Motorola to acquire Winphoria

BANGALORE: Motorola has announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Winphoria Networks and plans to integrate it into its Global Telecom Solutions Sector (GTSS) business unit in an all cash transaction. The completion of the acquisition is subject to customary closing and regulatory conditions and is expected to occur in the second quarter.

This is an important development as Winphoria, started in March 2000 by founded by Murali Aravamudan and Shamim Naqvi, pioneers of soft-switch technology at Lucent Technologies, built a next generation MSC (Main Switching Centre) that is a Linux-based soft switch and proposed to offer the advantage of better handling of mobile calls and cost-effectiveness.

The technology marvel was that some of the mobile-to-mobile calls could be handled without voice coding and decoding each time. And service providers could add new MSCs without disrupting the legacy infrastructure. Seeing this strength, Motorola GTSS had announced an OEM agreement with Winphoria in August 2002. Through that relationship the first commercial trial of the Winphoria soft-switch, branded the Motorola Soft-Switch (MSS) began in Asia.

CDMA 1X network customer trials are underway in North America and Asia, with limited commercial introduction slated for June 2003. Though Winphoria"s solution was for wireless CDMA technology, it had plans to develop the GSM MSC. It also had the application called "Push to Talk", where mobile users can have closed-user-group walkie-talkie like conversations.

This acquisition will provide Motorola with additional capability to deliver on its strategy to provide complete networks to support operators_ 2.5 Generation (2.5G) -- 3rd Generation (3G) systems worldwide. GTSS will increase its technology capability, enabling it to develop better choices for cost-effective, enhanced featured mobile switching center solutions.

Winphoria had about 125 engineers worldwide and about 45 of them were in the India development center and was an equal and integral component of the US Development organization with the same type of development work and the similar standards for technical competency of employees.

The CEO of Winphoria India, Dr M Giridhar Krishna, had quit the organization a couple of months before this development and the employees were reporting to the US office directly. The company had $50 million in funding in two rounds from Matrix Partners, North Bridge Venture Partners, Norwest Venture Partners, Amerindo Investment Advisors Inc.