Brand announces enhancements to the Apollo product range to address the GPRS market

Brand has proved to the world that today’s circuit-switched GSM Data services are not only useable but viable for large-scale deployment

Brand has done this by applying unique facilities such as spoofing, compression, session management, call recovery and security, and has turned a complex system into an off-the-shelf and simple-to-use service. Brand is committed to maintaining this lead with a range of solutions for the emerging GPRS market. Brand has already received 5 contracts to deliver value-added GPRS solutions to network operators, which is a sure sign that Brand will do for GPRS what it has done so successfully for 9600bps circuit-switched data.

Brand’s GPRS knowledge comes from close partnerships with the GSM networks, chairmanship of several of the ETSI and standards committees on GPRS and 3G, and membership of organisations such as the Mobile Data Association, Mobile Applications Alliance and GSM Association. Brand is therefore well positioned to develop the kinds of services that real GPRS users will adopt.

Those 5 networks (all under strict Non-Disclosure Agreement at this stage) have realised that GPRS is only a bearer service. It is by no means an end-to-end solution that could be adopted by corporate users, and it has many technical issues that will slow down its acceptance by the market. Those networks have realised that the capabilities of GPRS are lacking in areas such as IP address management, security, context management, resource utilisation, ease of use by the client, throughput, and delivery of connectivity to the corporate LAN. Brand will overcome these by the application of spoofing (to reduce traffic across the network and to drop inactive contexts), compression (to maximise throughput), tunneling and VPN (for enhanced security), authentication and IP address management (to satisfy the most stringent corporate organisation), call recovery (to take care of lost or dropped contexts), a foolproof client (to seamlessly drive the GPRS device), and there will be a range of host connectivity options to extend the GPRS network securely into the LAN or internet.

In addition, everyone in the industry accepts that initially customers will want to retain their use of circuit-switched data, and there will be a gradual migration to GPRS. Many customers will want to be able to choose between the two technologies dependent upon network availability, bandwidth and application characteristics. Brand’s Apollo solution will offer seamless switching between both bearer services – during a single session – either by user choice or based on criteria. This will give customers the ability to venture into GPRS whilst retaining existing technology, and will give them a future-proofed path and maximum choice.

These new contracts for Brand will ensure that Apollo does for GPRS what it has done so successfully for today’s data service – it will turn it into a deliverable for corporates and consumers alike.