LightSquared has until 5 p.m. ET today to work out a deal with lenders that would keep it from being forced into bankruptcy, but reports say the company is drawing up its own plans for voluntary Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in case those negotiations falter.

Reuters and the Wall Street Journal both reported on Sunday that hedge-fund manager Philip Falcone, whose Harbinger Capital Partners owns 96 percent of LightSquared, is at odds with lenders regarding his future role and how best to cede Harbinger’s ownership stakes in LightSquared to its creditors. The $3.8 billion hedge fund has sunk 60 percent of its money into LightSquared.

Reuters said lenders also want LightSquared to be overseen by an independent board and have sought to hold Falcone personally liable for a future bankruptcy filing under certain circumstances

Lenders agreed to twice extend deadline waivers to LightSquared as it struggled to avoid defaulting on a $1.6 billion loan, terms of which the company has already violated. The first date that the loan could have been declared in default was April 30, which would have forced LightSquared into immediate bankruptcy.

Falcone has said previously that he would consider Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection for LightSquared, which would give him time, perhaps 18 months, to craft a reorganization plan for the telecom startup. Lenders, however, would have a say in any plan Falcone submitted to the court and could block his efforts at reorganization.

The FCC in February revoked a conditional waiver for LightSquared to build a wholesale LTE network due to GPS interference concerns related to the 1.6 GHz L-band spectrum that LightSquared intended to employ. The telecom startup has been battling to stay afloat ever since.

According to Reuters, LightSquared’s creditors have included hedge fund manager David Tepper and hedge funds including Fortress Investment Group, Knighthead Capital Management, Redwood Capital Management and investment firm Capital Research and Management.

One potential twist to the LightSquared saga involves LightSquared investor Carl Icahn and Dish Network Chairman Charlie Ergen, who resigned his role as CEO last summer to focus on Dish’s efforts to use 2 GHz S-band spectrum for a terrestrial LTE-Advanced network. According to several reports, Icahn sold $250 million in LightSquared debt holdings earlier this month to Sound Point Capital, a three-year-old investment firm headed by Stephen Ketchum, whose client list when he previously worked as an investment banker included Dish.

If accurate, rumors of Dish’s possible involvement in the LightSquared debt are particularly curious given Ergen’s recent comments regarding the satellite spectrum that Dish wants to use to deploy a terrestrial LTE-Advanced network. At a speaking engagement last month at the University of Colorado-Boulder, Ergen seemed to imply that the S-band satellite spectrum Dish holds is preferable to LightSquared’s L-band spectrum.

“We did our homework, in the sense that we knew there’d be some interference issues,” Ergen said, adding the company “went after frequencies that are pretty clean.” He noted the GPS industry, which opposes LightSquared’s efforts to use L-band satellite spectrum for an LTE network, supports Dish’s plan to use S-band spectrum.

During Dish’s first-quarter 2012 earnings conference call, Ergen noted that the satellite-TV provider holds 40 MHz of S-band satellite spectrum and 6 MHz of 700 MHz spectrum, which he said is enough for the company to enter the broadband wireless business.

“Hopefully, there’ll be new spectrum coming on the market. Hopefully, there’ll be other ways to make spectrum more efficient,” Ergen said, according to a Seeking Alpha transcript.

For more:
– see the Reuters article
– see this Wall Street Journal article (sub. req.)
– see this Denver Post article and blog

Related articles:
Dish’s Ergen: We have enough spectrum for wireless biz
LightSquared: Icahn sells holdings, company keeps battling default
Report: Creditors want to push Falcone out as face of LightSquared
LightSquared to pay Inmarsat $56.3M, delays further payments until 2014
Lawmakers press FCC to give LightSquared new spectrum
Rumor Mill: LightSquared nearing bankruptcy

Courtesy: Fierce Telecom”

In a twist on advertising-supported Wi-Fi access, Spectrum Interactive will open its Free Street Wi-Fi network in London to users who select a promotional offer from one of its local brand and advertising partners.

Spectrum has retrofitted 1,800 of the United Kingdom’s iconic red payphone booths, turning them into Wi-Fi hotspots. Passersby who provide their mobile number and download an electronic voucher redeemable at a nearby store are promised free Internet access via Spectrum’s Wi-Fi network.

The service, which uses location-based advertising technology from Selective Media, is initially available in central London before a broader rollout commences to all of Spectrum’s 1,800 street-side payphone kiosks. Spectrum says 1,500 of those are within the M25 motorway zone, which nearly encircles London.

Spectrum initially began testing the program with the help of Nokia (NYSE:NOK) in November 2011, but, according to an article in Engadget, is no longer working with the Finnish vendor. Engadget says Spectrum is still sorting out its marketing strategy for raising ad revenue from the local businesses that are expected to supply coupons for the service.

Spectrum Interactive claims it is the U.K.’s largest, independent provider of Wi-Fi and related services. Its customer base includes large travel, retail and hospitality brands such as British Airways, Travelodge, Accor, Radisson Edwardian and Value Retail.

In related Wi-Fi news, Land Securities disclosed plans to introduce free Wi-Fi service in its 22 shopping centers and two outlet centers in the United Kingdom. The company is collaborating on the project with Wi-Fi provider The Cloud, which counts the contract as the largest it has secured with a commercial property company.

For more:
– see this Engadget article
– see this Cellular-News article and this article
– see this ISPreview article

Related articles:
AT&T ad-backed Wi-Fi to take wing at Dallas airport
Virgin Media to provide free Wi-Fi on London Tube
San Jose muni Wi-Fi to offer faster speeds, advanced service
Ireland’s Eircom Group deploys Wi-Fi offload for all data plans
O2 UK preps London for Europe’s largest free Wi-Fi network
Towerstream’s Wi-Fi hotzones see plenty of traffic but no wireless carrier customers – yet

Courtesy: Fierce Telecom”

According to a new survey released by the Wi-Fi Alliance, 70 percent of smartphone and tablet users would swap service providers to get streamlined Wi-Fi access while 72 percent said they would be willing to pay for easier Wi-Fi access.

The poll of 1,000 U.S. smartphone and tablet users, conducted by Wakefield Research on behalf of the alliance, also revealed that 85 percent of respondents prefer to connect via Wi-Fi over cellular for at least one common online activity, 83 percent would do more on their device if Wi-Fi were more widely available and 87 percent agreed that they want “greater Wi-Fi availability for my device.”

Edgar Figueroa, CEO of the Wi-Fi Alliance, told FierceBroadbandWireless that the survey results justify the group’s push for the Wi-Fi Certified Passpoint, a certification program for devices and infrastructure equipment that will launch in June 2012.

Among other things, Passpoint-certified devices will automatically identify and join Wi-Fi networks, and users will not be required to complete a manual login process. Passpoint also automatically configures industry-standard WPA2 security protections without user intervention. Passpoint certification is based on the Wi-Fi Alliance Hotspot 2.0 Specification, which draws on some elements of the IEEE 802.11u standard.

Figueroa said that according to ABI Research, nearly all smartphones will be Wi-Fi enabled by 2014. Further, he said mobile devices made up some 30 percent of all Wi-Fi Alliance product certifications in 2011.

In related news, according to an article in ComputerWorld, of the nation’s four biggest wireless carriers only T-Mobile USA has revealed plans to deploy Passpoint. A T-Mobile spokesperson told the publication that once the Passpoint certification process starts, “we expect that our Connection Manager on our devices will leverage Passpoint as an authentication mechanism.”

For more:
– see this ComputerWorld article

Related articles:
Ruckus gets Time Warner nod, as Nokia Siemens and IPO rumors fly
GSMA, WBA partner to ease roaming between mobile, Wi-Fi networks
Boingo CTO: Cellular-to-Wi-Fi roaming to be ready by early 2013
GSMA, WBA partner to ease roaming between mobile, Wi-Fi networks
Survey: 83% expect carriers to provide Wi-Fi service as part of bundle

Courtesy: Fierce Telecom”

NEW ORLEANS–When it comes to small cells and Wi-Fi access points, Ericsson (NASDAQ:ERIC), is all about ensuring operators keep a tight rein on the user experience by rigorously integrating this equipment with the rest of the network.

The infrastructure vendor is making 2012 its year for targeted pushes into both the small cell and Wi-Fi equipment arenas.

“Small cells start this year,” said Hans Beijner, radio portfolio marketing manager at Ericsson, who told FierceBroadbandWireless that the rapid adoption of smartphones is just as quickly opening up new opportunities for small cell deployments.

The 3G market holds the most potential for small cells right now, given that LTE is still too new to have capacity issues. There are more than 1 billion 3G smartphone worldwide, but capacity issues are entirely localized, a situation that often calls for small cell coverage, said Beijner in an interview during the CTIA Wireless 2012 convention.

But, it can be difficult to quantify small cell demand. “Some of the operators are talking about tens of thousands of smart cells in the coming year,” said Beijner. But others are looking at much smaller scales. Ericsson recently spoke to a large operator in Europe that predicted it would need to add only 150 small cells over the next five years.

Ericsson, which recently joined the board of the Small Cell Forum (formerly the Femto Forum), offers picocells and microcells in its portfolio, but no femtocells. “The problem with femtocells is the interference,” said Beijner.

Much of the femtocell industry adopted the 3GPP standard luh interface for linking femtocell access points to the service provider’s network, but Ericsson has never supported luh because it does not enable cell coordination. “If you do it over the luh, you can’t do cell coordination, and if you don’t do cell coordination, you face interference, and the only way to counter interference in the outdoor environment is to divide spectrum between the small cell and the macrocell,” said Beijner

Instead, Ericsson’s perspective is that all small cells, including femtos, should be linked by the Iub interface, which allows them to be integrated completely into the network just like macrocells. This is a much more complicated endeavor but one Ericsson feels is worthwhile because “it enables an operator to use the same spectrum for a small cell and a macrocell,” said Beijner.

The Iub interface was not popular among some femtocell proponents because its implementation is proprietary across vendors. Ericsson also uses the Iub interface in its pico and microcells and because of the proprietary nature of the implementation, the company recommends that operators buy their small cells from their macrocell supplier. “You can’t attach a small cell over an Iub from another vendor. It’s not possible,” said Beijner.  

In addition to offering picocell and microcell products, Ericsson has entered the Wi-Fi infrastructure business by acquiring BelAir Networks in a deal that closed last month. The move shocked much of the industry because the Swedish infrastructure king had largely turned its back on Wi-Fi. “We ignored Wi-Fi for a very long time,” acknowledged Beijner.

Perhaps just as shocking is the fact that although Ericsson now has a viable Wi-Fi business under its wings, it is not pushing carriers to start plopping Wi-Fi networks here and there. “We believe still that it’s a bad idea for mobile operators to just add Wi-Fi to their offering,” said Beijner.

“Instead of diluting the mobile carrier brand” which can happen with a generic Wi-Fi offload implementation, operators should instead strive to add value to the offering, he said. “You need much more integration between cellular and Wi-Fi, and you need to have quality assurance in the Wi-Fi network.”

Network access should be based on policies, applications and the quality of the connection, said Beijner, adding, “You can’t select Wi-Fi or cellular. They are complements, not replacements.”

Related articles:
Sprint counts 600,000 femtocells, plans to update Airave
AT&T’s Rinne: Small cells, SON and VoLTE coming in 2012, 2013
Small Cell Forum says 75% of macrocell traffic can be offloaded to 10 small cells
Survey: 76% of industry insiders say small cells play a role in their networks
Ruckus CEO: Wi-Fi offloading demands creativity
Wi-Fi offload at core of reported Ericsson BelAir buy

Courtesy: Fierce Telecom”

Regional wireless carrier Cellcom joined with Airvana and Taqua to announce their FemtoCloud femtocell-as-a-service offering, which is designed for regional North American CDMA operators. The companies contend that their service will enable rural North American operators to get in on the small cell action without having to pony up significant upfront capital expenditures. Operators also will not need to develop the expertise required to establish their own small cell core. Cellcom’s FemtoCloud platform consists of Airvana’s femtocell service manager and small cell analytics service and Taqua’s fully integrated small cell core offering. The partners intend to begin marketing the service later this month. Release

Courtesy: Fierce Telecom”

NEW ORLEANS–Bolstered by its big LTE win with T-Mobile USA, Nokia Siemens Networks finds itself in a much healthier position in North America and ready to compete with the new reality of shrinking margins for network vendors, said executives during an intimate press briefing at the CTIA Wireless 2012 show.

On Monday, T-Mobile USA selected NSN and rival vendor Ericsson (NASDAQ:ERIC) as the primary infrastructure vendors for its forthcoming LTE network. Rick Corker, NSN president of customer operations for North America, said the new T-Mobile contract is a game-changer for the vendor. “I don’t have to make the same headcount changes I was going to have to make,” he commented.

Corker said winning T-Mobile’s business “gives us a lot of relevance in the U.S.,” something the vendor admittedly needs after missing out on earlier LTE network contracts from AT&T Mobility (NYSE:T) and Verizon Wireless (NYSE:VZ). Those two operators chose Ericsson and Alcatel-Lucent (NASDAQ:ALU) as their primary LTE vendors.

“We haven’t given up on the other two elephants in the room,” Corker added.

This week has been a busy one for NSN. In addition to the T-Mobile deal, the company completed the sale of its fixed line broadband access business to AdTran and amended an agreement to have DragonWave take over its microwave backhaul manufacturing business.

NSN spokesman Barry French noted network equipment vendors continue to see plummeting profit margins, which is why NSN announced in November 2011 that it was narrowing its focus to concentrate primarily on providing broadband infrastructure and related services in North America, Japan and South Korea. That narrowed focus has resulted in “tough decisions on real estate,” layoffs and other restructuring decisions, French said. The company intends to slash up to 17,000 jobs by the end of 2013 to save $1.3 billion.

NSN has even nixed potentially lucrative contracts–such as a TETRA public-safety project in Norway– that don’t suit its new focus.

Other network equipment vendors, such as Ericsson and Alcatel-Lucent “haven’t taken the steps they need to take to adjust their cost structures to this new reality,” French said.

He acknowledged that NSN’s most recent quarterly financials were poor but said the company just needs to stay on plan. In the first quarter, NSN reported net sales of $3.85 billion, down 7 percent from $4.14 billion in the year-ago period. NSN reported an operating loss of $1.3 billion in the quarter, compared with an operating loss of $185.8 million in the year-ago period, though the company noted that because it completed the acquisition of Motorola Solutions’ (NYSE:MSI) networks business on April 30, 2011, its first-quarter results are not directly comparable to last year.

Since the Mobile World Congress in February, NSN has won in excess of $5 billion worth of new deals, with two of those totaling more than $1 billion. The vast majority of those wins are in our priority countries,” said French, noting NSN has scored a “clean sweep of LTE deals” with the three big operators in South Korea.

Nonetheless, he admits it is “early yet” to assess NSN’s success on strategic objectives, though he contends the company is making good progress.

For more:                                                                                       
- see this NSN release

Related articles:
T-Mobile picks Ericsson, NSN as its LTE vendors
DragonWave amends deal to buy Nokia Siemens’ microwave unit
Nokia continues to ‘pursue all options’ on NSN, despite upbeat Q2 outlook
Nokia Siemens’ Q1 sales drop 7%, but firm promises improvement
Report: Nokia Siemens leads LTE base station ranking
Nokia Siemens says small cells, optical are keys to U.S. expansion

Courtesy: Fierce Telecom”

NEW ORLEANS–Syniverse used this week’s CTIA show to introduce its Wi-Fi Talk & Text solution, which uses a handset-based client component that directs a subscriber’s smartphone to automatically switch to IP-based calling and messaging when it enters an approved Wi-Fi zone.

The WiTT also entails network-based protocols, switching and signaling as well. “To take that handset and drop it onto a Wi-Fi zone and enable it to make and receive calls, make and receive text, make and receive MMS [and] make and receive data, you have to do a lot of interaction with the network. So you effectively have to make that Wi-Fi hotspot look like an extension of the mobile switching network that the subscriber would typically be on,” John Wick, senior vice president of global network solutions, told FierceBroadbandWireless.

Though the product uses SIP technology, it can also throttle down to SS7 if necessary, he said.

WiTT relies upon standard roaming interfaces to provide enhanced indoor coverage via Wi-Fi, as well as enable subscribers to use an operator’s voice and messaging services over Wi-Fi while traveling abroad, said the company.

Operators that want to maintain control over which Wi-Fi networks their customers’ devices access, can employ a database that Wick said is analogous to a cellular network’s preferred roaming list. “A lot of the targets that we’ve spoken to so far about Wi-Fi Talk & Text in many cases are already associated with a Wi-Fi hotspot provider,” he said. “Clearly that becomes their preferred choice of hotspots.”

But as mobile operators increasingly rely upon Wi-Fi offloading, they should be concerned about quality of service issues, and that is a challenge for the industry ecosystem. “We’ve got to raise the quality and performance of the Wi-Fi environment in general up to the same standards as the 3G and the 4G networks,” said Wick.

“I think you’re going to find some Wi-Fi providers that are willing to step up to that challenge,” said Wick, noting those providers will operate the preferred go-to hotspots. That could enable the term “offload” to eventually disappear from industry lexicon. “If we can get to that preferred tier of Wi-Fi providers, it’s no longer an offload, it’s part of the network,” said Wick.

Syniverse is active in organizations developing SIM-based authentication methods for Wi-Fi offloading, but Wick said, “I think SIM authentication is going to be an important part of the overall solution, but I don’t think it’s going to be global.”

He added that the technology for SIM authenticated offloading is available but “deploying that into the industry and making money off of it” is a ways off.

For more:
- see this Syniverse release

Related articles:
Ruckus CEO: Wi-Fi offloading demands creativity
Wi-Fi offloading: Who controls your handset?
Smith Micro expanding the reach of its client-centric offloading solution
TIM Brazil says Wi-Fi is best offload strategy
Wi-Fi is more important than ever, but standards are lacking

Courtesy: Fierce Telecom”

NEW ORLEANS–Voice over mobile broadband (VoMBB), regardless of which broadband connection a user happens to be using, could help operators save 63 percent in per-subscriber costs even before they have fully refarmed the spectrum occupied by legacy networks, according to a forthcoming white paper that Mavenir commissioned from Senza Fili Consulting

VoMBB includes voice over Wi-Fi, HSPA and LTE. While VoWi-Fi already exists, VoLTE is slated for deployment by some operators this year and VoHSPA has only recently gained serious attention as an option.

“There’s a clear understanding that while LTE will grow very rapidly over the next five years, HSPA/HSPA+ will grow even more rapidly over the next five years,” said Madan Jagernauth, vice president of marketing and strategy at Mavenir, which provides IP-based core network products to migrate voice and messaging services to LTE.

The opportunity for VoHSPA is therefore larger than the VoLTE opportunity, said Jagernauth. Further, hetrogenous networks with Wi-Fi-capable small cells will open up a larger opportunity for operators to offload voice traffic using VoWi-Fi, he said.

Mavenir recently commissioned a white paper from Senza Fili Consulting regarding the cost implications of the transition to VoMBB voice. The report’s executive summary was released at the CTIA Wireless 2012 conference.

Among its findings, the paper said this transition will result in a 21 percent reduction in the number of carriers, meaning base station sectors, necessary to transport voice traffic. Further, VoMBB will deliver a 63 percent reduction in per-subscriber costs–projected to be $1.80 per subscriber per month in North America–and an additional cost reduction of $0.60 per subscriber per month after an operator fully refarms its 2G and 3G spectrum.

“By moving voice traffic to HSPA and LTE, operators need fewer 2G and 3G carriers for voice traffic. This frees up precious capacity in today’s most intensely used and congested networks. Increasing capacity for data access in these networks is especially valuable at a time when operators want to focus new deployment efforts on HSPA and LTE but still need to accommodate what is becoming legacy traffic. The short-term need for this additional capacity and cost savings indicates that a rapid transition to VoLTE and VoHSPA is preferable to a delayed transition timed to long-term spectrum refarming plans,” said the report.

According to Senza Fili, while not all voice traffic is suitable for routing via Wi-Fi “cost savings can be gained by encouraging subscribers to use Wi-Fi networks for voice.

Senza Fili recommends that because OTT VoIP demands more network resources than operator-managed VoMBB, mobile operators should transport what currently is OTT VoIP traffic as VoMBB simply because it would cost less. “This has implications for new models for charging for voice services and, possibly, for the development of new relationships between mobile operators and OTT application developers,” said the report.

For more:
– see the Senza Fili report’s executive summary (PDF)

Related articles:
Kineto Wireless offers an OTT Skype-killer
VoHSPA aims to steal some of VoLTE’s thunder
MetroPCS targets fall for cheaper LTE smartphones, VoLTE
VoLTE and RCS interoperability tests on tap
Wireless operators and OTT players: friends or foes?

Courtesy: Fierce Telecom”

NEW ORLEANS–T-Mobile USA would be interested in acquiring lower-band spectrum, but that doesn’t mean it is eyeing the Lower A and B Block 700 MHz frequencies Verizon Wireless (NYSE:VZ) has said it is willing to sell in order to win approval for it to acquire AWS spectrum from a group of cable operators.  

The vast majority of spectrum that Verizon is willing to dump is A Block, channel 52 spectrum, “but that is signal-challenged by channel 51 TV broadcasting,” said T-Mobile CTO Neville Ray during a luncheon fireside chat with FierceWireless Editor-in-Chief Sue Marek during FierceWireless’ The Path to 4G event at the CTIA Wireless 2012 conference on Tuesday.

“Our interest is limited at this point in time” in that spectrum, he added.

Ray took a jab at Verizon’s attempt to acquire AWS frequencies from a group of cable operators. “They have a stockpile of spectrum in 700 (MHz) and AWS spectrum that they’re not using,” he said, “and yet they’re interested in acquiring more AWS spectrum.”

Ray was referring to Verizon’s December agreement to pay $3.6 billion for the nationwide AWS spectrum licenses held by SpectrumCo, a joint venture of cable companies Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks. Separately, Verizon said it will buy Cox Communication’s 20 MHz of AWS spectrum covering 28 million POPs for $315 million.

Now that it has named its LTE infrastructure vendors–Ericsson (NASDAQ:ERIC) and Nokia Siemens Networks–T-Mobile will move very quickly to refarm its current spectrum. Less than half of the operator’s voice traffic is carried on its PCS 1900 MHz GSM network. “It makes sense for us to start liberating that spectrum,” said Ray, adding that most of the operator’s device sales activity is already in WCDMA smartphones rather than GSM handsets.

“There will potentially be some customer migration” due to refarming, said Ray, “but we hope we can retune and refarm without impacting the customer experience.”

Under terms of its newly announced network contracts with Ericsson and NSN, T-Mobile will modernize its existing GSM infrastructure to glean more spectral efficiencies, enabling the operator to quickly introduce WCDMA /HSPA+, which T-Mobile now provides in the AWS 1700 MHz/2100 MHz band, to the PCS 1900 MHz band, a shift targeted for the fourth quarter of this year. The carrier will then deploy LTE in the AWS frequencies where it currently has WCDMA/HSPA+.

T-Mobile  will also leverage the AWS frequencies that it recently obtained from AT&T due to the FCC’s scuttling of their merger in December 2011 “We’re looking to put that spectrum to use as soon as we can,” said Ray, noting the frequencies will initially be used to support T-Mobile’s existing HSPA+ deployments or will go toward the carrier’s LTE rollout.

T-Mobile is benefiting from the fact that other operators have already broken ground on LTE networks that use AWS spectrum, he said. Ray also said negotiations with device vendors regarding products compatible with LTE on AWS frequencies has gone much more smoothly than T-Mobile’s negotiations five years ago when OEMs were reluctant to develop WCDMA/HSPA products for use on AWS.

Ray also contends that T-Mobile is well positioned to migrate its users to LTE, given that half of its subscriber base is already using HSPA or HSPA+ services. “We don’t see that we have to rush to LTE,” though T-Mobile is committed to rapidly accomplishing its overall network modernization effort in order to gain spectral efficiencies and refarm much of its 1900 MHz band to WCDMA/HSPA+.

T-Mobile structured its network modernization deals in only four months once the AT&T deal fell apart. Ray said T-Mobile’s contracts with Ericsson and NSN are very similar, with each vendor being responsible for approximately the same number of POPs. The LTE portion of the deals is specifically for LTE Advanced Release 10 network infrastructure. Ray said the question for the industry is what will happen regarding LTE Advanced on the device roadmap.

“We’re coming into LTE commercial services at a very good time,” said Ray, noting the LTE ecosystem, though still relatively nascent, “is maturing well.”

Ray also said that T-Mobile is “not in any huge rush for VoLTE.” He noted Verizon is moving aggressively toward voice over LTE “because they have so many assets stranded on  CDMA.” Ray reiterated his earlier statement from the Mobile World Congress that T-Mobile will be the first North American operator to widely deploy integrated radios.  He said T-Mobile has been examining the technology for at least four years, though it only recently became commercially viable.

Related Articles:
T-Mobile’s Ray: Tower sale could take months, just getting started
T-Mobile picks Ericsson, NSN as its LTE vendors
Report: T-Mobile hires advisers to sell wireless towers
FCC approves AT&T’s AWS spectrum transfer to T-Mobile
Study: AT&T, T-Mobile top network speed tests
T-Mobile to give unlocked iPhones HSPA+ speeds this year

Courtesy: Fierce Telecom”

Ruckus Wireless is drawing attention at the CTIA Wireless 2012 event, thanks to a new contract it is announcing today with Time Warner Cable, a rumored partnership with Nokia Siemens Networks and other rumors regarding preparations for an initial public offering.

Ruckus announced that Time Warner will use Ruckus’ 802.11n Smart Wi-Fi equipment to extend wireless services to customers via its existing infrastructure. Ruckus is supplying dual-band, outdoor, strand-mounted Wi-Fi access points that integrate a DOCSIS 3.0 cable modem for backhauling Wi-Fi traffic over Time Warner’s existing cable plant. 

Time Warner, which has more than 15 million customers, is deploying Ruckus’ equipment within high-capacity indoor public venues, such a stadiums, as well as in select outdoor venues, where Time Warner wants to make its branded services available.

“Time Warner Cable clearly understands the strategic importance of Wi-Fi for carriers and is one of the more aggressive players in the wireless land grab currently underway,” said Selina Lo, Ruckus’ president and CEO.

The Time Warner win is significant for Ruckus, as the cable operator has previously worked with BelAir Networks, recently acquired by Ericsson (NASDAQ:ERIC). BelAir supplied gear for Time Warner’s Wi-Fi hotspots in the Northeast and is also supplying technology for wireless access points the MSO is deploying in Southern California, where last September it announced that it would spend $15 million to build a Wi-Fi in Los Angeles and Orange County.

Ruckus is also rumored to have a global reseller agreement in the works with Nokia Siemens Networks, which would give Ruckus more breadth and depth for working with mobile operators. An article in Bloomberg last week said the deal could be announced this week at CTIA. A source told FierceBroadbandWireless that the expected partnership will be non-exclusive, allowing Ruckus to continue working with NSN rivals, Alcatel-Lucent and Ericsson.

In addition, rumors are circulating that Ruckus is working with investment banks Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs Group regarding a possible initial public offering. The same Bloomberg article last week said Lo confirmed the company is in talks with bankers about a possible IPO but also said the company is exploring all options. Lo told Bloomberg the company would like to go public this year.

A source confirmed to FierceBroadbandWireless that the Sunnyvale, Calif., company could announce its IPO plans in the next couple of months with an eye toward going public by year’s end if market conditions are satisfactory.  

Meanwhile, Ruckus is also demonstrating this week at CTIA the benefits of the Wi-Fi Certified Passpoint program that the Wi-Fi Alliance is expected to launch in June. Based on the IEEE 802.11u protocol, Passpoint automates the Wi-Fi login process for mobile devices. The alliance’s Hotspot 2.0 specification underlies the first phase of the Passpoint program and automates discovery and selection of a Wi-Fi network; authentication of the user and device using the internal SIM or other methods; and securing the connection of each device using WPA-2 Enterprise encryption and authentication.

Ruckus says it is one of the first companies to integrate the 802.11u standard within its Smart Wi-Fi access points, which it has been testing with operators and handset manufacturers. Support for 802.11u and the technology tested by the Wi-Fi Alliance’s Passpoint certification program will be available as a no-cost software upgrade on Ruckus ZoneFlex access points by year’s end.

Ruckus has also participated in trials under the Wireless Broadband Alliance’s Next Generation Hotpots initiative.

For more:
– see this Bloomberg article

Related articles:
Ruckus CEO: Wi-Fi offloading demands creativity
Muni Wi-Fi gains a dose of pragmatism
GSMA, WBA partner to ease roaming between mobile, Wi-Fi networks
Wireless companies expected to launch IPOs in 2012 and beyond
Ericsson buys Wi-Fi gear specialist BelAir Networks
Ruckus preps for IPO, secures funding for carrier-grade Wi-Fi development
Wi-Fi offload at core of reported Ericsson BelAir buy

Courtesy: Fierce Telecom”