Motorola to go broad with CTIA debuts

Motorola won’t choose sides in the main technology standoffs expected at the CTIA Wireless trade show next week, judging from a set of early product announcements on Wednesday.

The company, an aggressive backer of Wi-Fi, will add another product to its line of femtocells, which are miniature cellular base stations that represent an alternative to Wi-Fi and dual-mode phones for boosting indoor coverage. Also at CTIA, Motorola will both introduce WiMax customer premises equipment and demonstrate a handoff between 3G and LTE (Long-Term Evolution), considered the key rival to WiMax. Motorola will also unveil a mobile TV device with a touchscreen and navigation capability.

All these initiatives came from Motorola’s Home and Networks Mobility group, which Motorola said Wednesday it would separate from its ailing handset business. The networks unit’s sales rose in last year’s fourth quarter, though its profit fell. The business is up against heavy hitters, including LM Ericsson, Alcatel-Lucent, and Nokia Siemens.

As Sprint Nextel gets ready to build a nationwide 4G wireless broadband network with WiMax, rival Verizon Wireless, Vodafone Group, and most European carriers are expected to choose LTE instead. At the same time, femtocells and UMA (Unlicensed Mobile Access) using Wi-Fi both are emerging for improved cellular coverage in homes and offices. While UMA uses cheap and familiar Wi-Fi as an indoor base station, femtocells can be used with any phone that works on the carrier’s regular outdoor network.

At CTIA next week in Las Vegas, Motorola will introduce the CPEi 150 desktop WiMax access device. Although it complies with the IEEE 802.16e-2005 specification for mobile WiMax and can be used in a moving car, according to Motorola, the CPEi 150 is designed primarily for stationary use. On a Wednesday morning Webcast, the company called it a “plug-and-play” device, with no drivers required. WiMax operators can manage the device and update its software remotely. The CPEi 150 is set to become available to service providers in the second quarter of this year. At the show, Motorola will demonstrate a WiMax network that spans about 20 square kilometers (8 square miles) around the Las Vegas area.

The company also will be demonstrating handoffs of VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) and streaming video between an EV-DO (Evolution-Data Optimized) Revision A and an LTE network. EV-DO is a version of CDMA (Code-Division Multiple Access) and LTE is the next step in the GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) technology path, but Motorola said the demonstrations will prove mobile operators can use the two together for wider total coverage. The company expects early deployments of LTE to begin in late 2009 or early 2010.

Also at CTIA, Motorola will show off a line of femtocells, including a CDMA model, as well as the UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications System) device it introduced at the World Mobile Congress in Barcelona last month. Motorola expects to ship the CDMA unit commercially in the fourth quarter. Subscribers will be able to start it up just by plugging it in, the company said.

Motorola will also update its lineup of devices for DVB-H (Digital Video Broadcast-Handheld), introducing the Mobile TV DH02. The device features a 4.8-inch (12.2 centimeter) touchscreen and includes navigation capabilities using GPS (Global Positioning System). It runs on HSDPA (High-Speed Downlink Packet Access) and GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) networks. Users can record shows to watch later as well as pausing them, and can store their own video, music and pictures on microSD cards for use on the DH02. Video runs at 25 frames per second, the standard rate for PAL, which is the video standard used in Europe. Last week the European Union named DVB-H as a technology its member countries must support and encourage.