Bridgewater Advances WiMAX Offerings

Bridgewater Systems recently said it has been selected by seven WiMAX service providers to provide a range service control solutions, including two Tier 1 North American service providers. The company said it is actively involved in more than 12 WiMAX trials.

Bridgewater also said it has released an over-the-air provisioning (OTA) solution, which enables service providers to support provisioning of devices on WiMAX networks.

The Bridgewater Systems service control solutions leverage a view of each subscriber and their present context, such as the network they are on, the device they are using, the quality of service of the network, as well as their subscriber profile showing their subscription level, historical usage patterns and other parameters. This provides operators with the tools they need to support key WiMAX applications such as over the air provisioning, lawful intercept, and subscriber service control across networks, the company said.

These solutions include support for fixed and mobile WiMAX, including support for WiMAX Forum standards. The Bridgewater WiMAX solutions are access network and equipment vendor agnostic, enabling service providers to easily deploy and provide concurrent support of mixed network environments.

Bridgewater has established channel partnerships for the company’s WiMAX solutions including Motorola Inc., Alvarion and Nortel.

The company’s OTA platform, which works with Open Mobile Alliance Device Management (OMA-DM) compliant servers, recognizes when subscribers and devices are on the network to facilitate provisioning and firmware updates over the air enabling immediate subscriber access to WiMAX services.

“Over the air provisioning is a key service control capability for WiMAX service providers who want to introduce new business models and light touch services based on open access”, said Farshid Mohammadi, vice president of product line management of Bridgewater Systems.

The Bridgewater solution serves subscriber requests to access the WiMAX network to determine subscriber identity, if a device should be given network access, and whether the device requires registration or a firmware upgrade. The solution features a real-time subscriber context database which can share dynamic data such as location, presence, IP address, roaming status and registration status with the OMA-DM server.