Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Nextel Announce Trails Wi-Fi Phone by Q2 -03 and Roll Out of a Tri-band GSM/GPRS phone by Q1-04

From: Marcel <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 17 Mar 2003 13:05:18 -0500

Nextel Details Plans for Wi-Fi Phones

Company will begin testing handsets later this year.

Stephen Lawson, IDG News Service
Monday, March 17, 2003

NEW ORLEANS -- Nextel Communications by next year will offer a mobile phone with
Motorola based on Microsoft's Windows Powered Smartphone platform, and in the second
quarter of this year the carrier will begin trials with a phone that can be used on Wi-Fi
wireless LANs, a Nextel executive said here Sunday.

The Smartphone device will support tri-band GSM/GPRS as well as Nextel's iDEN
(Integrated Digital Enhanced Network) infrastructure, according to Barry West, executive
vice president and chief technology officer of Nextel, in an interview following a Nextel
briefing.

The mobile operator, based in
Reston, Virginia, concentrates on
providing advanced services to
government and business clients.
That approach has helped it gain
market share and maintain strong
revenue and margins, executives
said at the briefing, held here on
the eve of the CTIA Wireless trade
show.

Calling on Wi-Fi

Nextel and Schaumburg,
Illinois-based Motorola also are
working on a mobile phone with
integrated Wi-Fi wireless LAN
capability, which will allow users to
make calls over a home or office
Wi-Fi network and use the same
phone to call over the iDEN
network while on the road, West said.

Although it couldn't truly roam from one type of network to the other, this phone could
allow customers to replace a cordless phone or a wired PBX (private branch exchange)
with a wireless LAN, West said. A call initiated on the iDEN network would stay on that
network when the user got to the office, but a call begun on the Wi-Fi network would be
dropped once the user moved out of range, he said.

Nextel also could work with providers of cable data services to send phone calls from the
Wi-Fi network over the cable infrastructure instead of the traditional telecommunications
network, West said. He would not comment on whether Nextel is in talks with any cable
providers about the plan. Nextel might share with the cable provider the access fee that
the user paid.

True handoffs of voice calls between Wi-Fi and cellular networks pose big technology
problems because Wi-Fi technology is designed to be inexpensive and relatively simple,
West said. Cellular technologies each have built into them special standards to allow
handoffs as users move around, and those specifications weren't built in to the IEEE
802.11 standard on which Wi-Fi products are based.

CTIA Wireless, sponsored by the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association, runs
from Monday through Wednesday.

http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,109831,00.asp
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