Group dialogue

Motorola’s proprietary group communications technology iDEN has been largely successful across the Americas and in parts of Asia, without ever having taken Europe, the Middle East, or Africa by storm. Razi Sayyed, Motorola Solutions’ iDEN MEA regional account manager believes that is about to change with particular reference to Africa, where he believes significant potential for adoption exists

Razi Sayyed is excited about extending iDEN’s footprint to a new continent for the first time

“I am confident nearer the end of the year I will be able to discuss more concrete plans for iDEN in Africa,” says Razi Sayyed, visibly excited about extending the technology’s  footprint to a new continent. “I have been in meetings all over the continent and have had the opportunity to discuss the value that iDEN brings to end-customers. That is what we are competing on, value.”

In the context of the Middle East and Africa region iDEN has had light exposure, having primarily been rolled out in Saudi Arabia and Jordan. The Jordanian operation, which was branded Xpress, is no longer operational, though Sayyed explains that its difficulties were related more to the business case and strategy adopted by the operator’s owners and management, rather than the technology itself.

In terms of iDEN’s technical performance, there really are no viable alternative technologies that rival its sub-one second push-to-talk (PTT) capabilities. Sayyed refers to iDEN as the ‘gold standard’ PTT service for which substitutes such as PTT-over-cellular (PoC) just cannot compete.

“You must understand that iDEN is used in mission critical circumstances when the reliability of the communications cannot be comprised, and the speed of responses is paramount,” Sayyed says.” In this environment no other technology can deliver what iDEN does. PoC is fine in social environments when a group of friends don’t mind a five or six second delay in the relay of communications, but in most enterprise situations, this is not acceptable.”

In the markets in which iDEN has enjoyed the most success across the Americas, its winning formula has been a focus on a mass communications enterprise niche, which yields tremendous loyalty and high average revenue per user (ARPU) as compared to the traditional cellular operators in the market.

“In Mexico for example, the ARPU for the iDEN operator is consistently around three times higher than the GSM operators,” Sayyed reveals.

Prior to its merger with Sprint in 2005, US iDEN operator Nextel was the poster child of iDEN technology, posting ARPUs significantly higher than those being achieved by its cellular counterparts. The creation of Sprint Nextel and the technology quandary the combined entity has since been faced with, in respect to phasing out iDEN in favour of CDMA, WiMAX and LTE, has comprised the lustre of iDEN as a business case in the US. However, in a similar way that the difficulties faced by Xpress in Jordan are more closely related to strategic decisions taken rather than the quality and potential of the technology, iDEN’s lowered profile in the US is down to changes in the strategic direction and leadership at the operator level.

“I believe most people who look at the Sprint Nextel deal in hindsight would agree that mistakes were made and things could have been done differently,” Sayyed says. “However, what that situation created is an opportunity for growth to be driven in international markets, and in my personal opinion I think we should have looked at Africa a long time ago,” he adds.

The scope and appeal of iDEN towards emerging markets is expanding all the time. Devices are priced competitively enough to make them largely affordable to the majority of enterprise users interested in utilising the technology. New iDEN devices are Android based, with iDEN/GSM devices already in use today, iDEN/UMTS chipsets already in production, and iDEN/LTE ones being contemplated. PTT-over-WiFi is also under development, and this continued expansion into wider radio interfaces only serves to increase the technology’s usability and attractiveness.

Countries around the world in which iDEN has been deployed

US Canada Colombia

Saudi Arabia India China

Singapore Guam El Salvador

Guatemala Ecuador Japan

Argentina Brazil Chile

Mexico Peru Philippines

Puerto Rico South Korea Morocco

Jordan

Source: Comm. research

As iDEN’s international footprint expands it raises the benefits to be garnered by end-users from roaming, given costs are predictable, transparent, and most positively, can be completed at the cost of domestic calls.

Given the proprietary nature of the technology, the R&D burden falls squarely on Motorola Solutions’ shoulders, though Sayyed believes the manner in which iDEN is evolved and implemented has as much to do with Motorola as it does its operator partners. The fact that network operators essentially have a choice of only one infrastructure supplier means that both parties need to be confident of the prospects of the business before any long-term commitments are made.

“Our success is directly linked to the success of our operator partners, perhaps more so than in any other vendor-operator relationship because of the one-to-one nature of the interactions,” Sayyed says. “We’re not in the business of providing vendor financing or investing in equity, but we do work very closely with our operator partners, and their success translates into our success, and the success of the technology,” he adds.

Thus Sayyed’s main message is iDEN is a technology that still has very healthy legs on it, and enjoys unwavering support from Motorola, with the vendor being contractually obligated to support it in the decades to come as a result of ongoing deployments it has in place.

“Asia, the Middle East and Africa, the US and Latin America are all really good actual and potential markets for iDEN,” Sayyed concludes. “In some of these markets I believe if regulators permitted innovative revenue sharing models with respect to spectrum payment so that operators are not saddled with huge upfront costs, this would be to everyone’s advantage. Such a system exists in Singapore and iDEN has been successful there.”