Start-up Drives Convergence Of Fixed, Mobile PhonesStart-up Drives Convergence Of Fixed, Mobile Phones

LONDON — Wireless start-up Stoke Inc. has come out of stealth mode with its plans for an IP service delivery platform for converged fixed and mobile networks. The Mountain View, California based company also announced it has secured $20 million in Series B funding in an oversubscribed round, bringing the total funding for the company to $30 million.

Investors in the Series B round include some of the biggest names in venture capital financing, including existing backers Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Sequoia Capital, as well as new investors Integral Capital Partners, Pilot House Ventures and Presidio STX, LLC.

The company admits significant challenges must be overcome to deliver secure and reliable "anyone anywhere" services with seamless mobility across fixed and wireless networks, and suggests its IP service delivery platform addresses these challenges with a scalable, carrier-class solution.

Several start-ups are also targeting the still ill-defined fixed-mobile convergence scene, including Kineto, Newstep Networks, BridgePort Networks and Netmotion Wireless, while some operators worldwide, including BT in the U.K., some in South Korea and France Telecom are already trialing the service and the converged handsets from companies such as Motorola.

The Stoke platform, currently in operator trials, transforms disparate networks into a single virtual IP network, simplifying service delivery to any device. The architecture is said to meet worldwide industry standards, including 3GPP/IMS and 3GPP2/MMD, ETSI/TIPSAN and CableLab's PCMM specifications.

Stoke is targeting fixed and mobile operators as well as new market entrants including VoIP providers. The company says its platform will be generally available in the first half of 2006. Randall Kruep, founder and CEO of Stoke said fixed mobile convergence needs a one big network solution “that can scale to support very large numbers of dynamic, secure multimedia sessions and seamlessly mobilize those sessions across various access networks as people move or as carrier operational realities dictate."