Motorola to offer 220MHz equipment
In a move that brings its extensive dealer network into play, Motorola will add 12.5kHz-channel FM land mobile radio equipment for the 220MHz band to its product line.
Motorola’s entry into 220MHz is based on an agreement with Aerwāv, the new-born successor to the Roamer One, Intek Global and Securicor Wireless legacy of 220MHz equipment distribution and airtime sales enterprises. New York-based Aerwāv was founded last year and bought Securicor Wireless on Jan. 2.
Aerwāv owns licenses for 28 5kHz-wide 220MHz band channels that can be used nationwide. Some of the licenses include blocks of five adjacent 5kHz channels that form 25kHz-wide bandwidths. Each five-channel block can accommodate two 12.5KHz-wide FM signals.
“Prior to Aerwāv, there was no company in the marketplace capable of and motivated to deploy 12.5kHz equipment in the 220MHz band,” said David Confalonieri, business development manager for Motorola’s Radio Products Division. “Once they came along, it gave us the opening. We have the equipment, and they’re welcoming the opportunity. Before Aerwāv, we stayed out of the 220MHz band because its 5kHz channels were not part of our core roadmap.”
Confalonieri said that Motorola would deploy analog FM using PassPort trunking, LTR trunking and conventional operation. Features include group dispatch, one-to-one selective calling and wide-area seamless roaming. Motorola expects to begin introducing its 220MHz products in the second half of 2002. Both Motorola and Aerwāv will market and distribute the products directly to customers, and Motorola also will offer them through its dealers.
“PassPort is where we believe the greatest value lies for users. It is a new, evolving, leading-edge protocol. Our dealers currently procure and resell the same platform in the UHF band, so this is something they’re familiar with. We’re opening up a new band of opportunity,” Confalonieri said.
Motorola numbers among its target markets for 220MHz equipment the security, manufacturing, transportation and utility industries. Confalonieri said that Motorola already had found for its nascent 220MHz products “a significant amount of interest from all over the United States, which played a role in persuading us to proceed.”
Robert Shiver, Aerwāv’s chairman, said in a prepared statement: “Our agreement with Motorola establishes the type of strategic relationship that will help us advance our spectrum-leasing model. Motorola’s dedication to innovative and quality two-way radio products, coupled with the spectrum pipeline that Aerwāv will provide, opens up significant new opportunities for wireless services nationwide.”
Currently, most of Aerwāv’s company-owned and dealer-operated systems use linear modulation and a variant of MPT 1327 trunking called advanced digital network trunking, and some use amplitude companded single-sideband equipment with LTR trunking.
