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SK Telecom, Staccato Deploy Ultra Wideband WPAN Mobile Phone Services

Staccato Communications and SK Telecom, the largest mobile phone and broadband operator in Korea, today unveiled plans for the global delivery of Ultra Wideband (UWB) wireless personal area network (WPAN) mobile phone services. The adoption of UWB by one of the largest and most innovative mobile carriers today will result in a host of new mobile handset applications.

SK Telecom selected Staccato for the company’s leadership in UWB silicon and for the competitive advantages inherent in the company’s Ripcord™ single-chip, all CMOS-based family of solutions. As a result of this partnership, customers, for the first time, will be provided with increased choices for content delivery from access points, connecting mobile phones to larger displays (PC, TV, Auto), connecting mobile phones to the PC ecosystem, and sharing profiles and content from one user to another through personal area social networking (PASN).

Services developed and launched by SK Telecom and Staccato will be standardized and offered worldwide to other operators after initial launch in Korea. With this introduction of UWB WPAN mobile phone services, customers will have expanded options and bandwidth for entertainment content delivery to their mobile devices. This means that users will now experience mobile social networking by communicating directly with other mobile users or from kiosks at 480Mbps. As a result, individuals will be able to connect based on one another’s proximity. This milestone marks the beginning of a revolution in the mobile handset market by employing WiMedia ultra wideband technology for 480Mbps WPAN connections.

With the choice of the WiMedia Common Radio Platform as the foundation for the project, SK Telecom and Staccato are developing together applications using several protocols. This benefit is enabled by Staccato’s PIK MAC (Medium Access Control) technology, which is a Protocol Independent Kernel, based on a custom implementation of hardware acceleration and ARM9 software control. This patent-pending technology enables the simultaneous operation of Certified Wireless USB, WiNet, Bluetooth 3.0 and other potential protocols at speeds up to 480Mbps. Products will initially launch with WiMedia radios using spectrum below 6GHz (band group 1, band 3) and add above-6GHz operation when the WiMedia Alliance completes the certification process for these bands.

“The SK Telecom–Staccato announcement is significant for at least three reasons. First, it signals adoption of UWB in mobile handsets much sooner than anyone had anticipated. Second, it shatters the assumption that a mobile carrier is not willing to use UWB products operating below 6GHz. Lastly, but perhaps most importantly, the value of the UWB applications and services envisioned by SK Telecom looks like it could be very high and very beneficial to both the users and the carriers,” said Fiona Thomson, market analyst, IMS Research.

“SK Telecom is known as the most innovative and aggressive mobile operator in the world due to our history of not only bringing new mobile features to market before our competitors, but also defining such new features that other operators quickly adopt. Staccato is instrumental in furthering this vision by offering the solution that meets our requirements of price, high bandwidth and low power. In order to successfully deploy these mobile devices, we needed a solution based on single-chip CMOS. Staccato is the only company that has accomplished that product design with their Ripcord low-cost, small form-factor wireless solutions,” said Dr. Jong Tae Ihm, vice president and head of the Mobile Device & Access Network R&D Center for SK Telecom.

“From the beginning, Staccato knew that single-chip CMOS was the only viable option to achieve the cost, power and space profile required by handheld products like cell phones, and this endorsement from a major mobile carrier further validates our early path and Ripcord device family. As one of the architects behind the WiMedia PHY and MAC, WiNet and Certified Wireless USB specifications, SK Telecom recognizes that we have the relevant UWB leadership expertise to offer,” said Marty Colombatto, chairman and CEO for Staccato Communications.

“With the mobile handset market representing nearly one billion units worldwide annually, the decision of SK Telecom to adopt the WiMedia Common Radio Platform means a tremendous boost to the potential market for WiMedia applications and Staccato in particular. The impact of this will not remain limited to one application, but will bring an entire array of new features and applications to the mobile customer.”

For the first phase, a Korean-based, leading manufacturer of handsets worldwide will be the handset developer for the new WiMedia UWB handsets.

Source: ABI Research

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