Nokia launches its own wifi routers

More than mere routers, Nokia’s ‘carrier-grade, in-home wifi solution’ is positioned as a cure for the CSP broadband blues.

Nokia reckons a combination of its small cell expertise and Broadcom’s BCM4363 WLAN chipset (featuring Air-IQ spectrum management technology) results in a router portfolio that will out-perform most of those currently being served up by CSPs. Air-IQ apparently helps reduce the interference between multiple wifi signals which, we’re told, is one of the main reasons for dodgy wifi performance.

“Everyone knows how tedious malfunctioning wifi networks can be,” said Federico Guillèn, president of Nokia Fixed Networks. “People demand instant connectivity and perfect coverage throughout their homes. Nokia in-home wifi delivers just that. Nokia wifi will be a great tool for service providers to increase customer loyalty and focus on new revenue streams. As they lease the central home gateway and have a trusted relationship with subscribers, they have a key role to play in delivering the Digital Home.”

“Broadcom is excited to partner with Nokia to bring to market the unique advantages of Air-IQ technology,” said Greg Fischer, GM of Broadband Carrier Access at Broadcom. “Wifi is becoming a managed service offering at many broadband operators around the world and, as a result, the unique insight provided by Air-IQ becomes essential to ensure best-in-class performance while minimizing total cost of ownership.”

In other Nokia news the Finnish vendor appears to be going for the ‘most arcane sequence of acronyms shoe-horned into one baffling sentence’ record. The age-old R-PHY vs R-MACPHY debate is over, we’re told, thanks to Nokia’s vDAA virtualizing the CMTS – vCMTS Anywhere – and enabling cable operators to flexibly and cost effectively upgrade their DOCSIS network. And not a moment too soon, we might add.

Guillén himself decided to join in the record-breaking fun. “Nokia is changing the game in the cable industry with a vDAA solution that gives operators the flexibility to support both Remote-PHY and Remote-MACPHY approaches,” he said. “While running the vCMTS on the node as part of a Remote-MACPHY deployment will garner the most significant savings in cost, space and power, there is no such thing as one size fits all. Nokia’s enhanced cable solution gives operators the flexibility to choose from a full range of options across both fiber and cable to meet their unique network needs.”

And he wasn’t done there. Perhaps warming up for the next MWC, Nokia decided to bestow three press releases on us in close succession. The last announcement concerned a few tweaks to its Intelligent Access domestic broadband portfolio, which includes the router stuff mentioned earlier.

“The technologies, nodes, traffic and services needed to support today’s ultra-broadband requirements are adding significant complexity to the network and those who can master this complexity the fastest will come out ahead,” said Guillén. “Nokia is providing operators with a smarter approach to fixed access that combines the intelligent application of technology with the intelligence of the network to help make broadband networks faster, better and smarter.”

At the same time Nokia whacked out a bunch of new videos promoting its Intelligent Access proposition, some of which already have view-counts in the hundreds. Here’s one of them, which for some reason doesn’t feature Guillén. Maybe he was knackered from writing all those quotes.