BRAMPTON – SCTE’s Ontario chapter continues its string of well-attended events with this past Tuesday’s wireless seminars, followed by a golf tournament attracted nearly 200 cable technologists to Lionhead Golf and Country Club in Brampton, Ont. 
Paul Rayment of Strategic Wireless (right) presented a deep technical introduction to wireless standards from Wi-Fi, WiMAX, Bluetooth, Ultra WideBand (UWB) as well as others. The session identified spectrum allocations available as well as the properties and the pros and cons of each band including issues like EIRP (effective isotropic radiated power). Rayment has a long history in wireless and was once director of engineering at Industry Canada.
Derek Bailey, director of customer systems engineering for Alcatel Canada talked about Wi-MAX deployment strategies. He talked a bit about RBOC deployments in U.S. and how MSOs can enhance their service offerings and expand their footprints faster and more economically than traditional HFC deployments by leveraging WiMAX technologies. 
For example, down the road, he said he envisioned MSOs installing not necessarily fibre nodes to serve the last miles, but wireless nodes.
Bailey (right) talked about opportunities to serve small businesses and covered hypothetical operating expenditure and capital expenditures (and expected payback time frames) along with the means by which WiMAX can be integrated into the existing cable infrastructure. He also talked about the similarities between WiMAX and DOCSIS, with an emphasis on Quality of Service, wireless security and bandwidth allocation.
Nikos Katinakis, CTO of Ericsson Canada (right) focused on the convergence of wireless and cable services and what the customer is doing, and not necessarily in North America. Katinakis talked about IMS, too (not instant messaging service, but IP Multimedia Subsystem), specifically the IMS standardization work which enables new converged voice and data services to permit interoperability between subscribers over the two networks will be covered as well as the next steps and challenges for eventual deployment in North America.
He talked applications, too, such as a video soap opera running right now on television in Sweden where viewers can use the TVs and mobile phones to interact with the program and become the star’s next boyfriend. 
In Italy, customers pay for something called the 93rd minute, said Katinakis (right). For a few extra dollars a month, customers can access soccer highlights from the most recent matches a mere three minutes after the game is finished. The images are delivered on the wireless network but the IMS goal is to deliver such content on whatever network is most efficient.
The next SCTE gathering will be its VOIP training seminar, Wednesday and Thursday, October 5 and 6, 2005. The last VOIP seminar sold out in a real hurry, so keep tabs on registration (which isn’t yet available) at www.scte-ontario.com.
