Because cell phone companies in the United States use several operating systems that are incompatible with each other, it is usually necessary to buy a new phone when you change carriers.
That drawback became apparent to many consumers now that wireless customers can keep their number when switching carriers. Number portability is a real benefit to consumers, but the need to give up a phone that may have cost $300 or more is still a barrier to changing service.
That barrier may fall in a year or two.
New technology called software-defined radio makes it possible to quickly change a radio’s operating system, the frequencies it uses and pretty much everything about how it works.
Since cell phones are just small radios, someday it will be possible to take a phone that works on the CDMA system used by Sprint PCS and make it also work on a GSM system offered by AT&T Wireless or the iDEN system that underpins Nextel.
Instead of making radios that are hardwired to operate in a particular way, it’s now possible to design them to work in a general way with the specifics dictated by software. When the software is changed, so is the radio.
A Southern California firm, TechnoConcepts Inc., has designed a chipset that translates an analog radio signal into a digital signal directly from a radio’s antenna.
“This provides terrific flexibility at the lowest price,” said Oleg Panfilof, the firm’s chief scientist–and a Motorola alumnus–based in Palatine.
TechnoConcepts has been shopping its technology around to large electronics firms and will announce a deal with a huge international firm within the next few weeks, said Tony Turgeon, company chairman.
Turgeon said he expects that some cell phone handsets will contain his firm’s chipsets by the end of this year.
Since it was founded in 1991, TechnoConcepts has done most of its research for the military. Now it is ready to apply its technology to the commercial sector, Turgeon said.
Besides making it easier for consumers to change wireless service, software radio also will enable carriers to quickly and cheaply upgrade systems by revising software rather than replacing hardware, Turgeon said.
Software radio will make it easier for everyone to communicate, including police units from different jurisdictions, firefighters, ambulance workers and others who traditionally each use disparate radio systems.
And that’s just the beginning, said Turgeon.
“We’ve been focusing on wireless, but there are other areas, such as communications security, where our technology has application,” he said.
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TV technology: SBC Communications Inc. has launched its satellite TV service offering that partners with the Dish Network, but some phone companies are taking a different route to video.
Westell Technologies Inc., the Aurora-based firm that makes DSL equipment, is selling a system that enables users to receive TV shows on their computers or to route those shows from computers to TV sets.
So far Westell’s U.S. customers have mostly been independent phone companies in smaller markets.
Last week Westell announced a deal–its second in Europe this year–with Elltepe Broadband Technology AB, a Swedish technology supplier, to distribute Westell’s video DSL product in Scandinavia.