by Rebecca Engmann*

Frequency planning has been a mainstay of logistics in the wireless industry since the dawn of the technology. Helsingborg-based software developer ComOpt has been a leader in the field since 1997, with the introduction of CellOpt AFP, widely touted as a breakthrough innovation in the area of Automatic Frequently Planning.

"Our automatic frequency planning technology helps wireless operators optimise the performance of their networks by assigning frequencies in networks," says Conal Lewer-Allen, Technical Director at ComOpt.

This is also the aim of ComOpt's new groundbreaking Automatic Cell Planning software application, CellOpt ACP that helps wireless operators to configure their base stations. Both of these applications are also crucial timesaving mechanisms when optimising wireless networks.

"If you can make these design decisions more intelligently, you're going to see a better overall performance in your wireless networks," Lewer-Allen says.

Pure and simple

"The effect of our software for ordinary wireless users is a reduced number of dropped calls and wireless networks that simply work better. If wireless operators can design their networks more effectively, they can squeeze more capacity from their infrastructure, save money, and hopefully pass those savings on in the form of lower rates for their customers," Lewer-Allen explains.

Strategic location in the Øresund Region, renowned as a hotbed of telecom activity, has definite benefits for ComOpt.

"Being located in southern Sweden, our closest operators are Danish. We have, for example, a close collaboration with TDC. It's good to be in Sweden, thanks to our heritage with Ericsson. There's a fair amount of wireless talent in this area. And on a purely practical scale, people are eager to live in the south of the country, as opposed to being based in Stockholm. So there's a good liveability factor for our workers, in addition to our proximity to TDC," Lewer-Allen says.

A banner year in 2003

Last June, ComOpt unveiled version 3.0 of flagship product CellOpt AFP. The latest version of CellOpt AFP is used on more than 100 wireless markets, in more than 30 countries, enabling network operators to improve service quality without increasing infrastructure costs. CellOpt AFP can be installed and fully implemented in less than a week - including employee training - without the need for costly network consultants. ComOpt is growing fast. In the last two years the company has more than doubled its revenues and size.

In the coming years, ComOpt plans to continue developing software to improve network performance, helping operators to solve difficult and valuable optimisation problems. Frequency planning in the traditional sense is about to go the way of the wireless dinosaur, as second-generation GSM technology makes way for 3G, which is code-modulated rather than frequency-modulated. Despite this generational shift in wireless services, ComOpt will still be there, shifting their focus to automatic cell planning.

Late last month, the leading developer of automatic wireless network optimisation solutions opened its first-ever branch office in Tokyo, Japan, in a bid to meet the high level of demand for network solutions in northwest Asia.

"Wherever the operators go, we will simply follow and deploy our skills. It's an evolution for us to solve these problems," Lewer-Allen says.

This article was originally published by Øresund IT Magasine (nr. 4 - 2004). You can download the magazine in PDF format on Publications.

*Rebecca Engmann is an American journalist living in Copenhagen.