Microsoft prepares Zune Phone to rival iPhone

On Monday, Microsoft filed a mystery application with the FCC for an enigmatic wireless device that could be used to talk over the Internet. Sounds like a VoiP device, right?Not really. The device is described as being used for “consumer broadband access and networking,†which doesn’t sound like vanilla VoIP to me. Microsoft goes on to say that the device would use OFDM as its communications protocol, not WiFi or Bluetooth. Well, why not? The standard OFDM (orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing) is a modulation scheme that is used widely in upcoming 4G standards of the future. But with wireless access gaining momentum, and the all-around arms race for bandwidth, 4G starts to make sense, in a crazy, crazy kind of way.

The idea of a next-gen, high-bandwidth capable phone sounded to these ears like the Zune Phone, so we did some poking, called some sources, and waded into the wonderful world of Zune. One thing led to another, and we’ve determined that there is a whole lot more going on at Bear Creek in Redmond than we figured.

Read More…

10 February 2007 in News | Comments enabled