NEW YORK-Will hardware yield to software for prepaid wireless services? Tecore, a Columbia, Md., technology company, is in business to facilitate the transition, which it believes is inevitable.
The euphemistically named class of customers called “credit challenged” comprises as much as one-third of the wireless customer marketplace in the United States. And prepaid wireless service is widely viewed by cellular carriers as a means to bring them in without getting taken in.
Today, however, the means to that end is a clunker, in the view of Thomas “Casey” Joseph, vice president of engineering for Tecore, based at its offices in Richardson, Texas.
It requires proprietary hardware platforms connected to remote terminals at retail outlets. It requires special debit phones dedicated to a single transmission technology, whether analog, Time Division Multiple Access or Code Division Multiple Access. The prepaid dollar amount is programmed into these special phones and is deducted pretty much at a flat rate.
The AirCore wireless switching platform, based on personal computer technology, is designed to provide an end run around all these drawbacks, said Joseph at a recent conference in New York sponsored by The Global Organization for Multi-Vendor Integration Protocol Inc. GO-MVIP is headquartered in Washington, D.C.
The end user can buy or lease any kind of wireless handset. The system will work with any kind of transmission technology. It is a turnkey system that is modular and can be upgraded and permits carriers to structure individualized calling rate plans and bundle services, while also cutting off service mid-sentence when the prepaid amount runs out.
“The beauty of our solution is that the phone has no knowledge of money,” Joseph said. “It’s all keyed to the user’s phone number and account number.”
Depending on preference, the carrier can own and operate AirCore and use remote terminals at points of sale, or the reseller can own and operate AirCore with a direct connection to the carrier.
A few years down the road, GO-MVIP is expected to have surmounted the still unresolved issue of “hot pluggability.” This risque-sounding buzzword is jargon for the ability to replace malfunctioning computer cards in seconds without having to take down the system, as now is the case, Joseph said.
“Once that issue is resolved, we will have addressed the arguments now made by the larger switch manufacturers (about continual reliability),” Casey said. “The technology we’re based on is the way to the future.”
Joseph said Tecore is in purchase negotiations with a number of large cellular carriers and resellers for the AirCore platform. Cellular carriers are paying more attention to Tecore and prepaid services, “as PCS (personal communications services) are starting to creep up,” Casey said.
