The InterReach Fusion system from San Jose, California-based LGC was launched last year in North America, where it is available in two frequency offerings, said John Spindler, the company’s VP of marketing.
There is an 850/1900MHz version for the cellular bands in the US and another with 800 and 900MHz IDEN and 1900MHz for cellular, which is specifically for Sprint, because they acquired [IDEN operator] Nextel, he explained.
The international version of the Fusion offering, meanwhile, ships with 1800MHz for 2G spectrum and 2100MHz for 3G, with another variant offering 900MHz and 2100MHz for operators that want the lower band for 2G services.
Fusion represents LGC’s third generation of product and, to some extent, supersedes the second generation, called Unison, which as its name suggests is a single-band offering, which is still applicable in high-capacity scenarios like airports, where every carrier wants a dedicated system just for its subscribers. Fusion consists of a main hub that sits in an enterprise comms room, connecting with up to four expansion hubs distributed around a building or campus, with each expansion hub supporting up to eight radio access units (RAUs), which are akin to access points in a WLAN context.
Spindler explained that, whereas Unison supports up to 35MHz of bandwidth, Fusion supports u to 135MHz, i.e. the full 75MHz in the DCS 1800MHz band and 60MHz in the UMTS 2100MHz band. This means that, since no one operator has all the bandwidth in any given frequency band, an enterprise deploying the device will be able to support multiple operators in each band.
LGC still derives the bulk of its revenue from sales to mobile operators rather than directly to enterprises, though the latter is on the increase: Spindler said it currently represents anywhere from 10% to 35% of revenue, depending on the quarter. As for pricing, LGC is cagey, as with any technology sold to carriers, but Spindler did say that an enterprise could look at a cost per square foot of around 20 cents-25 cents for the complete turnkey installation. It can go as low as five cents in wide open areas, while in older, more divided-up buildings, it can be as high as 75 cents.
As for the future, Spindler said a lot of mobile WiMAX networks are starting to be deployed in the 3.5GHz band, and it’s certainly in our plans to offer in-building mobile WiMAX coverage, where of course the focus will be on data rather than voice.
Our View
Distributed antenna systems from LGC and other players such as MobileAccess Networks (from Israel), InnerWireless and even, these days, Andrew/CommScope, are themselves competitors, in terms of a technology proposition, with a few other alternatives for delivering fixed-mobile convergence (FMC), namely:
– dual-mode handsets with cellular and WiFi radios, sometimes with a UMA client on the phone and a UMA Network Controller in the carrier network; BT and Orange are both offering UMA-based services for households;
– an IMS-based offering from a mobile carrier, with or without the WiFi dimension; BT is talking about such an offering for enterprises;
– PBX extension to mobile phones, like the service, based on the Ascendant technology from RIM, that Verizon Business has just unveiled in the US;
– femto- and picocell base stations deployed by mobile operators, respectively, in homes and offices.
All these technologies have their pros and cons, and indeed, Spindler confided, LGC itself has regards as the optimum solution for the long-term for office environments one or two picocells deployed centrally, with our distributed radios deployed around the building, because that avoids the traffic engineering and channel planning required by picocell-only deployments.
It will be interesting to see whether, based on that observation, LGC moves to strike alliances with picocell vendors like IP.access, RadioFrame and Airvana, or decides, in the fullness of time, to develop and market its own picocell offering.
