On the eve of introducing a brand new wireless local loop product, Diva Communications Inc. already is placing a priority on forging strategic relationships in newly industrializing countries to jointly develop interfaces for transparent connectivity to their public switched telephone networks.
“It’s one way of localizing to the market,” said Alan Jacobsen, product marketing manager for the Berkeley, Calif.-based company.
DIVA-2000, a digital WLL system, will be officially unveiled at Telecom ’95 in Geneva but the company has recently announced interface development agreements with STC Telecomunicacoes and NewCom Tecnologias Avancadas in Brazil as well as other strategic relationships in China and India.
Those markets reportedly have average telephony penetration rates of only 6 percent, 1.3 percent and 0.7 percent, respectively.
“The capacity exists in the switch,” Jacobsen noted, but the biggest hurdle to telephony expansion in the newly industrializing countries is the deployment of twisted pairs of copper wires to connect subscribers to central office switches. Some estimates place the average cost between $500 and $1,000 per subscriber with the added aggravations of long waiting lists and line maintenance difficulties.
Diva’s solution-and that of other WLL developers-is to go the last mile with wireless instead of copper.
However, according to Diva, “The manner in which the WLL system interconnects to the PSTN*…*represents a key distinction between systems based on mobile wireless technology or adapted to fixed wireless.” Their respective evolution paths have diverged and solutions optimized for one cannot well satisfy the needs of the other, the company said. Not all wireless local loops are the same.
“The problem is, `How do you seamlessly integrate into the central office switch?,’ ” Jacobsen said.
“The interface to the wireline network is*…*not subject to the kind of standardization that satisfies the dual goals of reduced overall system cost and transparency to the network. WLL systems that employ a mobile switch are penalized by the additional cost of the switch, while WLL systems directly connecting to the existing central office switch suffer from lack of standardization of the network interface,” the company said.
Hence there is a need for local strategic relationships to develop such interfaces.
“Direct connection of a WLL system to existing central office switches effectively makes the WLL network a direct extension of the wireline network and allows use of underutilized switching resources. The WLL system itself can rely upon the PSTN to provide all primary switching functions,” the company said.
In related news, the company announced an agreement with a Chinese manufacturer to produce the wall-mounted, single-line-subscriber terminals for the DIVA-2000 system. The terminals interface to standard telephone sets through an RJ-11 jack, the company said.
