NextWave’s latest effort: Mobile TV over WiMAX: Company’s new MXtv technology leverages its IPWireless acquisition

NextWave Wireless Inc. plans to introduce today broadcast technology that will give WiMAX operators the ability to deliver multimedia services like mobile TV and digital audio over their networks.
NextWave’s new MXtv technology is compatible with the 802.16e standard, the company said.
The company said its MXtv technology will be a standard feature on its future WiMAX infrastructure products. In addition, NextWave said it signed a joint development agreement with Huawei Technologies USA that calls for Huawei to integrate MXtv into its WiMAX products.
MXtv supports up to 30 frames per second of video, and provides up to 45 mobile TV channels in 10 MHz, said NextWave. The technology also allows carriers to dynamically allocate spectrum based on content availability, time of day, user demand and live events.
NextWave’s new MXtv product is based on technology the company acquired through its $100 million purchase of IPWireless Inc. last year. IPWireless sold TD-CDMA network technology as well as TDtv mobile TV technology. TDtv, which is based on the Multimedia Broadcast Multicast Service standard, allows cellular carriers to broadcast TV content through the data channels of their existing networks. NextWave’s new MXtv technology is the WiMAX iteration.
Interestingly, NextWave’s MXtv’s product is just one of a long string of efforts the company is currently juggling, stretching from network infrastructure to software to silicon.
NextWave began its long journey in the wireless industry by bidding for PCS spectrum in the 1990s, and eventually went bankrupt due to the cost of the spectrum. The company’s spectrum licenses were held up in courts for years, and the issue managed to wind its way to the Supreme Court. NextWave eventually sold off its spectrum licenses to Verizon Wireless for around $3 billion, and has been using the proceeds from that sale to fund its new efforts in the wireless industry.
In recent months, NextWave has been working to combine its various acquisitions — from IPWireless to Go Networks to PacketVideo — into one single platform. Further, the company now plans to put much of its resources behind the burgeoning LTE network standard.