British Telecommunications Plc yesterday said it will next year introduce a range of wireless home networking products to the UK residential and small office markets, based on products co-developed with Atlanta, Georgia-based Home Wireless Networks Inc (HWN). The UK incumbent telco sees wireless networking as central to the evolution of the interactive home, and forecast that 5 million UK homes and 10 million small businesses and teleworkers will use wireless networks within five years.
In return for an exclusive UK distribution agreement, BT co-funded the development of Europeanized versions of HWN’s GSM-based home network servers, modified to support the Digital European Cordless Telephone (DECT) standard to avoid spectrum overlap with European mobile handsets. According to Simon Finch, HWN’s director of European product development, based in Cambridge, the product set is geared to residential user that has just bought their second domestic phone line, and wants an economic means of sharing it among a number of proliferating internet-ready devices.
The entry-level DECT system will support up to 16 wireless devices, including telephone handsets, and wireless enabled PCs, printers or digital cameras, with up to 12 devices running concurrently. A second offering supporting the IEEE 802.11 wireless LAN (WLAN) standard could potentially support 256 devices, but it is largely aimed at early user of ADSL and other broadband access network services which BT is scheduled to roll out later this year and throughout 2000. Both the DECT and 802.11 radio systems will have a line of sight range of approximately 300m or 75m within a building.
BT is bullish about sales prospects for the new systems, and said it expects sales revenue of between 35m pounds ($50m) in the first year in the UK. It will also be able to sell the products in any market where it has a service outlet, such as France, Germany or Spain. Prices for the grey bricks that will act as a plug-and-play wireless PABX and access router, are expected to start at under 400 pounds ($642) in the UK, Finch said.
The endorsement of the UK incumbent telco is a major fillip for HWN as it prepares to expand its reach from the North American market. According to Finch HWN has already received generic PSTN (public switched telephone network) type approval in Europe, and is now beginning to finalize type-approvals in individual country markets. He said all Europe’s telcos are preparing to follow BT’s lead, and our model is to sell through telcos he said.
