Alcatel, Nortel Heat Up WLAN Market

With its new wireless LAN lineup, Alcatel is filling out its enterprise convergence story and paving the way for customers to add wireless voice to their IP telephony strategies, said Brian Witt, director of product marketing at Alcatel, Calabasas, Calif.

"Our goal is to deliver all the same services through voice over WLAN as we're able to deliver over digital handsets with OmniPCX [Alcatel's IP-PBX family]," Witt said.

With the new offerings, Alcatel solution providers can tap into the growing wireless opportunity by offering end-to-end solutions from the vendor, said David Carney, vice president of corporate development at Midwest Technology Services, a solution provider in Overland Park, Kan.

Customers that in the past have been standoffish about implementing wireless technology are now coming around as security features mature, Carney said.

"Ranging from small companies to Fortune 100 companies, everyone is looking at wireless," Carney said. "The sky's the limit with this stuff," he said, describing the business opportunity the new Alcatel wireless gear opens up for Midwest Technology Services.

Alcatel's new products include the OmniAccess access point, with support for 802.11b/g and 802.11 a/b/g. Other new offerings include OmniAccess 4012 and 4024 wireless LAN switches for wiring closets and the OmniAccess 4102 wireless appliance for the data center, all sourced from WLAN equipment vendor Airespace, San Jose, Calif.

The new OmniAccess line supports a "thin" access point architecture where most of the intelligence is built into the wireless switch instead of the access point itself. As a result, features such as detection of rogue users that previously required separate equipment are now consolidated onto the switch, easing network management, Witt said.

For example, the new wireless appliance and switches include software for radio frequency management that automatically detects changes in the RF environment and assigns channel and signal strength to maintain maximum coverage, he said.

The equipment also supports a full range of security protocols, including the 802.11i security standard that is awaiting ratification by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), which defines industry standards.

In addition to the new wireless infrastructure, Alcatel is launching a new line of wireless VoIP handsets sourced from SpectraLink, Boulder, Colo., including the Mobile IP Touch 300 for general office use and the Mobile IP Touch 600 ruggedized handset for industrial environments.

Available this month, Alcatel's OmniAccess 4000 switches start at $8,250, 4100 appliances start at $13,685; and 1200 access points start at $400. The Mobile IP Touch phones are slated to ship this September.

In a separate announcement, Nortel Networks said it, too, is augmenting its wireless networking and voice portfolio with products from partnerships with Airespace and SpectraLink.

The new Nortel products, which were co-developed with the two technology partners, include WLAN Security Switch 2270 and Access Ports 2230 and 2231. The security switch analyzes RF information gathered by the access ports to ensure optimum coverage and also includes security features such as rogue access point detection and containment.

New voice over WLAN products include WLAN Handsets 2210 and 2211, WLAN IP Telephony Manager 2245 for voice prioritization on the wireless network, and WLAN Application Gateway 2246, which enables standards-based third-party applications to be integrated with wireless handsets.

The new security switch is slated to ship in April starting at $10,999. Also shipping next month is the Access Port 2230, which supports 802.11 a/b/g and is priced at $599, and the Access Port 2231, which supports 802.11 b/g, and is priced at $499.

Pricing for the WLAN handsets, which are scheduled to ship in May, starts at $695; pricing for IP Telephony Manager 2245 is $2,500; and pricing for Application Gateway 2246 starts at $1,600.