NEW YORK-Why wait for 3G, whenever that might be, when you can provide multimedia services over wireless networks today?
That is the message of Nehemiah Davidson, chief executive officer of Jigami, Rosh Haayin, Israel, developer of the trademarked 3Gate platform and content switch.
Carrier trials are under way in Europe and Asia. The company, which has a joint marketing agreement with Lucent Technologies Inc., expects to launch similar trials in the United States during the first quarter of 2001. Jigami formerly was Net2Wireless. The company rang in the new year with a new name, Jigami, which Davidson said means pioneer in Japanese.
Jigami has applied for a dozen patents for its technology, which Davidson said, “recognizes different content-video, audio, intranet, Internet-and uses new algorithms to compress, manage and deliver it to devices over 2G and 2.5G wireless networks.”
The technology works with GSM, CDMA, CDPD, GPRS and iDEN protocols. It can compress data to make it five-to-10 times smaller, thereby allowing data streams that now take five minutes to be completed in 30 seconds.
“Wireless networks need a two-to-three second response, and people don’t care how it’s done. We need a new way to take Web content and give the user the experience of 64-128 kilobits per second. M-commerce will not succeed if we don’t have the technology to make things fast,” he said.
Today, personal digital assistants and other handhelds can receive Jigami’s speedy, highly compressed multimedia feeds. By the second quarter of the year, Davidson said he expects that L.M. Ericsson and Nokia Corp. will have “embedded our technology” into new generations of smart phones.
The company plans to demonstrate its 3Gate switch and platform in Hanover, Germany, in late March, at which time it expects to introduce a new handset that can accept any kind of content.
“We are not a text or Web clipping technology. Let’s not try to sell things to people that they don’t need. Going back three years, carriers invested hundreds of millions of dollars in infrastructure and handsets for WAP. WAP is limited and text-based and created the need for special Web sites for WAP,” he said.
“This wasn’t a network problem. Carriers had no alternative because they had to show a data strategy. But we don’t believe there is any future in WAP or i-mode. The only future for wireless is when people can access regular Internet content.”
The chief executive said he is convinced deployment of third-generation wireless networks will not begin in earnest for at least four or five years, and that full deployment will not happen until the end of the decade.
However, the investor marketplace probably needs the year 2001 to sort out fact from unrealistic expectations surrounding 3G wireless, whose technical issues remain unresolved. Those expectations include fast, multimedia transmission over wireless networks, he said.
“Another barrier is the handset. With 2G, it needs one slot. With 2.5G, in order to push more bandwidth, it needs two-to-four slots. Each slot needs more energy, and more energy produces more radiation,” Davidson said.
“In 3G, we are talking about much higher energy. The FDA (Food and Drug Administration) is looking at radiation, and wireless handsets could become like cigarettes.”
Jigami also stands ready to provide similar compression relief to Internet networks for alleviating the data traffic jams and resulting latency plaguing that part of the content delivery system, Davidson said.
“When the real Internet appears to wireless customers, the Internet will have a problem, and even all the fiber optics won’t be enough,” Davidson said.
“Our technology can also work for landline connectivity and open bottlenecks to the Internet.”
