Alcatel has followed up its wireline IP BellSouth win with a major next-generation deal on the wireless side, announcing its subsidiary Spatial Wireless has been selected to provide the voice core for Cingular’s new UMTS network. Alcatel today also announced it was expanding its reach into next-generation fixed wireless, signing an OEM deal with Alvarion for WiMax gear and network trials with key European operators.

While Alcatel is not one of Cingular’s three selected vendors for the nationwide UMTS and high-speed downlink packet access (HSDPA) rollout, Siemens has contracted with Alcatel to supply Spatial’s distributed mobile switching center for its portion of the deployment. Called Spatial Atrium, the solution is a distributed mobile architecture with a centralized call server that combines all switching logic and management in one location and uses multiple intelligent gateways to handle local traffics in each market. Those gateways in turn keep local traffic local, instead of backhauling all calls back to a regional MSC. The architecture supports the voice-over-packet traffic of the new UMTS network, while handling the legacy ATM switching of Siemens currently deployed GSM network, all over a common core, Spatial officials said.

The win has more significance than its size, however. It marks Alcatel’s entry into the North American wireless market after years of being pigeonholed as a wireline access and transport vendor in the U.S. Just Tuesday, Alcatel was named one of the primary vendors for BellSouth’s next generation network build, supplying IP DSLAMs and it’s media gateways to power the carrier’s IP video rollout. In the wireless arena though, Alcatel’s North American wins have been confined to transport contracts. Since it’s acquisition of core network provider Spatial in December, Alcatel has greatly boosted its portfolio, gaining both Spatial’s distributed switching architecture and its IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) technology.

Alcatel plans to use the Siemens/Cingular win as a launch point into other North American carrier relationships, making it a viable contender for both core and access technology, said Pardeep Kohli, Alcatel’s senior vice president for mobile next generation networks and former CEO and co-founder of Spatial.

“That’s really our goal,” Kohli said. “In a few years if there is an RFP out there for a whole network, Alcatel provide that whole network, supplied either entirely by Alcatel are partly through our partners.”

In addition to its traditional GSM portfolio, Alcatel’s long partnership with Fujitsu produced its UMTS line. But Kohli said Alcatel would be promoting numerous access technologies, including WiMax.

Alcatel’s agreement with Alvarion makes the broadband wireless vendor’s BreezeMax 802.16-2004 basestation line a central component of Alcatel’s WiMax strategy. The two vendors have been conducting pilot programs of Alvarion’s pre-certified gear with two European entities: the RATP, a public transit agency in Paris and TDF, a French broadcast service provider.

The OEM deal is Alvarion’s third for WiMax, having announced agreements with Siemens for 802.16-2004 (formerly 802.16d) and with Lucent Technologies for 802.16e, the mobile evolution of WiMax. Vice president of marketing Carlton O’Neal said that the Alvarion is testing its WiMax equipment with several other large vendors, and Alvarion will announce more OEM deals in the future.

“Our dream would be to that the Alvarion platform would become the predominant product in the market,” O’Neal said. “Mainstream adoption of the standard involves very large deals with carriers. When the large providers go into WiMax it will be through OEMs.”

While Alvarion has been selling its BreezeMax gear commercially, it’s still awaiting certification from the WiMax Forum. The Forum has pushed its certification and interoperability trials up to this summer, shortly after which Alvarion plans to release the certified version of its base station.