3G. Wireless Communication Solutions

It is end of year 2005, there are lots of predictions for 2006 over the air. What is new? What is VoIP’s future - Om Malik has a great overview on Towards Nearly Free Voice

Especially if you are one of those, (who like me) believe that most of the major telecom trends start-out in Asia, and slowly roll their way across Europe before crossing the Atlantic, then by end of 2006 we should expect the rapid decline in the cost of voice to near zero. To be clear, we are not talking about PC-to-PC free minutes on an IM client, or Skype, but instead we are talking about long distance and local voice.

There are some early indications of Voice-prices heading south. Lets start in the East. Hong Kong-based Hong Kong Broadband recently started selling a VoIP package that give users a Hong Kong 8-digit local number that allows them to make calls to any Hong Kong number - PSTN, Wireless and VoIP - as un-metered HK local calls. The service will cost about $5 a month.

More recently, Netherlands-based ISP, CompuServe launched a five-euro plans which allows folks to make calls to Netherlands-based fixed line phones for free. (Well, if you add the 15 Euros you pay for their DSL connection, it is almost free.)

Happy New Year 2006!

Airvana plans to enter the inflight wireless broadband market. Working with industry leaders such as Verizon Airfone Inc, Airvana’s technology provides vast benefits over competing technologies.

The customized IP-based EVDO Rev. A radio base station has unique RF filtering capabilities to ensure that no interference is caused to systems operating in adjacent radio bands. Airvana’s Rev. A technology also includes a 3-4x increase in uplink speeds, and support for VoIP, broadcast and multicast services.

Verizon Airfone, first to use Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) technology in an airborne system, has been demonstrating the system to commercial airlines by conducting flight tests since September 2004 that have achieved ground-to-air data speeds of 2.4 Mbps (megabits per second).

Upon receipt of a license from the FCC, Verizon Airfone plans to upgrade its existing North American ground network to enable this broadband capability and Airvana looks to play an integral role in that network expansion.

Read more IP-based EVDO Inflight Wireless Broadband