Digital in-building system due for launch in Q1 2007
Irish telecoms developer Ircona has licensed technology from Lucent that it says will enable it to build a distributed antenna system (DAS) that packetises the RF signal to send it dgitally over a company’s existing Ethernet infrastructure.
John Doody, Director of Business & Product Development at Irconaa said the Lucent technology, developed by Bell Labs, digitises RF, distributes it over a standard LAN infrastucture and then reconstructs the signal at the antenna.
Ircona will add the systems, hardware and software to productise the technology, and is currently in Alpha stage, with “volume release” scheduled for the first quarter of 2007, Doody said.
The entry into in-building GSM is a new departure for Ircona, which was spun out from Stratus Technologies after acting previously as an internal product design department within the company.
Doody said that othersystems (such as that promoted by UK start up Zinwave) because other systems sent analogue RF signals over fibre. Digitising the signal makes management of the network more flexible, he says, as the signal is sent just as etherneet packets over a standard LAN infrastructure, and additions and changes can be made without taking into account the effect on the rest of the network.
The flexibility of the system also means a single Base Station could serve a whole campus, Doody said, rather than having to site a base station within reach of each area of intended coverage.
Doody’s view is that affordable, flexible and manageable in-building coverage will offer mobile operators the chance to offer fixed line conversion solutions to enterprise customers, whilst being able to hand over management of that to an IT manager, with the mobile company only having to worry about managing the base station.