Adam Bender

Motorola previewed four wireless and cable products it plans to show at CES. On the wireless side, Motorola showed the CPEi 100 WiMAX Desktop Device, a WiMAX router designed to work with 2.5 GHz spectrum. Motorola is selling the WiMAX device through operators in 35-38 countries, said Motorola’s Ashish Dayama. If Sprint or “any other” operator reveals a retail model, Motorola would support it, he added. Motorola also unveiled the Mobile TV DHO1, a DVB-H pocket-sized live TV player with DVR, a 4.3 inch screen and four hours of rechargeable battery life. Motorola starts selling DH01 this month to broadcasters, service providers and retailers, said Venkat Eswara, senior marketing manager for application services. For cable operators, Motorola announced the DCX series of MPEG-4 set-top boxes, supporting HD, DVR and surround sound. All models use a 1 GHz tuner and are backward compatible with MPEG-2. HD models can output up to 1080i through HDMI and component cables; they also have pass-through support for 1080p, said Rob Folk, product management director for Motorola’s Digital Video Solutions business. The DCX series will be available Q3 2008. Motorola will also show CES the SURFboard SBV5422 Digital Voice Modem and Integrated DECT Cordless Phone System. The device combines two cordless VoIP phone lines with a cable broadband modem and lets users access e-mail, check the weather and send and receive SMS text messages. Consumers can configure the device using a handset; previous versions required a PC.

What “open access” means depends on who’s defining it, advocates, analysts and wireless industry officials told Communications Daily. Following news in November that Verizon Wireless would open its network to all devices and applications (CD Nov 28 p2), officials from the Bell’s three largest rivals said their networks were open already. The top four carriers give different reasons for calling themselves open, but open access advocates say no U.S. operator measures up.

Qualcomm has replacement WCDMA chipsets to comply with part of a New Year’s Eve injunction, and is developing workarounds for other products a Santa Ana jury last May determined to infringe three Broadcom patents, Qualcomm said Wednesday. Late Monday, the Santa Ana U.S. District Court banned Qualcomm from making, using, selling and importing the infringing products. However, to lessen the blow to carriers and handset makers, the court stayed the injunction until Jan. 31, 2009, for chips sold before the May jury ruling. Qualcomm plans to appeal to the Federal Circuit U.S. Appeals Court.

The proposed no-cash Vonage-Nortel settlement (CD Jan 2 p10) is a “non-event” for Vonage stock, Stanford Group’s Clayton Moran said. No one expected a “significant monetary settlement,” and it was unlikely Vonage would come out the loser, told us. Assuming Vonage and Nortel finalize the deal, Vonage will have settled all patent suits brought against it. That “legal stability” is good, but Vonage must now focus on the “financial side,” Stifel Nicolaus analyst Rebecca Arbogast said in an interview. Vonage must pay off $250 million in debt by the end of 2008 but has less than $150 million in working capital, most of which is needed for business costs, Moran said. Vonage should come up with a plan to address the funding gap in the next three to six months, he said.

Vonage and Nortel would trade patent licenses but no cash in a proposed settlement, Vonage said Monday. Vonage said Friday that it was “close” to a Nortel settlement that would end suits in the U.S. District Courts for Delaware and the Northern District of Texas (CD Dec 31 p6). Under the deal, each VoIP firm would license three patents from the other, Vonage said. Vonage and Nortel could not sub-license the patents to other companies, a Vonage spokesman added. “Claims relating to past damages and the remaining patents will be dismissed without prejudice.” The parties agree “in principle” but are waiting for final documentation, Vonage said. Nortel is “pleased” with the agreement, a spokesman said.

Cable companies seeking wireless partners should take a look at T-Mobile, ThinkEquity analyst Anton Wahlman said in an interview. T-Mobile is seen by some analysts as an “extremely likely candidate” for a cable partnership (CD Dec 28 p4). T-Mobile’s Wi-Fi hand-off service HotSpot@Home would work well with the Internet backbone cable provides, offering excellent wireless coverage in cable customers’ homes, Wahlman said. It costs relatively little to add Wi-Fi, so cable would have to pay only “incremental costs” for T- Mobile’s cellular network to provide service when customers aren’t in range of a Wi-Fi router, he said. Cable companies could save more still by building municipal Wi-Fi networks in cities, he said. Municipal Wi-Fi has struggled because laptop owners don’t use it, he said, predicting that BlackBerry and other cellphone users could turn the networks into moneymakers.

Vonage and Nortel are “in discussions” and “close to a resolution” of their patent fight, a Vonage spokesman told us Friday. The VoIP companies have infringement claims against each other in the U.S. District Court for Delaware and the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas. Meanwhile, Vonage moved to dismiss claims and counterclaims between itself and SBC Internet Services in the Texas court. The action satisfies a condition of the Vonage-AT&T settlement (CD Dec 28 p6).

Vonage will pay $39 million to settle with AT&T, the price it agreed in principle to pay last month (CD Nov 9 p6), a Vonage spokesman confirmed. A Securities and Exchange Commission filing is coming, he said.

One claim of a European InterDigital patent is essential to the 3G WCDMA standard by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute, but the patent’s second claim and three other patents are not, the English High Court ruled last week after reviewing a Nokia lawsuit against InterDigital. Both parties declared victory. The decision means Nokia will have to pay royalties on the InterDigital patent ruled essential, InterDigital said. And “this is the first ruling by a court of law finding any patent to be essential to the 3G standard,” said Chief Legal Officer Lawrence Shay. Nokia also said it was pleased. “The outcome of the case, pending a possible appeal, will be a declaration that the vast majority of the patents InterDigital had declared so far to ETSI as essential… are not essential,” a spokeswoman said. “It was found that one claim of one patent was essential, however, in order to do so, the judge had to interpret the claim very broadly so that it covered the standard,” she added. “This interpretation calls into question the validity of the patents, which was not an issue at the hearing… Nokia now has the option to take future legal actions to resolve these patent validity questions.” In its original July 2005 complaint Nokia asked the court to declare 31 InterDigital patents not essential to the standard. During litigation, however, the case’s scope was reduced to four.

Qualcomm faces another investigation by the International Trade Commission, which in the summer issued a limited exclusion order banning import of Qualcomm cell phone chips said to infringe Broadcom patents. Broadcom seeks “fines and additional orders against Qualcomm to finally put a stop to their infringement,” a Broadcom spokesman said. Broadcom filed a complaint last month alleging that Qualcomm had violated the ITC ban by continued marketing, testing and programming of infringing chips. Qualcomm filed an opposition this month. After reviewing the filings, the ITC found that Broadcom’s complaint complied with commission rules “for institution of a formal enforcement proceeding,” the commission said. The ITC “is not taking a position on Broadcom’s complaint and has referred it to an administrative law judge for handling,” a Qualcomm spokeswoman said. “Any time frame for handling will be set by the ALJ. In the meantime, the stay on the downstream exclusion order remains in place.” Qualcomm has a stay on the “bulk” of the ITC injunction while it appeals in the Federal Circuit U.S. Appeals Court, said Stifel Nicolaus analyst Rebecca Arbogast. However, “there was no stay in effect” that would have let Qualcomm bring in standalone chips not contained in handsets “for engineering and research purposes,” she said. “The larger lesson to be drawn… is how aggressive the legal challenges will be to any workaround that Qualcomm says it has.”