Kineto Wireless and Texas Instruments Collaborate on UMA

Kineto Wireless announced it is working with Texas Instruments to enable UMA support on TI's OMAP-Vox platform. The collaboration will allow mobile handset manufacturers to quickly develop UMA-enabled Microsoft Windows Mobile smartphones and UMA-enabled feature phones based on the TI OMAPV1030 GSM/GPRS/EDGE solution.

"Operator demand for UMA-enabled handsets continues to grow rapidly," said Avner Goren, marketing director of Texas Instruments Cellular Systems Solutions. "With its proven track record in UMA, Kineto helped deliver a combined solution based on TI's OMAPV1030 processor to meet handset manufacturers' needs."

Part of TI's OMAP-Vox product family, the OMAPV1030 processor is a highly integrated and optimized GSM/GPRS/EDGE solution. Both companies plan to extend the UMA collaboration to other operating systems and potentially other TI mobile handset platforms.

"We are delighted to be collaborating with Texas Instruments on UMA technology," said Mark Powell, vice president of the client business unit and co-founder of Kineto Wireless. "TI is a leading supplier of baseband platforms to handset vendors and partnering to leverage the excellent OMAPV1030 processor is a tremendous way to help the mobile handset industry satisfy the growing operator demand for more UMA devices."

Unlicensed Mobile Access (UMA) technology is the 3GPP global standard for fixed/mobile convergence. UMA enables secure, scalable access to mobile voice, data and IMS services over broadband IP access networks. The most well known application of UMA technology is dual-mode cellular/Wi-Fi handsets, which enable subscribers to automatically roam and handover between cellular networks, public and private WLANs. Leading operators around the world have embraced UMA technology as part of a fixed-mobile convergence strategy, including Telecom Italia, France Telecom/Orange and TeliaSonera.