ArrayComm and Japanese electronics vendor Kyocera Corp are supplying equipment for the initiative, which will bring 1Mbps internet access at up to 60mph to users in and around the park once it goes live.
A single base station will cover the entire 24-acre site of Queen’s Island, including the dock where the RMS Titanic was built. But ArrayComm will be hoping for a more buoyant future for its all IP-based network technology than the doomed ocean liner.
The system should be live a month, according to David Brunnen, managing director of Advanced Business Facilities Ltd, who is acting in a business development role for the project. The system will be demonstrated for three months until the end of September and will be available to users at the Science Park’s Innovation Center. Belfast’s harbor police are also set to use the service for surveillance purposes, said Brunnen.
ArrayComm’s Belfast adventure could herald the start of a major international expansion for the company, according to Brunnen. While he was not at liberty to divulge the company’s plans at this stage much appears to depend on ArrayComm being assigned suitable spectrum.
San Jose, California-based ArrayComm is one of a handful of companies offering so-called 4G wireless networking equipment. To date, ArrayComm’s system, known as i-Burst Personal Broadband, has a lower profile in Europe and the US than rival technologies from vendors such as Navini Networks, Flarion, and IPWireless, all of which have signed deals with major service providers in those geographies.
Meanwhile, i-Burst has had its strongest reception in the southern hemisphere and southeast Asia, with successful trials in South Africa with WBS and South Korea with KT Corp. But the current jewel in ArrayComm’s crown is the network operated by its Australian subsidiary, Personal Broadband Australia.
PBBA, in association with partners Vodafone Australia, local ISP Ozemail, Crown Castle Australia and 3Com company CommWorks, has raised some $29m to develop the network, which it plans to extend to other Australian cities. The network, which launched commercially last December, covers over 60 square miles with 12 base stations.
i-Burst is built on ArrayComm’s adaptive smart antenna technology known as IntelliCell based on a proprietary implementation of spatial processing technology, a mathematical representation of each user’s physical location in a service area.
This creates what the company describes as personal cells that are created, moved around and dismantled for individual users rather than broadcasting to many users simultaneously as do conventional cellular systems.
This approach reduces interference, allows wider coverage, improves capacity, and creates clearer signals than its rivals. Downlink speeds of up to 2Mbps are possible in a fully optimized network.
Analyses by consultants such as McKinsey have demonstrated spectral efficiency for the system, in terms of Mbps/MHz, 20 times greater than WCDMA 3G networks and 13 times greater than the highly-touted wireless metropolitan area network technology, WiMax. This efficiency, as with those of ArrayComm’s 4G rivals, offers considerable cost benefits to operators.
IntelliCell itself is already in use in over 228,000 base stations for more conventional wireless networks, principally in the far east, but also in Africa and the Middle East. The technology is one of the main components of the proposed IEEE 802.20 Mobile Broadband Wireless Access specification, along with Flarion’s Flash-OFDM.
Hardly a start-up, with origins dating back to 1992, ArrayComm is the brain child of Martin Cooper, widely recognized as the father of the mobile phone. Cooper led Motorola’s team in the 1970s and early 1980s that devised and built the first handset for cellular networks.
ArrayComm has taken its time bringing i-Burst to market, but the company and its supporters believe that time was well spent. Total funding stretches to $140m. Investors include Marconi Mobile, DDI, Sony Corp of America, American Century Ventures, Cornerstone Equity, and Nomura International.
