Transcript: CTIA WIRELESS 2006 - Bruce Gustafson, Nortel Networks

This transcript is from a PodTech.net podcast at:
http://www.podtech.net/?p=525

CTIA WIRELESS 2006 - Bruce Gustafson, Nortel Networks

Michael Johnson: This is PodTech.net here on the floor of CTIA Wireless 2006 in Las Vegas, Nevada. I'm Michael Johnson and here with me is Bruce Gustafson who is the director of WiMax marketing for Nortel.

Bruce Gustafson: Hey, it's great to be here.

Michael Johnson: So tell me a little bit about what Nortel is displaying here at CTIA this week.

Bruce Gustafson: Well, Nortel's a big player in CDMA and EMTS space, and we're kind of new to the WiMax space, this is kind of our coming out. So we have some live air demos and stuff in the booth, a lot of excitement, and hopefully people can get a chance to see it here or see it at shows coming up in the next month or two.

Michael Johnson: OK, so when you say live air demos, what are they looking?

Bruce Gustafson: Oh, we're running all kinds of video streaming, we run voice over IP, and we have some interactive gaming demonstrations running.

If you come by the booth here, you would see that we have some cameras focused on the action inside, focused on the action outside. All different kinds of different bandwidth streaming and just the kind of stuff people are going to see when they get wireless internet when they push WiMax out.

Michael Johnson: Now what kind of solutions is Nortel bringing to this particular platform?

Bruce Gustafson: Well we build the product itself, so we build the bay stations; we build all that wireless equipment that gets mounted on towers and stuff in the real world. The key technology from our side is something called MIMO - M-I-M-O - that's multiple input, multiple output anatine technology. And that's the stuff that makes this stuff really sing.

We're talking high bandwidth, multi megabit kind of services, probably at about a third of the cost of what you would pay to get it through cellular and other technologies. Voice over IP: great application for people at home. DSL extension in rural areas, for instance, or laptops, PDAs, all that stuff going mobile. What the 3G guys have been promising for a while, WiMax really delivers.

Michael Johnson: Now where do you see WiMax going right now?

Bruce Gustafson: Yeah, like I said, the 3D guys they've been talking about wireless data for a long time. You get kind of multi kilobit kind of stuff, but they haven't been able to replicate what you would get with a broadband connection in the home.

So what WiMax finally brings to the table is the ability to take DSL-like kind of speeds, cable type speeds, either deliver that wirelessly at home so if, for instance, you can't get DSL because you're in one of those regions where it doesn't reach. Or take that and make it mobile.

So we're working with people like Intel, right? They're doing chip solutions to imbed WiMax along their Centrino chips in laptops. In the next couple of years, you'll go down to the consumer electronics store, you'll buy any kind of handheld device, any kind of portable device, fire it up and it's going to be connected to a multi-megabit stream back on the internet.

That's what WiMax delivers. That's an exciting space for us. It's a set of new customers, new money in the market, so we're showing product here today and we'll be in trials in the next half of this year. It's an exciting space, we're kind of pumped.

Michael Johnson: Where is Nortel's reach right now: is it mostly in the United States or is it international as well?

Bruce Gustafson: Oh yeah, we are in 300 on some networks at least on the 3G side. We serve virtually every country around the globe. I mean, we're big in Europe; we're big in Asia, in North America. The wireless space is split up into, by and large, CDMA, GSM, and UMTS, and we deliver products into all of those spaces.

The US, I mean, all the big carriers are our customers. Sprint, Verizon, T-Mobile, AT&T now, I guess Cingular, all the big players. We run about a five billion dollar wireless business, part of a 10 billion dollar company. WiMax is a new and growing segment for us, and that will be the growth driver for the company going forward.

Michael Johnson: Is there more uptakes on this here domestically or overseas? Is there a difference you have seen working in both markets?

Bruce Gustafson: Well, certainly, I think North America is going to go first. We're seeing interest all over the globe. I mean we're talking to a lot of customers. The spectrum that you need to run WiMax is a bit of a challenge.

It's not standardized around the globe, so in North America, for instance, if you want to deliver WiMax, sometimes it's in 2.5 gigahertz, sometimes it's in 2.3, sometimes it's even in bands like 1.5. So the spectrum is a little more challenging to acquire and to consolidate than it has been on the cellular side. When you go outside North America, new bands show up like; 3.5 gigahertz for instance.

So although we're pushing global products, you do end up kind of tailored for certain regions. We see the US going first. We see Asia probably going next; big activity in China, India. And the Europeans may be a little behind on this one just because they don't have the spectrum quite lined up yet.

Michael Johnson: If people want to find out a little bit more about what Nortel's up to, where can they go?

Bruce Gustafson: Well certainly the big shows like this are a great place to run into Nortel folks. We'll be here for the balance of the week. We're going to be at the National Cable show in the next couple of weeks, Broadband World Forum. So we kind of do that circuit. We talk to our cable operators in certain places, our wireless operators elsewhere. Certainly nortel.com is a great place to find us. So if you log onto nortel.com and hunt out WiMax, you'll find all our data there, we have white papers, various customer testimonials.

I think that's probably your best route, so we look forward to hearing from people. By all means, fire me a question at gustafson@nortel.com and I can answer directly.

Michael Johnson: All right, there... [Laughing] We've got a lot of people listening to this podcast, so you're email box might be really full.

Bruce Gustafson: Excellent.

Michael Johnson: We've been speaking today to Bruce Gustafson from Nortel. He is the director of WiMax marketing, and thanks for being on the podcast with us.

Bruce Gustafson: Oh, it was great doing it, thanks.