XG Technology pushes new form of wireless VoIP

New low-power, long-reach wireless technology could support metropolitan VoIP services within a year, improving mobility on campuses and within 18 miles of base stations.

XG Technology is starting to sell wholesale a wireless VoIP service, called xMax, to ISPs that is low-cost and uses little power compared with other technologies. It hopes to expand the service over the next year to include Internet access and video. The company says xMax can send a 3.7Mbps signal 18 miles with a directional antenna using 38 milliwatts and could provide phone coverage to Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., for $3.2 million in infrastructure costs vs. $299 million for 3G wireless.

XG Technology supplies local ISPs a base station that supports an initial 500 simultaneous phone calls and puts out bandwidth equivalent to 17M to 18Mbps. The company makes arrangements with a VoIP service provider for network services and furnishes the link between the base station and the network or lets the ISP acquire the link in accordance with xG specifications.

Two drawbacks of the xMax service are that there's no roaming coverage and the service areas of its small ISP customers don't overlap. To avoid being cut off, users have to stay within range of their ISP's antennas. The upside for business is that with xMax they wouldn't have to rely on Wi-Fi access exclusively for corporate wireless phones. A dual-mode Wi-Fi/xMax phone would seek the xMax network if a particular Wi-Fi access point were overloaded. ISPs would add base stations in a local phone market to handle more customers, not to expand the area that is covered, the company says.

The technological advantage of xMax is that it can cram more information onto fewer radio waves than other transmission methods, including Code Division Multiple Access and WiMAX. xMax uses single-cycle modulation to deliver longer-range and lower-power radio frequency communications, in which single-wave cycles are modulated to represent one or more bits of data, XG Technology says. This is different from transmission methods that use tens to hundreds of thousands of cycles to represent a bit. "With each additional cycle representing more [radio frequency] power, getting the job done with fewer cycles translates into more power-efficient RF transmissions," the company says. XG Technology's gear operates in the unlicensed range of 902MHz to 928MHz.

A Swedish firm is making handsets for the initial launch of the xMax service. The handsets will be sold by authorized dealers to ISPs to provide to customers. The next step will be to add Internet access to the service, then video, both of which could be done via software upgrades to the phones and base stations, the company says. xMax has two pricing plans - $40 per month for 1,500 minutes or $50 per month for unlimited calling.