What is going to be the thrust area for Kineto Wireless with you as the new CEO? Kineto provides technology behind the leading FMC standards using both licensed and unlicensed spectrum. We will continue our leadership in that space. I...What is going to be the thrust area for Kineto Wireless with you as the new CEO? Kineto provides technology behind the leading FMC standards using both licensed and unlicensed spectrum. We will continue our leadership in that space. I also see a lot of potential in Kineto’s solution for voice and SMS over LTE as part of the VoLGA Forum.
You started out promoting UMA based FMC and then extended support to femtocells. How does all that tie in with the industry shift towards LTE? With the amount of data users of smart phones like the iPhone generate on an operator’s network, it is going to take a number of service paradigms to ensure adequate bandwidth and service levels. Kineto’s strengths lie in enabling mobile operators to deliver services over both fixed and mobile IP networks. UMA delivers these services. Femtocells rely on the same fixed-broadband IP to connect to the mobile core. In the future, operators will need a mobile IP access network for delivering voice and SMS services over LTE; and that is actually right in line with Kineto’s core competencies. You are also working on picocells. Has this area helped you increase traction for your solutions? Definitely. Kineto announced a collaboration with picoChip three years ago. The result has been the success our OEM partners have achieved in the femtocell market. Together with picoChip and our other partners, we provide the most advanced 3G femtocell solution on the market today, in part because of our early collaborations. Who are your main service provider customers right now? Kineto is in three different markets today: UMA, femtocells and the emerging voice over LTE space. Kineto’s customers for UMA are fairly well known, including Orange, T-Mobile, Telia and others. In the femtocell market, Kineto has secured a number of commercial opportunities, including Orange, but many others are still unannounced. Orange is a great example of an operator who sees the need for multiple FMC technologies to meet the demand of their customers. We are supplying Orange with femtocell controllers, as well as UMA controllers. But Kineto’s belief has always been that licensed and unlicensed technologies are complementary, and Orange is a great example of that. For voice over LTE, the market is still quite young, but we have solid engagements with several operators at this point. It has been a while since you announced VoLGA initiative. What has been the progress there? I think the progress that VoLGA Forum has made in less than 3 months is truly incredible. The VoLGA Forum was announced about 3 months ago, on March 31, with the goal of providing the most functional, cost-effective solution for voice and SMS over LTE. In that time, the Forum has grown from 10 to nearly 20 members and has been quite active speaking and presenting its position to the market. Operators are realizing the need for this solution to provide voice over LTE. What are the market drivers for VoLGA? ‘Falling back’ to 3G or 2G is not acceptable for many reasons. And while IMS remains the plan of record for a number of operators, it’s viewed as expensive to own and implement. Also, most operators are still spending on their 3G networks while having to acquire spectrum and pay for an LTE rollout. There is a desire to find solutions that can delay that spend-out for voice services, and VoLGA fits the bill perfectly. Finally, VoLGA is poised to solve a more immediate problem for data-only LTE deployments. Operators rely heavily on SMS to provide operational, management and customer care messages to 3G/HSPA dongles and data cards today. But as we now know, there is currently no industry plan for SMS over LTE. Operators must have a solution for SMS over LTE to launch even the most basic LTE data service. VoLGA, which supports all circuit services including SMS, is the right technology at the right time to solve this problem.
