IPWireless wins stimulus contract in Colorado
Works with Raytheon to expand its public safety base into LTE and wider commercial services
Published: 7 July, 2011
READ MORE: Spectrum | US | IPWireless | LTE
IPWireless once hoped to see widespread carrier adoption of its TD-CDMA technology, but was eclipsed by WiMAX. However, it continues to be a player, moving towards LTE and targeting niches where it has particular expertise, especially mobile broadcast and public safety. In the latter market, it has won an $8.7m contract with defense giant Raytheon to build an LTE safety network in Colorado.
Raytheon said the deal was the first competitive public safety award for LTE, and the first under the US broadband stimulus program for recipients of the 700MHz broadband waiver, which allows commercial broadband services in the safety frequencies. The project will provide Adams County Colorado, and the city of Denver, with an LTE communications system using spectrum which is already owned by safety agencies. The FCC has given permission for those frequencies to be used for mobile broadband offerings too.
IPWireless will supply the base stations and devices while Raytheon will be responsible for system design, equipment and system configuration, project management, installation, testing and training. This division of responsibility mirrors that in New York City, where the partners have been working on a major public safety roll-out for the past two years. This project runs on TD-CDMA - the TDD version of W-CDMA - but will be upgradeable to LTE.
As regards the newer roll-out, Brian Shepherd, deputy director of Adams Country Communications, commented: "We expect the entire state of Colorado and even the surrounding region to build upon and expand the core infrastructure that will be provided through this project."
As the FCC continues to agonize over the future of the national safety network project, and especially the D Block of the 700MHz band - which was earmarked for this roll-out, but remains unsold - some individual authorities have gone ahead with their own build-outs. Motorola, in particular, has been a beneficiary of this and in March announced a scheme to provide safety agencies with the chance to run LTE applications across Verizon's commercial network. In many cases, the business case is improved if the networks can also be used for consumer access.
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