XG Technology announces VoIP product plans
Florida-based communications start-up xG Technology this week announced plans to offer dual-mode, xMAX/Wi-Fi voice-over-IP (VoIP) mobile phones and wireless Ethernet extensions for enterprises by the end of the year.
These announcements represent a new era for xG Technology, which has been securing patent rights and demonstrating its xMAX technology since releasing information about the company publicly for the first time last summer.
“We’re at the commercialization and product stage now, as opposed to R&D,” xG Technology Chairman and CEO Rick Mooers said.
With spectrum-efficient xMAX technology, any communications network can realize increased range while transmitting at lower power levels than those used by traditional wireless protocols—one xMAX base station can cover 1000 square miles, Mooers said. As a result, the cost of deploying an xMAX system will be 25 times less than the expense associated with a traditional cellular technology, according to company officials.
“We have extremely low-cost spectrum solutions, including—but not limited to—being able to utilize the [unlicensed 900 MHz] ISM band,” Mooers said, noting that the potential low-cost service will impact the industry. “We will redefine wireless usage.”
Receiving those base-station signals will be xG Technology’s wireless VoIP phone, which will be designed to let users access a VoIP provider via an xMAX network, a WiFi network or a fixed-line Ethernet connection via a jack in the handset, Mooers said. U.S.-based contract manufacturers will build the phones using a field-programmable-gate-array [FPGA] xMAX chip design that the company hopes to have ready by August, he said.
First-generation handsets will be voice-only devices in a form factor similar to cellular counterparts, but xG plans to introduce data applications in the future.
“We think there is a market for a simple, stripped-down, voice-only phone that has the capacity to bypass the PSTN and hook into the VoIP community to have free or very low-cost calling,” Mooers said. “We will add data and video upgrades … We’ll be the first ones to hit 4G requirements established by the ITU—years ahead of schedule.”
The VoIP phone is scheduled to be released by the end of the year. In about three months, xG plans to begin selling frequency-agnostic xMAX systems to enterprises as a wireless Ethernet backhaul extensions to connect wide area networks in remote locations, Mooers said.
“It’s a simple, point-to-point link using our technology, which has better range,” Mooers said. “I’m 99% sure that’s going to be our first product.”
In separate news, xG officials said the company has transmitted high-quality video signal a quarter mile from a 6.5 dB, 60-foot, omnidirectional antenna to a 0 dB magnet-mount, omnidirectional antenna using just 39 microwatts of power.
