SK Telecom Selects Staccato Communications as Partner to Deliver the First Worldwide Deployment of Ultra Wideband WPAN Mobile Phone Services

SK Telecom Selects Staccato Communications as Partner to Deliver the First Worldwide Deployment of Ultra Wideband WPAN Mobile Phone Services

SK Telecom’s Selection Validates Staccato’s Leadership Vision for Low-Cost UWB Solutions with the Industry’s Only Single-Chip, All-CMOS Devices

Staccato Communications and SK Telecom, the largest mobile phone and broadband operator in Korea, today unveiled plans for the global delivery of Ultra Wideband (UWB) wireless personal area network (WPAN) mobile phone services. The adoption of UWB by one of the largest and most innovative mobile carriers today will result in a host of new mobile handset applications. SK Telecom selected Staccato for the company’s leadership in UWB silicon and for the competitive advantages inherent in the company’s Ripcord™ single-chip, all CMOS-based family of solutions. As a result of this partnership, customers, for the first time, will be provided with increased choices for content delivery from access points, connecting mobile phones to larger displays (PC, TV, Auto), connecting mobile phones to the PC ecosystem, and sharing profiles and content from one user to another through personal area social networking (PASN).

Services developed and launched by SK Telecom and Staccato will be standardized and offered worldwide to other operators after initial launch in Korea. With this introduction of UWB WPAN mobile phone services, customers will have expanded options and bandwidth for entertainment content delivery to their mobile devices. This means that users will now experience mobile social networking by communicating directly with other mobile users or from kiosks at 480Mbps. As a result, individuals will be able to connect based on one another’s proximity. This milestone marks the beginning of a revolution in the mobile handset market by employing WiMedia ultra wideband technology for 480Mbps WPAN connections.

With the choice of the WiMedia Common Radio Platform as the foundation for the project, SK Telecom and Staccato are developing together applications using several protocols. This benefit is enabled by Staccato’s PIK™ MAC (Medium Access Control) technology, which is a Protocol Independent Kernel, based on a custom implementation of hardware acceleration and ARM9 software control. This patent-pending technology enables the simultaneous operation of Certified Wireless USB, WiNet, Bluetooth 3.0 and other potential protocols at speeds up to 480Mbps. Products will initially launch with WiMedia radios using spectrum below 6GHz (band group 1, band 3) and add above-6GHz operation when the WiMedia Alliance completes the certification process for these bands.

“The SK Telecom–Staccato announcement is significant for at least three reasons. First, it signals adoption of UWB in mobile handsets much sooner than anyone had anticipated. Second, it shatters the assumption that a mobile carrier is not willing to use UWB products operating below 6GHz. Lastly, but perhaps most importantly, the value of the UWB applications and services envisioned by SK Telecom looks like it could be very high and very beneficial to both the users and the carriers,” said Fiona Thomson, market analyst, IMS Research.

“SK Telecom is known as the most innovative and aggressive mobile operator in the world due to our history of not only bringing new mobile features to market before our competitors, but also defining such new features that other operators quickly adopt. Staccato is instrumental in furthering this vision by offering the solution that meets our requirements of price, high bandwidth and low power. In order to successfully deploy these mobile devices, we needed a solution based on single-chip CMOS. Staccato is the only company that has accomplished that product design with their Ripcord low-cost, small form-factor wireless solutions,” said Dr. Jong Tae Ihm, vice president and head of the Mobile Device & Access Network R&D Center for SK Telecom.

“From the beginning, Staccato knew that single-chip CMOS was the only viable option to achieve the cost, power and space profile required by handheld products like cell phones, and this endorsement from a major mobile carrier further validates our early path and Ripcord device family. As one of the architects behind the WiMedia PHY and MAC, WiNet and Certified Wireless USB specifications, SK Telecom recognizes that we have the relevant UWB leadership expertise to offer,” said Marty Colombatto, chairman and CEO for Staccato Communications. “With the mobile handset market representing nearly one billion units worldwide annually, the decision of SK Telecom to adopt the WiMedia Common Radio Platform means a tremendous boost to the potential market for WiMedia applications and Staccato in particular. The impact of this will not remain limited to one application, but will bring an entire array of new features and applications to the mobile customer.”

For the first phase, a Korean-based, leading manufacturer of handsets worldwide will be the handset developer for the new WiMedia UWB handsets.

For Additional Information

For more detailed information on mobile usage models, creating new revenue opportunities and enhancing subscriber loyalty, see the Staccato companion whitepaper, “Leveraging Ultra Wideband (UWB) Technology to Enable Next-Generation Handset-Centric Applications,” at http://staccatocommunications.com/papers/UWB_enables_new_handset_ applications.pdf. For a photo of UWB-enabled mobile solutions, visit http://staccatocommunications.com/press/photos/UWB_enabled_mobile.jpg. (Due to its length, the URL above may need to be copied/pasted into your Internet browser’s address field. Remove the extra space if one exists.)

Staccato’s UWB University will feature a live and on-demand free online webinar that will look at where UWB wireless comes into play, providing standards-based, high-bandwidth, multi-protocol capabilities, with the flexibility for auto-discovery and connection with a variety of peer-to-peer and/or local server-based networks. The event will take place on January 17, 2007, at 1:00 p.m. PST. To pre-register for the course, visit www.uwb-u.com. Archived viewing will be up within 24 hours of the live event.

About Staccato Communications’ Products

Based on the WiMedia Alliance’s UWB common radio platform and the Certified Wireless USB specification from the USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF), Ripcord is a single-chip, all-CMOS solution implemented in a complete, fully integrated System-In-Package (SiP) using leading 110nm digital CMOS process technology. Ripcord’s high level of integration minimizes design risk, lowers system cost and accelerates customers’ time-to-market by consolidating all hardware and software components necessary to implement a solution based on 480Mbps Certified Wireless USB. For more information, please visit www.staccatocommunications.com.

About SK Telecom

SK Telecom is Korea’s leading mobile communications company, with more than 20 million subscribers. SK Telecom successfully commercialized the world’s first CDMA cellular phone service and launched the world’s first IMT-2000 third-generation service. The company is listed on the Korean Stock Exchange, the New York Stock Exchange and the London Stock Exchange. For more information about SK Telecom, please visit www.sktelecom.com or email at press {at} sktelecom(.)com.

Staccato and Ripcord are trademarks of Staccato Communications. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
Contacts

Staccato Contact:
The Ardell Group
Taryn Unruh, 858-792-4963
taryn {at} ardellgroup(.)com