[Corrected and updated, 10/28/09, 12:40 p.m.; see page 4.] Back in 2002, it must have sounded like a good idea for Orange, a fast-growing European wireless provider known more for the simplicity of its services than for their sophistication, to open an R&D center in Boston, where it could hire a troop of brainy engineers, consultants, and startup entrepreneurs to come up with ideas for new high-tech services that would continue to fuel its growth.

In practice, though, an array of barriers meant that Orange Labs—which settled near MIT in Cambridge, MA, and became home to what one former employee calls “the most talented, most passionate group of people I’ve ever worked with”—never really fulfilled its potential. Eventually, it lost the pull it needed within Orange and its parent company, France Telecom, to keep growing. And after a seven-year run, the lab will close its doors tomorrow.

France Telecom’s decision to shutter Orange Labs Cambridge is ostensibly part of a corporate consolidation effort—there’s another Orange laboratory in South San Francisco, and in tough economic times it’s hard to argue that any European company needs two U.S. research centers.

But several former Orange Labs members tell Xconomy that the Cambridge facility’s demise was so long in the making that it could perhaps have been predicted from the start. It was rooted, these sources say, both in cultural differences between the lab’s American engineers and their British and French overseers, and in textbook organizational frictions and rivalries that prevented most Orange Labs initiatives from maturing into products that could be deployed to actual Orange customers. Just as important, the former employees say, Orange’s San Francisco lab developed far stronger political connections to the France Telecom leadership, making it obvious which of the two labs was more likely to survive any cost-cutting round.

Orange Labs' facility on Second Street in Kendall Square, Cambridge, MA

But while Orange Labs Cambridge may not have fulfilled its creators’ hopes, it will leave a lasting footprint on the Boston technology scene. Developers at the lab prototyped services such as push-to-talk, mobile photo sharing, localized search, and app-like “widgets” long before any of these technologies became standard on mobile phones. The lab provided a home, at its height, to about 60 brilliant hardware and software engineers, including many graduates of MIT and other local universities. And it acted as a springboard for entrepreneurs who have gone on to play other important roles in the mobile industry—the most prominent being Orange Labs’ founder and first director, Rich Miner, who later co-founded mobile software startup Android, helped transform the Android operating system into an industry standard before and after the company was acquired by Google, and now runs Google Ventures.

Still, there’s a sense that the lab could have accomplished much more. “If I were to summarize the ultimate legacy that the lab had for Orange and France Telecom, I would say ‘missed opportunity,’” says Iliya Rybchin, who was a program manager at Orange Lab from 2002 to 2004 and is now overseeing digital development projects at publisher McGraw-Hill. “The fact that [France Telecom] wasn’t willing or capable of tapping into that talent pool, with that amazing level of innovation and insight and passion, is frankly unfortunate, because the kinds of things that we were producing in the lab really had the potential to be transformative in the industry.”

Officials at France Telecom have not responded to Xconomy’s requests for comment on the shutdown, nor has Orange Labs CEO Frank Bowman.

The story of Orange Labs starts with Orange itself, formed in 1994 by a consortium of British and French companies. Industry insiders describe the early Orange as a scrappy, innovation-focused, startup-style company that …Next Page »

Comments (2) | Reprints | Share:        

The Washington Technology Industry Association (WTIA) announced today it is joining forces with TechAmerica, the advocacy organization, to become a unified tech entity in Washington state.

The move broadens WTIA’s membership to include more companies in hardware, electronics, and devices, which complements the trade association’s strengths in software, digital media, and telecom, says Ken Myer, WTIA’s president and chief executive. WTIA is now TechAmerica’s exclusive management and marketing partner in the state.

Under the terms of the partnership, WTIA will support TechAmerica members and programs locally and market joint membership in TechAmerica and WTIA to tech companies across the state. WTIA will also deliver TechAmerica’s business programs and policy (together with WTIA’s usual offerings). In turn, TechAmerica is transferring its Washington state council programs and staff to the WTIA. Current TechAmerica members based in Washington state (about 100) will automatically become members of WTIA.

There have been various name changes involved in these longstanding organizations. TechAmerica was previously called the American Electronics Association, which was founded in 1956. As the organization enrolled more software companies, it became the AeA, while WTIA was previously named Washington Software Association and was founded in 1984.

Comments | Reprints | Share:        

Verivue, the Westford, MA-based maker of multimedia distribution switches for cable and telecom operators, has raised $20.1 million in an equity offering, according to regulatory forms filed yesterday. PE Hub, citing a Venture Wire report, says new investor Sigma Partners took the lead in the round. Verivue raised a $40 million Series B round in March of this year, on the heels of a $25 million Series A round in 2007.

Comments | Reprints | Share:        

Orange Labs in Cambridge, MA, France Telecom’s East Coast research outpost, will reportedly close down as of October 30. Scott Kirsner of the Boston Globe first reported the story this morning; a France Telecom spokesman told him the Cambridge lab duplicates the functions of other Orange labs in France, Japan, and Silicon Valley. Michael Cappelletti, the Cambridge lab’s director of operations, tells Xconomy that he can’t comment on the report. “The information has not been officially published,” Cappelletti says, but “It has been publicly discussed.”

Comments | Reprints | Share:        

Wireless telecommunication networks require a constant, uninterrupted supply of electricity. Unfortunately, power outages are a common problem in many parts of India. The electrical grid in those areas can go down for hours every day. As a solution to this problem, Indian telecommunications company ACME Tele Power has turned to hydrogen fuel-cell generators to keep power flowing even when the central electrical grid goes down. As we previously reported, Vancouver, BC-based Ballard Power Systems has formed a partnership with Bend, OR-based IdaTech, and together they are manufacturing these generators for ACME; earlier this month, they completed an agreement to send 310 direct hydrogen-fueled Electragen generators to ACME.

Hydrogen fuel-cell generators are a better answer to backup power issues than coal or gasoline-powered generators for a few reasons. They are cleaner, both environmentally and internally. They have few, if any, emissions from their electricity generation, and tend to require less in the way of maintenance—an important concern especially in the more remote parts of India. This deal is the latest in an upsurge in hydrogen fuel-cell usage, notably, as we reported, in cars.

Ballard Power developed and produces the two types of fuel cell. These first 310 generators are built to use hydrogen directly. Future shipments, this year and possibly in years to come, will be fueled by natural gas to generate hydrogen to run the fuel cells and thus the generator. IdaTech, a manufacturer of backup power supplies for more than a decade, signed an agreement with Ballard in May last year to incorporate Ballard’s fuel cells into some of its generators. When ACME approached IdaTech in October about the generators, Ballard was included as part of the deal, according to Tony Cochrane, director of the backup power market segment at Ballard.

IdaTech was founded in 1996 as a backup-power product maker, specifically low-maintenance machines that run on cleaner fuels, like natural gas, than standard generators. Ballard was originally founded in 1979 to make better lithium batteries, although since then it has moved exclusively into …Next Page »

Comments | Reprints | Share:        

Ahmet Ozalp, a former partner at Atlas Venture in Waltham, MA, has joined communications software and services firm Telenity as its CEO, according to a press release. At Atlas, Ozlap led investments in technology firms such as ExtendMedia, a Newton, MA-based provider of software for managing digital content, and MyVu, a Westwood, MA, a developer of wearable video display products. He officially started work at Monroe, CT-based Telenity on Monday, June 8, according to the company.

Comments | Reprints | Share:        

NewPath Networks, a Seattle-based provider of wireless infrastructure, has reeled in $30 million to fuel its continued growth, according to a statement today. New York private equity firm Charterhouse Group invested $20 million in NewPath, and Denver-based venture group Meritage Funds provided the rest of the money.

NewPath, founded in 2004, is capitalizing on consumers’ demand for wireless signals wherever they go and the desire of major telecom firms like AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile to keep their customers happy. Those major carriers hire NewPath to design and operate networks of wireless antennas and underground fiber-optic cables to provide wireless coverage in areas, say, too remote for a standard cellular towers or where such towers are deemed an eyesore. (Yet the firm has recently run into resistance in Scottsdale, AZ, where officials want to police the firm’s plans to install 260 antennas and bury 100-200 miles of fiber optic cable under city grounds, according to this story in the Arizona Republic.)

“Charterhouse and Meritage’s telecom knowledge and capital resources enable NewPath to continue on its rapid organic growth trajectory,” says Mike Kavanagh, co-founder and CEO of NewPath, in a statement. “Increasing wireless network capacity demands necessitated by the growth in data and multi-media applications make this a very exciting time to focus on expanding our footprint and pursuing strategic acquisitions.”

Kavanagh co-founded NewPath in 2004 with company chief operating officer Shawn Cooprider. Cooprider cut his teeth in the wireless industry with firms such as pioneering Seattle cell phone company McCaw Cellular Communications, and his fortunes skyrocketed dramatically when AT&T gobbled up McCaw in a $11.5 billion buyout in 1994.

Comments | Reprints | Share:        

Rich Miner, the driving force behind Google’s Android operating system for mobile phones and a longtime leader in Massachusetts communications software circles, reportedly will join Google Ventures, a $100 million venture fund the search giant is said to be forming.

Rumors of the planned venture fund have been in the air since last summer. More recently, the rumors included Miner, who is based in Google’s offices in Kendall Square, near MIT. But things perked up significantly in recent days, after a Reuters reporter attending a Silicon Valley venture capital event last week spotted a name badge that identified Miner as part of Google Ventures. According to Reuters, a Google spokesman asked about the venture effort last Thursday said, “It’s a project we’re working on. But we’re not able to discuss the details right now.” But on Friday night TechCrunch stated that it had confirmed the news: “Yes, the rumors are true. Google’s Rich Miner is moving from the Android team to a new venture arm called Google Ventures,” it reported, citing an unnamed source.

Miner, who will be part of the keynote chat at Xconomy’s Future of Mobile Innovation in New England forum on April 7, did not respond to my e-mail seeking confirmation of the TechCrunch report. And an East Coast Google spokesperson sent me a reply virtually identical to what Reuters reported: “This is a project we are working on, but we’re not ready to discuss details right now.”

Which is to say that it all looks real to me.

News of a Google venture fund first surfaced last July in the Wall Street Journal, which reported that the fund would be headed by Google senior vice president of corporate development and chief legal officer David Drummond.

Not everyone thinks it’s a good ideas for companies to be dabbling in venture funding. The Journal article included some statistics and background on corporate venture capital arms, which indeed do have a mixed-to-poor overall record of success. Rather than focusing on cash returns, these funds play a chiefly strategic role, by allowing companies to invest in startups whose products or services fill gaps in the corporation’s own offerings—or that are blazing new trails, both in markets the company might want to enter and in areas that might prove disruptive to the parent firm.

Occasionally, such arms are also formed to incubate and spin out interesting new developments from inside the company that don’t fit core business lines. No one seems to think this is what Google Ventures would do, but you never know: there are a lot of interesting things going on in Google—and not all may get the attention they deserve if they stay inside the company.

Whatever the focus of the new fund, Miner’s presence—his current title is Group Manager, Mobile Platforms—would seem to indicate it will take an interest in Android-related ventures, and also mobile software and communications more generally.

Miner was brought into the Google fold in 2005, when Google bought Android, the Silicon Valley mobile software company he co-founded. Before that, he was Vice President of Advanced Services at Orange, where he headed North American R&D activities. And prior to that, he co-founded Wildfire, a Lexington, MA-based company that developed a voice-based personal assistant (you can definitely see aspects of Wildfire in Google Voice, which Wade reviewed here). He got his PhD in computer science from the University of Massachusetts at Lowell. You can read more about his background here.

Comments | Reprints | Share:        

[Update 12:00 pm 3/20/09: We were swamped with hundreds of e-mails in response to our offer of 100 free Google Voice beta accounts this morning. Thanks everyone! We'll be in touch with the winners as soon as possible with details about their new accounts.]

Brace for impact, again. Google is about to change the way you think about telephones.

The information giant has a pattern of setting its sights on an existing technology, moving in with overwhelming software-engineering force, and upending all of our old expectations. We didn’t know we needed ads alongside our search results, and Google turned keyword-based advertising into a multi-billion-dollar industry. We all thought e-mail was something we could only access and manage using desktop programs like Outlook, then along came Gmail. We thought we had to go to libraries to find out-of-print books, then Google went and created Google Book Search. We imagined cell phone platforms would always be controlled by a few elite carriers and handset makers, then Google started Android.

To be clear about it, Google didn’t invent keyword-based advertising, Web mail, book scanning, or open-source software. It just figured out how to apply such technologies more cleverly and pervasively than anyone else. And that’s what it has done once more with Google Voice—the renovated version of Grand Central, the phone-number-unification service it bought in 2007.

Grand Central was a startup that allowed users to sign up for a single phone number for life. A call to that number would automatically ring through to any or all of the other phones the user designated, meaning they no longer had to give their acquaintances separate home, office, and mobile numbers. Google paid somewhere north of $50 million for the technology, then spent more than a year and a half rebuilding it to work with its own infrastructure. Starting March 12, Google upgraded old Grand Central’s existing users to Google Voice accounts, and started inviting in a few beta testers. It plans to open up the free service to anyone in the U.S. starting “soon“—in a few weeks, by all accounts.

I’ve been testing Google Voice for the last couple of days, and I’m impressed. I think the service will mark a kind of tipping point in public perceptions of telephony. Before this, it was still possible to think of the phone system as something predating the Internet and therefore distinct from it, surrounded by its own set of customs and usage patterns. After this, we’ll think of phone calls more as if they were audio e-mails—finding their way through the uber-network to their intended recipients wherever those recipients may be located, and leaving a digital record that can be stored, searched, and manipulated on the Web.

There are a lot of features to Google Voice, which makes the overall concept a bit hard to explain, as I’ve realized over the past couple of days as I’ve talked with friends and colleagues about it. So I’ll try to simplify things. You start by signing up for a new phone number in your area code of choice. Google provides a search page where you can look for numbers that spell out mnemonics like “617-IM2-COOL.” In practice, there aren’t that many numbers available, so you might have to search for a while before you find one that spells out something that appeals to you, and that won’t embarrass you five or 10 years from now. (Google could do a better job explaining the number selection process—and it wouldn’t hurt if they showed a picture of a phone keyboard, to remind you of what letters go with what numbers.)

In the same way that an e-mail address doesn’t correspond to a single computer, your Google Voice number doesn’t correspond to any single phone. Indeed, that’s the beauty of the whole system. So once you’ve picked your number, the first thing to decide is which actual phones should ring when someone calls it. You can tell Google Voice to route calls to your office phone, your home land line, your mobile phone, your vacation rental, your Aunt Minnie’s house where you’re staying for the weekend, or all of the above.

The next big decision is about how Google Voice should handle voicemail messages, for those times you can’t answer or don’t want to. As soon as someone leaves a message, it goes into your Google Voice inbox, which you can access by calling the service or by directing the browser on your computer or your mobile phone to the Google Voice website.

If you like, you can simply let messages pile up in your inbox, and check them once in a while by calling in or visiting on the Web. Or you if you want to know about new messages right away, you can set Google Voice to notify you via e-mail or SMS text message.

Now here’s the really cool part. Rather than just notifying you that you got a voicemail the way your cell phone does, Google Voice can—if you choose—send you a text transcription of the message itself. Transcriptions are created automatically using speech recognition software, so they aren’t as accurate as one might like, but they …Next Page »

Comments (30) | Reprints | Share:        

Bedford, MA-based vCentrix, which hosts voice-over-Internet services for businesses, is becoming part of Momentum, a provider of white-label digital voice services based in Birmingham, AL, according to an announcement from Momentum today. “In such a fragmented market, both companies feel that hosted voice applications are entering a period of consolidation, and Momentum is well-equipped to be a leader in this coming shakeout,” Momentum CEO Alan Creighton said in the announcement. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Comments | Reprints | Share:        

Bellevue, WA-based Intellectual Ventures said today it has formed an alliance with Telcordia Technologies, a networking and telecommunications firm in Piscataway, NJ. Intellectual Ventures has acquired the rights to license about 500 of Telcordia’s patents, and in return, has also agreed to fund inventions from Telcordia’s R&D lab. Financial terms of the deal were not given.

Comments | Reprints | Share:        

What’s the most exciting company in Seattle? I recently put the question to Patrick Ennis, the global head of technology for Bellevue, WA-based Intellectual Ventures, and his answer surprised me: Impinj. The firm in Seattle’s Fremont neighborhood has been around since 2000, and is well-known for its focus on radio-frequency identification (RFID) technologies—not exactly the sexiest field in an era of Web 2.0, mobile software, and alternative energy startups.

But dig a little deeper, and the story of Impinj will grab you. Like most successful companies, Impinj has been forced to change its strategy at crucial moments. It has had to navigate tricky technology standards—eventually winning out in a major fight between standards bodies—and adapt to major challenges in the marketplace. Through it all, it has amassed an impressive network of customers, partners, and investors—to the tune of $110 million in funding from the likes of Arch Venture Partners, Madrona Venture Group, Polaris Venture Partners, and Mobius Venture Capital.

So how is it doing now? After Ennis mentioned Impinj—he led an investment in the firm back when he was a managing director at Arch—I was eager to hear its story, and why its technology and business model are still so promising. I recently had a chance to visit with Impinj’s CEO, William Colleran, and Evan Fein, vice president of finance and administration. What they told me amounted to quite a compelling case study of how to navigate a nascent market.

Impinj was founded in 2000 by a University of Washington professor of computer science and engineering, Chris Diorio, who was a student of microelectronics pioneer Carver Mead at Caltech. Diorio serves as Impinj’s chairman and chief technology officer. “He’s a fantastic professor and entrepreneur,” Ennis says. “Usually, professors just want to be professors. When you do find an entrepreneur professor, it’s heaven. The world needs more people like that.”

As Fein relates, Impinj originally focused on hardware for cell phones and base stations. Diorio had developed a technology called “self-adaptive silicon” that allowed an electronic circuit on a chip to adapt its characteristics after being fabricated. The company released a cellular product in 2001—right as the telecom industry was melting down. “We decided, ‘This isn’t going to work,’” says Fein, who was employee No. 8.

So the search was on for broader applications of integrated circuit technology. In late 2003, Impinj settled on RFID as its new focus, over other promising candidates like ultrasound and GPS. The idea of cheap, tiny chips that could be used to “tag” any product or shipment and improve companies’ supply-chain management was getting a lot of play in commercial circles. What Impinj brought to the table was a …Next Page »

Comments (2) | Reprints | Share:        

Last month, Xconomy reported on a visit to China by five Seattle-area tech companies as part of a mobile-telecom mission organized by the Washington Technology Industry Association (WTIA). The goal of the trip was to open up business opportunities for the companies by setting up meetings with potential partners, investors, and customers. On Friday, I sat down for a one-on-one with Ken Myer, the president and CEO of the WTIA (and an Xconomist), to talk about the trip and what he learned about the Chinese mobile market.

Myer led the delegation, together with the Washington State Community, Trade and Economic Development office, and representatives from the local tech companies Formotus, McObject, Mobile Semiconductor, RealNetworks, and Zoodango. The trip included stops in Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen, extensive meetings with dozens of companies and local government officials, and an excursion to the Great Wall—Myer’s first trip there, though he’s been to China several times.

Their experience struck me as useful stuff for anyone thinking globally about the impact of their company or organization, particularly in the mobile sector. So, here are Myer’s top five take-aways after observing the China mobile market up close:

1. It’s even bigger than you think. With more than 700 million handsets out there (100 million were sold in the first half of this year alone), the Chinese market size is truly impressive. “Embedded software around improving performance or cost of a device is an early adopter opportunity,” Myer says.

2. Mobile behaviors of consumers are very different compared with the U.S. Hardly anyone leaves a voice message, there’s lots of texting, and much less use of data applications—the mobile market is something like 90 percent voice and 10 percent data (versus 69 percent voice and 31 percent data in the U.S.), according to Myer.

3. Think regionally. Domestic growth is key to the Chinese mobile industry. And a lot of that growth is in rural areas, where there are cheap “mountain plans” for wireless service. “There’s no single application for all of the country,” says Myer. “Pick a province, and focus on one arm of a carrier that’s amenable to working with you.”

4. Mobile business applications are in early days. “It’s a good time to get in,” says Myer, though there are long sales cycles and adoption times at this point. And mobile gaming is even further behind.

5. As for intellectual property, go in with your eyes wide open. Keep in mind Web services are probably easier to protect than a technology that involves a disk or file that can be copied.

Myer also stressed the importance of building personal and business relationships. Each day on the trip was filled with formal business meetings, followed by a lavish banquet. (Myer cited steamed fish, seafood, and duck as his favorite dishes.) “Meals are really where the relationship is established. You talk to people one-on-one, and you cement the personal relationship…It’s important to think of these efforts as long-term,” he says. At the same time, “we want to get business and revenues flowing for our members.” To that end, Myer says he plans to return to China early next year, in part to visit more companies and formalize a trade cooperation agreement with Chinese officials.

Lastly, Myer had an unrelated (and much more Washington-centric) public service announcement: Get your applications in this week for the annual Industry Achievement Awards, which will be given out at the WTIA’s 25th anniversary bash on the evening of March 25, 2009, at the Paramount Theater in downtown Seattle. The deadline for all entries is this Friday, November 21. The award categories include technology innovator of the year, consumer product or service of the year, and a new one, breakthrough startup of the year.

Comments | Reprints | Share:        

The leaves have changed, the World Series is winding down (hang in there, Tampa Bay), and the deals continue to flow in the Northwest. Digital media, software, and biotech were well represented in the last week.

—Seattle-based HyperQuality, which makes software to improve call centers and customer experience, secured $7.6 million of a $12.1 million Series C round, according to PE Hub. HyperQuality has previously raised $17 million in investments led by Ignition Partners and Miramar Venture Partners.

—In one of the bigger acquisitions of the year, Seattle-based Getty Images bought Jupitermedia’s online image business, Jupiterimages, for $96 million in cash. Getty, which previously tried to acquire its smaller rival in early 2007, was itself bought this summer by an affiliate of private-equity firm Hellman & Friedman.

—ZymoGenetics, the Seattle-based biotech firm, accepted a $21 million lump-sum payment from Bristol-Meyers Squibb to settle a patent dispute over lg fusion proteins, as Luke reported. ZymoGenetics dropped its patent lawsuit against Bristol and granted the company a non-exclusive worldwide license for the technology, which is used in a rheumatoid arthritis drug.

—Seattle-based Amazon acquired Reflexive Entertainment, a developer and distributor of casual games based in Lake Forest, CA. The terms of the deal were not released, but the move seems to signal Amazon’s increasing interest in the game distribution market, particularly for casual and social games.

—Luke reported that Vancouver, BC-based Sutus, a telecom company that targets small businesses, raised $4.5 million in venture and debt financing. BDC Venture Capital and Growthworks Capital invested $2 million, while MMV Financial provided $2.5 million in debt financing.

—Earth Class Mail, a Seattle-based company that digitizes paper mail and delivers it through the Internet, raised $5.1 million in angel investment, led by the Keiretsu Forum. The company primarily targets corporate and government customers.

—Not a deal, but a hint of deals to come, in cleantech: At the second annual Algae Biomass Summit in Seattle, Silicon Valley venture capitalist Vinod Khosla spoke about the potential of algae-based biofuels, and Bob Nelsen of Arch Venture Partners and Jim Long of Gabriel Venture Partners discussed their high-profile investments in the space. The next day, Al Gore (who’s a venture partner with Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers) heard about cleantech and the University of Washington’s new College of the Environment from UW Tech Transfer head Linden Rhoads.

Comments | Reprints | Share:        

‘Tis the season for grand tours of Asia. Last week, we covered life on the road with Intellectual Ventures, as the Bellevue, WA-based invention firm launched offices in five Asian countries, including China. This week, it’s the Washington Technology Industry Association’s turn. Together with the Washington State Community, Trade and Economic Development office, the WTIA is coordinating a three-city visit to China for five Seattle-area tech companies: RealNetworks, Formotus, Mobile Semiconductor, Zoodango, and McObject.

It’s the third WTIA-organized trip to China in the past year, and the first dedicated to a specific tech industry—mobile telecommunications. The trip’s focus “is on understanding the opportunity and dynamics of the China mobile market and setting up one-on-one business matchmaking meetings with the participants,” says Ken Myer, CEO of the WTIA (and an Xconomist). “Our goal with this mission is to open up business opportunities for our members who are seeking to enter or expand their presence in China.”

The business opportunity is a no-brainer, given the size and growth of China’s mobile market (600 million subscribers and counting). This week’s agenda includes stops in Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen, and meetings with more than 20 prominent companies, including Microsoft, Huawei, China Mobile, Hurray!, Sina.com, and Tencent. Myer says his team will also visit the WTIA’s office in the Longgang district of Shenzhen and its local host, Pacific Prestige, along with Chinese government officials there, including the Shenzhen vice mayor, Xu Qin.

All in all, it sounds like a fun and productive tour—one designed to build long-term relationships in the area. I had a chance to talk with a couple of the Seattle-area companies about their expectations for the trip. Joe Verschueren, co-founder and CEO of Formotus, a Bellevue-based maker of mobile software for businesses, says his goal is “to meet with potential strategic investors and go-to-market partners. Our partner candidates include carriers, device manufacturers, device distributors, industrial handheld computer manufacturers, distribution partners, potential joint venture partners and other companies involved in the cellular mobile industry.” Verschueren adds that he sees “tremendous opportunity for Formotus in China. We believe Formotus is favorably positioned to become an important partner to IT and Telco companies in China.”

Cameron Fisher, co-founder and CEO of Mobile Semiconductor, a Seattle-based maker of memory technologies for mobile handsets, emphasized the importance of really connecting with the local companies he’s meeting. “We hope to first understand the market and what these companies see as important differentiators,” Fisher says. “Our memory technology can enable new applications, especially data-intensive applications such as video sharing, mobile database access, or simply large file system access. As we understand their needs, we can help them to design better cell phones, mobile gaming devices, etc. Next we would like to partner on a next-gen handset design, and license our technology,” he says. “I expect to spend one or two years developing a few key partnerships. That would most likely include our retaining some local representation.”

There’s also a local celebrity among the WTIA contingent. James Sun, founder and CEO of Seattle-based Zoodango, a business-networking site, was the runner-up on ABC’s “The Apprentice 6″ last year. It will be interesting to see what, if anything, Sun’s experience with the Donald buys him in China.

Comments | Reprints | Share:        

Sprint Nextel, which is spending billions to blanket major U.S. cities with super-high-speed wireless networks based on the new WiMax standard, turned on its first city—Baltimore—last week. Now there’s a report from the blogosphere that Sprint’s so-called XOHM network is up and running—though not officially launched or supported—in six additional locales, including Boston.

The automotive electronics website MP3Car.com reported yesterday, based on a conversation with a XOHM representative working at a booth at Baltimore’s Fells Point Festival, that the XOHM network has been turned on for testing purposes in Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Philadelphia, Washington DC, and northern Virginia. The network is “not supported,” the reports said, but computer users who have bought the Samsung Expresscard, one of the first WiMax wireless cards certified to work with XOHM, should be able to get onto the network.

We’re seeking confirmation of this news from Sprint Nextel, which hasn’t yet responded to our inquiries. The XOHM website says that the network is “coming soon” to Chicago and Washington DC and that it’s “in the works” in Boston, Dallas, Fort Worth, Providence, and Philadelphia.

XOHM is a so-called 4G or fourth-generation wireless network that delivers data to subscribers’ laptop or desktop PCs at speeds of 2 to 4 megabits per second. That’s a lot faster than 3G wireless: while 3G speeds vary depending on signal strength, I get downloads on my iPhone 3G at about 800 kilobits per second (0.8 megabits per second). But XOHM isn’t as fast as most cable Internet connections—here at Xconomy, our Comcast cable Internet service tops out at around 13 megabits per second. Sprint’s introductory prices for XOHM service in Baltimore are $10 for a day pass, $25 per month for home service, and $30 per month for “On-the-go” or mobile service.

So, Bostonians—if you have a WiMax card and the XOHM network is working for you, let us know. (Leave a comment or write to editors@xconomy.com.)

Update 5:15 pm, 10/6/08: John Polivka, a public relations representative for XOHM, sent the following note just now. I had asked Polivka whether XOHM is working in Boston for people who have WiMax cards. He didn’t offer a direct answer, so draw your own conclusions:

“XOHM service is commercially available in Baltimore only, though we have a number of other cities where the 4G mobile broadband network is in various stages of development or implementation. Chicago and Washington DC are furthest along and developmental work is in process in Boston, Providence, Philadelphia, Dallas and Ft. Worth. No timetables have been announced, and the privilege of doing so will likely fall to the new Clearwire—expected to be formed sometime this quarter from the merger with Sprint’s XOHM WiMax once all approvals are received. There has been a phenomenal response to our launch, so additional interest is certainly understood.”

Comments (2) | Reprints | Share:        

NextWave Wireless (NASDAQ: WAVE), a San Diego company that makes embedded multimedia software for mobile devices, said this week that it’s shutting down Israeli Wi-Fi equipment subsidiary Go Networks as part of a global cost-cutting effort. Earlier in the month, NextWave arranged $100 million in new debt financing and announced a series of cash-conservation moves, including 67 layoffs among its San Diego-based workforce. NextWave’s business has been impacted by delays in adoption of next-generation telecom equipment made by its subsdiaries, according to the San Diego Business Journal.

Comments | Reprints | Share:        

Vanu, the Cambridge, MA, company whose “all-software radios” allow wireless operators to broadcast using multiple standards such as GSM and CDMA, has raised $32 million a stealthy Series B venture round, Dan Primack of Private Equity Hub is reporting today. Waltham, MA-based Charles River Ventures, which led a $9 million Series A round for Vanu last year, has returned for the new round, which also included Norwest Venture Partners of Palo Alto, CA, and Tata Capital of India.

Vanu, founded in 1998 by MIT computer science PhD Vanu Bose, the son of Bose Corporation founder Amar Bose, isn’t publicizing the funding round. But Andy Beard, the company’s chief strategy officer, told Primack that the company will use the funds to expand operations in the United States and India. The company “will talk later this year about the motivation behind the round and what it means for our future plans,” Beard said.

Software radio technology uses computer software to emulate functions such as mixing and amplification that are handled by separate hardware components in traditional radios. Software-defined radios can communicate using multiple radio protocols that would normally require separate chips. In Vanu’s implementation of software radio, the software runs on standard Linux PCs rather than the specialized hardware used by most manufacturers of cellular base stations, making the systems easier to upgrade.

Comments (1) | Reprints | Share:        

Netcracker Technology, a Waltham, MA, company that makes software used by telecom companies to manage order fulfillment and other operations, announced today that it will be acquired by Tokyo-based electronics and communications giant NEC. The companies didn’t disclose the terms of the deal.

Comments | Reprints | Share:        

Chelmsford, MA-based Aspect Software, which makes call center equipment and software, said yesterday that it has bought most of the assets of BlueNote Networks, a Tewksbury, MA, company with technology that helps companies integrate Internet-based communications into their existing business software. Aspect CEO Jim Foy said the acquisition would help Aspect’s customers treat their call centers as part of an overall “unified communications” strategy—industry slang for the new generation of Internet-based communications techniques such as Voice over IP and instant messaging. Aspect didn’t disclose the terms of the deal.

Comments | Reprints | Share: