Posted by Barlow Keener

For this post on IMS and FMC developers’ intellectual property, I collaborated with my friend, Michael Dowd, a partner at Foley, Hoag, LLP, in Boston.  I provide counsel on licensing patents and trademarks, and Michael’s practice involves developing patenting strategies and resolving inventorship issues, software licensing disputes and trade secret misappropriation claims.  As we explain below, these are intellectual [...]

Posted by Barlow Keener

On September 17, 2007, only 10 days after the Pulvermedia’s FMC conference in Chicago where Sprint discussed its future femtocell plans, Sprint formerly announced that it would immediately start offering its AIRAVE femtocell solution in Denver and Indianapolis.  Sprint included a cool marketing video about AIRAVE and femtocells on the Sprint web site. While two trials [...]

Posted by Barlow Keener

Femtocells were all the rage at PulverMedia’s FMC (Fixed Mobile Convergence) Conference in Chicago last week.     One carrier in the U.S., Sprint, is leading the pack.   As of today, there are no femtocell rollouts in any geography.  There are a few trials, some announced and others not.   Telefonica, as reported in WSJ last week (9/6/2007), is [...]

Posted by Barlow Keener

Femtocells are going to move fast in the coming 12 months.  Wireless carriers will push the residential gateway from zero units to millions.  On August 13, 2007, Xchange Magazine reported that In-Stat is projecting that by 2011 there will be 40 million femtocells in use and 101 million users of femtocells.   Femtocells are micro cell phone [...]

Posted by Barlow Keener

Femtocells could revolutionize cellular service in terms of diverting cell traffic off the network, providing great service in buildings and homes, increasing bandwidth speed, and, most significantly, increasing the service providers’ footprints outside their licensed areas.  Cell phone service providers, like Sprint or T-Mobile, would be able use femtocells to off-load traffic to their customer’s provided [...]

Posted by Barlow Keener

Femtocells could have a dramatic change on the cell phone service environment.  ABI research predicts there will be 150 million femtocell users by 2012.  That is from zero users today, as reported by GigaOm.   On the other side of the race, In-Sat, as quoted in PDAStreet, projects there will be 200 million dual mode WiFi [...]

Posted by Barlow Keener

TMC announced today that WiFiMobile is selling unlocked smartphones in the US market with VoIP software clients included: “WiFiMobile addresses the Wi-Fi starved US smartphone market.”   WiFiMobile has been competing in Europe by providing a VoIP client for the Nokia N95 and Nokia S60.   The VoIP-mobile company competes with Truphone in the UK. Truphone, a [...]

Posted by Barlow Keener

 UMA (Unlicensed Mobile Access) is driving FMC (Fixed Mobile Convergence).  UMA is really WiFi and cell phones combined.  ABI Research, as reported by InformationWeek, currently projects that there will be 65 million UMA users by 2012.  The growth in UMA is happening without strategic thinking by the wireless providers.  Almost like a small sound that will [...]

Posted by Barlow Keener

More significant than the iPhone (nothing could be that important…) this week there were several events that announced to the general public that fixed mobile convergence is hitting the mainstream.  The interesting point is that is not exactly as FMC was anticipated back in 1990. In 1990, PCS “Personal Communication System” was touted as the [...]