News: Software That Fills a Cellphone Gap

By MICHAEL FITZGERALD
Published: September 23, 2007

VANU BOSE is the son of a fabled engineer, but he garnered no mercy when he presented his big idea at a technical conference in 1996. Mr. Bose’s graduate work at M.I.T. involved using software to handle the radio function in a cellular phone. He remembers that after he successfully demonstrated his technology, an audience member stood up and dismissed it with: “Congratulations! You’ve just invented the world’s most expensive cellphone.”

Mr. Bose, a personable man, shrugged off the criticism. He expected that over time, the increasing processing speed of chips would make such phones much cheaper.

But he didn’t want to make the phones. He wanted to remake the wireless base station, the guts of the world’s cellular networks, by changing them from complex systems that incorporate hardware, software and the electronics needed for wireless communications into systems run primarily with software.

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