Bridgewater Enables Over-The-Air WiMAX Provisioning

Bridgewater Systems announced an Over-The-Air Provisioning (OTA) solution, which enables service providers to provision devices on WiMAX networks, at the Mobile World Congress. The solution, which was created in conjunction with Open Mobile Alliance Device Management (OMA-DM)-compliant servers, recognizes when subscribers and devices are on the network and enables access to WiMAX services. The OTA solution is beneficial to device vendors who support an open network model. In traditional networks, devices are sold and provisioned by network operators or their partners. Some device vendors, however, plan to support an open model in which WiMAX-enabled devices are offered without a direct relationship to a specific service provider. The solution offers a dynamic view of all subscribers and devices on the network and a scalable approach to identify, register, track, and update the devices that will be connected to WiMAX networks. "Over-the-air provisioning is a key service control capability for WiMAX service providers who want to introduce new business models and light touch services based on open access," Farshid Mohammadi, vice president of product line management at Bridgewater Systems, said in a statement. The solution processes subscriber requests to access the WiMAX network to determine identity, determines if a device should be given network access, and decides if the device requires registration or a firmware upgrade. Its real-time subscriber context database shares dynamic data like location, presence, IP address, roaming status, and registration status with the OMA-DM server. Bridgewater is currently working with a number of device management platform vendors and is implementing the solution with a number of WiMAX service providers.