Staccato Communications and SK Telecom, the largest mobile phone
and broadband operator in Korea, today unveiled plans for the global
delivery of Ultra Wideband (UWB) wireless personal area network (WPAN)
mobile phone services. The adoption of UWB by one of the largest and
most innovative mobile carriers today will result in a host of new
mobile handset applications. SK Telecom selected Staccato for the
company's leadership in UWB silicon and for the competitive advantages
inherent in the company's Ripcord(TM) single-chip, all CMOS-based
family of solutions. As a result of this partnership, customers, for
the first time, will be provided with increased choices for content
delivery from access points, connecting mobile phones to larger
displays (PC, TV, Auto), connecting mobile phones to the PC ecosystem,
and sharing profiles and content from one user to another through
personal area social networking (PASN).
Services developed and launched by SK Telecom and Staccato will be
standardized and offered worldwide to other operators after initial
launch in Korea. With this introduction of UWB WPAN mobile phone
services, customers will have expanded options and bandwidth for
entertainment content delivery to their mobile devices. This means
that users will now experience mobile social networking by
communicating directly with other mobile users or from kiosks at
480Mbps. As a result, individuals will be able to connect based on one
another's proximity. This milestone marks the beginning of a
revolution in the mobile handset market by employing WiMedia ultra
wideband technology for 480Mbps WPAN connections.
With the choice of the WiMedia Common Radio Platform as the
foundation for the project, SK Telecom and Staccato are developing
together applications using several protocols. This benefit is enabled
by Staccato's PIK(TM) MAC (Medium Access Control) technology, which is
a Protocol Independent Kernel, based on a custom implementation of
hardware acceleration and ARM9 software control. This patent-pending
technology enables the simultaneous operation of Certified Wireless
USB, WiNet, Bluetooth 3.0 and other potential protocols at speeds up
to 480Mbps. Products will initially launch with WiMedia radios using
spectrum below 6GHz (band group 1, band 3) and add above-6GHz
operation when the WiMedia Alliance completes the certification
process for these bands.
"The SK Telecom-Staccato announcement is significant for at least
three reasons. First, it signals adoption of UWB in mobile handsets
much sooner than anyone had anticipated. Second, it shatters the
assumption that a mobile carrier is not willing to use UWB products
operating below 6GHz. Lastly, but perhaps most importantly, the value
of the UWB applications and services envisioned by SK Telecom looks
like it could be very high and very beneficial to both the users and
the carriers," said Fiona Thomson, market analyst, IMS Research.
"SK Telecom is known as the most innovative and aggressive mobile
operator in the world due to our history of not only bringing new
mobile features to market before our competitors, but also defining
such new features that other operators quickly adopt. Staccato is
instrumental in furthering this vision by offering the solution that
meets our requirements of price, high bandwidth and low power. In
order to successfully deploy these mobile devices, we needed a
solution based on single-chip CMOS. Staccato is the only company that
has accomplished that product design with their Ripcord low-cost,
small form-factor wireless solutions," said Dr. Jong Tae Ihm, vice
president and head of the Mobile Device & Access Network R&D Center
for SK Telecom.
"From the beginning, Staccato knew that single-chip CMOS was the
only viable option to achieve the cost, power and space profile
required by handheld products like cell phones, and this endorsement
from a major mobile carrier further validates our early path and
Ripcord device family. As one of the architects behind the WiMedia PHY
and MAC, WiNet and Certified Wireless USB specifications, SK Telecom
recognizes that we have the relevant UWB leadership expertise to
offer," said Marty Colombatto, chairman and CEO for Staccato
Communications. "With the mobile handset market representing nearly
one billion units worldwide annually, the decision of SK Telecom to
adopt the WiMedia Common Radio Platform means a tremendous boost to
the potential market for WiMedia applications and Staccato in
particular. The impact of this will not remain limited to one
application, but will bring an entire array of new features and
applications to the mobile customer."
For the first phase, a Korean-based, leading manufacturer of
handsets worldwide will be the handset developer for the new WiMedia
UWB handsets.
For Additional Information
For more detailed information on mobile usage models, creating new
revenue opportunities and enhancing subscriber loyalty, see the
Staccato companion whitepaper, "Leveraging Ultra Wideband (UWB)
Technology to Enable Next-Generation Handset-Centric Applications," at
http://staccatocommunications.com/papers/UWB_enables_new_handset_
applications.pdf. For a photo of UWB-enabled mobile solutions, visit
http://staccatocommunications.com/press/photos/UWB_enabled_mobile.jpg.
(Due to its length, the URL above may need to be copied/pasted into
your Internet browser's address field. Remove the extra space if one
exists.)
Staccato's UWB University will feature a live and on-demand free
online webinar that will look at where UWB wireless comes into play,
providing standards-based, high-bandwidth, multi-protocol
capabilities, with the flexibility for auto-discovery and connection
with a variety of peer-to-peer and/or local server-based networks. The
event will take place on January 17, 2007, at 1:00 p.m. PST. To
pre-register for the course, visit www.uwb-u.com. Archived viewing
will be up within 24 hours of the live event.
About Staccato Communications' Products
Based on the WiMedia Alliance's UWB common radio platform and the
Certified Wireless USB specification from the USB Implementers Forum
(USB-IF), Ripcord is a single-chip, all-CMOS solution implemented in a
complete, fully integrated System-In-Package (SiP) using leading 110nm
digital CMOS process technology. Ripcord's high level of integration
minimizes design risk, lowers system cost and accelerates customers'
time-to-market by consolidating all hardware and software components
necessary to implement a solution based on 480Mbps Certified Wireless
USB. For more information, please visit
www.staccatocommunications.com.
About SK Telecom
SK Telecom is Korea's leading mobile communications company, with
more than 20 million subscribers. SK Telecom successfully
commercialized the world's first CDMA cellular phone service and
launched the world's first IMT-2000 third-generation service. The
company is listed on the Korean Stock Exchange, the New York Stock
Exchange and the London Stock Exchange. For more information about SK
Telecom, please visit www.sktelecom.com or email at
press@sktelecom.com.
Staccato and Ripcord are trademarks of Staccato Communications.
All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
