Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Motorola powering DirectConnect upgrade

From: Marcel <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 18 Dec 2002 20:08:33 -0500

Motorola powering DirectConnect upgrade
By Ben Charny
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
December 17, 2002, 3:03 PM PT

Executives from Nextel Communications and Motorola discussed on Tuesday details of
Nextel's plans to tap improvements in a Motorola-created cell phone standard to upgrade
its popular no-dialing-required phone service.

Beginning in 2003, Nextel's DirectConnect service will acquire a nationwide reach, with
some subscribers able to chat with people anywhere in the continental United States,
Nextel Chief Technology Officer Barry West said during a technology update for analysts
and the press.  Nextel describes DirectConnect as a "digital long-range walkie-talkie"
built into a phone, which lets the phone connect to a similarly equipped handset without
the need for standard cellular procedures such as dialing.

Currently, Nextel customers can use the feature only with someone in the same calling
area, which can vary in size from a city to an area measuring thousands of square miles.
Rival carriers are expected to offer their own versions of the existing, shorter-range
service soon, and West said the upgrade is an effort to stay a step ahead. Nextel should
make the new longer-range service available to all of its subscribers by 2004, he added.

DirectConnect has become one of
Nextel's chief moneymakers and
one of its most popular services.
Subscribers make three
DirectConnect calls for every two
standard cell phone calls, West
said. Expanding the reach of the
service will only make it more
popular, West said--and put Nextel
further ahead of other wireless
carriers.

West did not release prices for any
new services, or say what
geographic areas would be getting
the expanded service first.

Motorola under the hood

The change to DirectConnect is among the scores of projects being developed right now by
Motorola, which is currently in the process of upgrading its IDEN, (Integrated Dispatch
Enhanced Network) cell phone standard, said Fred Wright, Motorola vice president of global
telecommunications. Nextel is the only major U.S. cell phone carrier to use IDEN, which is
the fourth most popular cell phone network standard in the world and the only one that
currently allows for DirectConnect style services.

Nextel hasn't yet decided whether it will take advantage of all the new elements being
added to IDEN, which include faster wireless Web capabilities and doubled capacity for
cell phone calls, Wright said.

"These are big development programs: 12 to 18 months from...start to hard architectural
work," Wright said.

To increase the speed and capacity of IDEN, Motorola is relying on software it developed
that lets six cell phone calls be conducted simultaneously over the same sliver of
spectrum, Wright said. The ratio is usually one call to one chunk of spectrum.
Wright said Motorola is also creating a "gateway" that will enable IDEN-based telephone
networks to connect to cell phone networks based on currently incompatible standards such
as Qualcomm's Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) standard. The gateway would let someone
using DirectConnect on IDEN communicate with someone using a DirectConnect-like feature
offered by a CDMA carrier, Wright said.

The gateway from Motorola is another sign of the growing effort to put different cell
phone networks on better speaking terms. Most of the major wireless manufacturers,
including Lucent Technologies, Qualcomm and Nokia, are working on similar "bridges"
between the nine different cell phone standards. The goal is to create a single wireless
network that can host calls from any cell phone, regardless of the standard it's based on.
Calls involving different standards are now possible--but such setups are crude and
expensive.

When it comes to wireless Web speed, IDEN-based networks are now capable of downloading
data at about 15kbps, at least four times slower than the wireless Web networks of Sprint
PCS and Verizon Communications. IDEN is also about half the speed of wireless networks now
sold by T-Mobile, Cingular Wireless and AT&T Wireless.

Wright said Motorola is working on ramping up the maximum speed of IDEN networks to
132kbps. The average user experience would be comparable to those offered by the other
five major wireless carriers, he believes.

http://news.com.com/2100-1033-978251.html

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