Where and when did Global Wireless Technologies originate?

We’ve been in the basestation test business for over 15 years. We’ve developed many protocol stacks and validation tests during that time. Our basestation testers and simulators are used throughout the industry and have tested 1000’s of different handsets.

We’ve now evolved our basestation simulator into a femtocell product and are way past the stage of interoperability testing required by many of our competitors.

The company is small and privately owned. The 50 staff are distributed between the US headquarters and offices in Hungary, Israel and Canada.

What is your hardware approach?

We have designed a femtocell hardware platform which can be configured through software to be either UMTS or CDMA technology capable.  Today we are using the picoChip PC204 chip.

Our design will handle either 4 or 32 concurrent users on the same hardware.

We believe this will significantly reduce our product costs by not having to support or configure different hardware variants.

What about different frequency bands? Don’t you need different hardware filters for different markets such as 1800MHz for Europe vs 1900MHz for US?

Our designs today require the hardware filter components to be different for these different frequency bands.  We are working with two RF filter manufacturers who have designed new products with an integrated SAW filter.

This will allow us to configure the frequency bands through software, so we can ship exactly the same hardware to all of our markets.

What system architectures do you support?

For UMTS, we can support the Iu-h standard interface. This will interwork with femtocell gateways from other suppliers. We have also developed a SIP client which connects directly with IMS core networks.

For CDMA, we incorporate the PCS function and connect directly to the PSDN. Here we would use a SIP client in the femtocell. This would integrate with core network equipment such as Starent.

For both standards, we integrate with all standard 3G phones.

When will these products be commercially available?

We are currently in trials with more than one operator.

Any plans for LTE?

We are developing an LTE version for availability end Q1 2010.

What is your route to market – we don’t see you at trade shows or with much PR?

We use the same channels to market as other femtocell vendors, selling through larger partners/vendors.

While you won’t see us at the trade shows, we are very active in business development. We directly visit and work with our target customers, where we already have strong relationships.

We are also able to provide a complete Home Gateway with our partners [Ed note: See press release announcing Ikanos home gateway incorporating Global Wireless Technologies’ femtocell].

And finally

Don’t confuse Global Wireless Technologies of New Jersey (discussed above) with Global Wireless Technology of Minneapolis (who specialise in antenna technology). They are totally unrelated companies.

For more information about, Global Wireless Technologies, please visit their website www.globalwirelesstech.com

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