Starent Offers Equal-Capability For 2G Devices

Communications Today, Nov 15, 2001

Wireless providers can offer third-generation services to their customers still using 2G handsets with Starent Networks' intelligent mobile gateway platform, which will be available for CDMA operators in the second quarter next year.

Tewksbury, Mass.-based Starent President and CEO Ash Dahod said the company expects to provide its ST16 intelligent mobile gateway directly to CDMA operators in Asia and North America. Also, Samsung Electronics will use Starent's gateway in its CDMA2000 infrastructure offerings that will be available in Asia.

"Even though our entry into the market is more toward 2.5G or 3G, all of our services are compatible with 2G handsets," Dahod told Communications Today.

Starent's platform integrates voice and 3G data signals, but also formats the signals to be compatible with handsets used today by the majority of wireless subscribers. "The 2G handsets, we would make them appear like 3G handsets," Dahod said.

Although 2G handsets won't support streaming video, streaming audio is likely to be a popular capability enabled by Starent's platform. "Even though we go to the Internet and retrieve the digitized, packetized music, we then covert into a format that the handset can play," Dahod said.

Increasing the capabilities of their customers' devices increases carriers' revenues, he added. "It actually plays into what carriers are looking for, which is increasing the ARPU. And by hanging onto their customers, they reduce their marketing costs."

Starent expects to build demand for its platform by working directly with wireless carriers. But the company expects the majority of its business to come from licensing its technology to infrastructure vendors. The company, which was formed in August 2000 and has received a total of $32 million in financing, plans to roll out its platform for the GSM interface in six months. >TK