Tooley Pushing CableMatrix into WiMAX

Signal to Noise: Useful Information and Analysis

By Jim Barthold

Tooley Pushing CableMatrix into WiMAX

Matt Tooley, CTO of CableMatrix, is betting his company's future on providing a way for WiMAX service providers to follow the trail cable blazed in the voice space. Tooley even sees the two service providers merging their business plans into a mutually beneficial voice offering.

CableMatrix, on its Web site, said it provides a "complete policy management product portfolio (that) ... allows service providers to launch new IP-based services such as SIP voice/data/video, streaming media, on-line gaming, video conferencing, and commercial services - or any other QoS-intensive application that drives revenues and creates a competitive advantage - with maximum quality of experience."

WiMAX, which is slowly emerging as the latest, greatest broadband pipe - even though it isn't a physical pipe - fits into that schematic.

"We're pushing what we've been doing for the cable operators, explaining how you can do that for the WiMAX operators and showing how from a QoS and policy standpoint the magic is building policy and control in a very centralized way," Tooley said.

Blending all three

Properly done, a service provider can blend WiMAX and Wi-Fi and cable "and build out the network with whatever the appropriate underlying access technology is and then provide the same services over all that through the use of policy management," Tooley said.

That consolidation, he said, will dovetail with IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem) and move everybody into a quadruple play. That's where CableMatrix will deliver a differentiator by aligning its technology to work with IMS. To overcome the fact that IMS only addresses SIP-based applications, CableMatrix is building flexibility into its smart agents to work with non-SIP applications and pull them into IMS to "take advantage of these end-to-end services across the network."

Tooley, the rare individual who's conversant and realistic about both cable and WiMAX, soaked his feet in cable as a CMTS software development manager at 3Com and with Tellabs on its PacketCable initiative before starting Xinnia with Jay Malin, now vice president of marketing and business development at CableMatrix. It was at Xinnia, which was swallowed by CableMatrix, that Tooley first took notice that "the WiMAX guys were going. to face the same problems that cable operators were facing," he said.

He also saw clearly that "the WiMAX market is full of a lot of hype. Everybody is trying to get their own message through for their own self-interest."

Fixed-mobile chasm

This is most evident in the Grand Canyon-wide chasm between fixed and mobile WiMAX. Mobile, it should be noted, gets the lion's share of industry support because it is, at least for the North American market, the ultimate broadband voice platform.

The problem is that fixed is the horse that's dragging the mobile cart, and "they all think they want to leapfrog to mobile and do fixed with mobile," Tooley said. "We're trying to show them how they can do it with a fixed WiMAX as well as how they can do it with a mobile WiMAX."

It's been widely speculated - perhaps you read it here - that cable will use WiMAX as its mobile play. Tooley's heard the speculation, but couldn't offer any further insights. Visits with operators showed they were, typically, "kind of close to the vest" about their WiMAX plans, he said. "At the last (SCTE Cable Tec Expo in Denver), we were getting a lot of interest from the cable operators looking at using it as an extension for their plant."

It's a different story once you leave the wired-up North American space. In those greenfield regions, "they all want to do voice," said Tooley. "Right now, they're just trying to get their networks up and running. We're having to educate them that you have to plan for voice now and shouldn't try to retrofit it in later."

Voice doesn't have to be mobile, he emphasized, although it's unlikely cable is interested in a fixed fix.

Really complicated

"The mobile stuff is really complicated, and there are a lot of things that are still being resolved," Tooley said. "If the WiMAX guys sit too long, there's a risk that this stuff from the 3G (third generation mobile) guys will get a big enough footprint that they (WiMAX) won't be able to get into the game."

In the meantime, Tooley and CableMatrix continue to shove cable and WiMAX together.

"We're focused on two major areas," he said. "We started with the cable companies, and we're pursuing that ... making a lot of progress on a number of fronts there with the bigger cable companies. The growth strategy is to complement that with reaching out and offering the same kind of stuff to the WiMAX operators and then showing how that eventually all ties back together with IMS."

- Jim Barthold