April 12, 2007

Speaking of Wireless Plays

By Jim Barthold

NextWave Wireless created some small ripples in the wireless pond this week when said it would plunk down up to $135 million to acquire IPWireless, the industry's largest provider and biggest booster of TD-CDMA gear.

Most obviously, this meant that IPWireless was seeking help in what has been an uphill battle to gain respect and market share for the TD-CDMA mobile technology the company has positioned as an alternative to WiMAX. IPWireless did not unfurl the white flag, remaining defiant, especially when it comes to it TDtv mobile video play.

"We feel we've gotten a lot of traction in the mobile TV space with the recent announcements we've been doing with the tier one European carriers, Vodafone, Orange ... and in that market," said Jon Hambidge, IPWireless' marketing vice president.

Combining that TDtv package with the NextWave PacketVideo play "gives us a lot of help and a lot of tools to make us more successful in that market," Hambidge said.

Digging beneath the surface, the acquisition left observers with two thoughts: NextWave has overreached and now had too many wireless options - Wi-Fi, via its GoNetworks acquisition; PacketVideo and WiMAX, which NextWave is developing as its fourth generation (4G) mobile wireless play; as well as its own silicon effort. This diversity, critics say, has led to a lack of focus.

NextWave, of course, disagrees.

Complementary companies

"On the mobile broadband side, the two companies are very complementary in terms of skill sets and are going to add a lot of value to each other," said Roy Berger, NextWave's executive vice president of corporate marketing and communications. "Across the board, in all three of those markets, we see the partnership and being a part of the NextWave family as really benefiting our chances of success in all three of those markets."

Berger fell back on an old standby: "We are a customer-driven company ... and our goal is to provide customers around the world with the mobile broadband technologies and products that best fit their particular needs."

In this case, it's more than a cliché, insisted Donna Carlson, senior analyst at Sky Light Research.

"I totally admire the point of view that says, 'My customer is in charge of the decisions I make, and I want to arm myself with the tools I need in order to satisfy the customers' needs,'" she said.

Mainly, Berger said, those customers are interested in mobile TV, which is great because "IPWireless has really demonstrated leadership in developing their TDtv technology. In marrying their technology with the software capabilities of PacketVideo, it's only going to strengthen our capability to provide complete mobile TV solutions."

The international angle

Again, getting away from the thought that mobile TV might be more of an oxymoron than "managing editor," there is the question of where this technology will gain market share. It doesn't seem likely to hit North America any time soon – at least from the broadband perspective - thanks to the uber-presence of cable, satellite and emerging IPTV offerings.

"Our mobile TV initiative has been carrier-driven over in Europe because Vodafone, Orange, those kinds of operators over there own this UMTS-TDD (universal mobile telecommunications system-time division duplexing) spectrum" on which IPWireless' TD-CDMA technology works, said Hambidge. "What's great about PacketVideo is they're in 160 different handsets and have shipped over a million clients. They really get the whole client, but also the delivery of video over those networks."

This might seem like a small thing now - especially in North America where cable and TelcoTV are dominating the video space - but the picture could get bigger if the company featured in the next item takes off.

- Jim Barthold