Vodafone and O2. Once the deal has closed, Apertio is expected to form a new business line, to be headed by Apertio CEO, Paul Magelli, within Nokia Siemens Networks' Converged Core business unit.http://www.nokiasiemensnetworks.comhttp://www.apertio.com

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Bharti Airtel awards multi-million Euro Deal to Ericsson

Bharti Airtel awarded a pan India contract to Ericsson for deployment of a single Interactive Voice Response (IVR) platform across all 23 circles. The three year turnkey and multi-million Euro contract includes designing, planning, systems integration and optimization services to enhance overall customer experience.


Ericsson said the new IVR solution will enable Airtel to deliver Services such as Voice SMS, Televoting, Call Management Services (Reach-me service / Missed Call Advisor), Caller Ring back Tone (CRBT) and VoicePortal among others on a faster time-to-market basis, reduce OPEX costs due to optimized network utilization, and increase security by creation of a layered architecture towards Interactive Voice applications.http://www.ericsson.com

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Chelsio Raises $25 Million for 10Gb Ethernet Adapters

Chelsio Communications, a start-up offering 10-Gigabit Ethernet server adapters and protocol acceleration technology,

announced the closing of a Series E private funding round, raising a total of $25 million. Chelsio's 3rd generation Terminator 3 (T3) ASICs power the company's portfolio of unified wire adapters for 10Gb Ethernet. Target applications for the 10Gb adapters include Network-Attached Storage (NAS) Filers, Storage Area Network (SAN) Arrays, Server Adapters, High Performance Cluster Computing, Blade Servers, Video Servers, Application Servers and Web Accelerators.


The new funding round was led by an investor new to the company, Investor Growth Capital, while existing investors New Enterprise Associates, INVESCO Private Capital, LSI Logic Corporation, Hotung Capital Management, Abacus Capital Group, Pacesetter Capital Group, and Horizon Ventures all participated.http://www.chelsio.com

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Meraki Raises $20 Million for its Muni Wireless Mesh

Meraki, a start-up based in Mountain View, California, raised $20 million in Series B funding of from Sequoia Capital, DAG Ventures, Northgate Capital and other existing investors for its municipal wireless networking plans. The company also announced that it will deploy a city-wide wireless access network in San Francisco that will provide free, broadband Internet access for every neighborhood in the city by the end of 2008.


Meraki said it is pioneering networking technologies to bring the next billion people online. The company offers a low-cost, easy-to-install and use, wireless mesh technology that enables consumers to cover their homes, apartment complexes and entire communities. The technology creates a wireless network by combining signals from hundreds or thousands of low-power radio repeaters installed on rooftops, balconies and windows, extending WiFi access to city residents in their homes and businesses. Through communication with Meraki central servers and intelligence worked into every repeater, each point in the network is automatically optimized for speed and performance without any maintenance required of users.

Meraki's "Free the Net" program, which was launched last year in San Francisco in select neighborhoods, currently claims over 40,000 users.
In the first two square miles of the project in San Francisco, the network identified and worked around more than 20,000 sources of interference and allowed Meraki to deliver almost 1Mbps of access to every user.



The backbone of the San Francisco network will be built using hundreds of small solar-powered distribution points, installed on residential and commercial rooftops -- enabling quick installation and reliable operation. As the network extends into new neighborhoods, Meraki will offer San Francisco residents free repeaters that will bring a high-speed, broadband signal into their homes while strengthening the network and providing coverage to neighbors. A repeater is not required to receive wireless access, residents may simply hop on the free network provided by repeaters throughout the neighborhood.


Meraki said it will fund the entire cost for establishing the free network across the city, as part of an effort to showcase for other communities around the world how the company's technology can allow the creation of city-wide access networks at a fraction of current costs. No public funds will be used to build this new Meraki wireless network in San Francisco.http://www.meraki.com/

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