Marconi Corp. plc and ArrayComm Inc. announced a deal under which Marconi will embed ArrayComm’s Intellicell smart antenna technology in its third-generation wideband-CDMA base stations.
The open-ended deal is expected to generate more than $300 million in revenues during the next five years, ArrayComm said.
“The technology we’re applying to UMTS is fundamentally the same Intellicell technology that is deployed in Asia,” said Marty Cooper, chief executive officer of ArrayComm.
ArrayComm has more than 60,000 base stations in Asia, but this will be the first time Intellicell will appear in a 3G w-CDMA system.
IntelliCell technology utilizes proprietary software and standard antenna arrays to continuously optimize, in real time, the communication channel with every wireless user. Instead of broadcasting the signal in all directions, the technology delivers the system directly to the receiver. It is fundamentally software that works by using multiple antennas that combine signals.
“The bottom line is the carriers will get a great deal more revenue. For 3G, this is really essential because people have paid billions of dollars for their spectrum,” Cooper said.
In the most recent Universal Mobile Telecommunications Service auction, carriers paid more than $33 billion for wireless spectrum in the United Kingdom, and around $45 billion for wireless spectrum in Germany.
Cooper said Marconi will ship the Intellicell-enhanced base stations sometime in the next couple of years.
In a separate announcement, Marconi said it made an undisclosed investment in ArrayComm. Said Cooper, “They think the relationship is important enough that they want to have tighter ties to the company.”
