CAT-iq is the new global technology for broadband home connectivity and is based on the mature and reliable DECT technology where frequencies are available worldwide and regulative rules are established.
CAT-iq stands for Cordless Advanced Technology - Internet and Quality.
The CAT-iq standard supports new and exciting consumer products for wireless home communication and entertainment applications.
CAT-iq technology is able to access the Internet, to support streaming audio applications by covering the entire home with a guaranteed quality of service.
CAT-iq is a registered trademark owned by the DECT Forum.
CAT-iq offers the ease of use experience, known from the DECT products, with additional advantages.
The following seven issues are noteworthy;
Complete coverage in the home and in the garden (also familiar to DECT)
CCAT-iq, like DECT, offers coverage throughout the house and garden, whereby the connection quality keeps the same bandwidth, independent of the location of the user in the home. This is not only important for a telephone conversation, but also for IP connections.
CAT-iq is an open standard, by which the platform offers endless opportunities for designers and application developers.
CAT-iq offers a universal interface for the equipment manufacturers to Internet and IMS applications and opens the door to an unlimited field of innovations in this application field, e.g., new trends like emerging WEB2.0 applications. These kinds of applications are not restricted to telephony sets, any other device which needs cost-effective internet access throughout the home will be able to benefit from the advantages of CAT-iq.
However, CAT-iq is not designed to substitute other Internet access technologies such as WLAN; it does not offer very high volume Internet surfing; for this application the consumer should use LAN or WLAN products together with a computer. Furthermore CAT-iq is not designed to transport IP-TV and equivalent content wirelessly in the home. The focus is to embed CAT-iq into consumer products that demand simple and easy access to the Internet and full coverage in the home.
Not only the quality of the telephone call has improved, but CAT-iq offers new opportunities for audio applications in the highest quality for many applications.
Since the beginning of telephony in the year 1908 the voice quality has been limited to the bandwidth of 300 Hertz to 3400 Hertz; since then the industry has worked on continuous enhancement of the telephony equipment, but the voice quality has always been limited to the bandwidth of the fixed line.
With the CAT-iq technology and because telephony applications are now beginning to be connected to a broadband network, the voice quality will enter a new stage. And with the introduction of the broadband era to the telephony application field also new applications and form factors for telephony equipment will enter the home, one example is speakerphones with a design and feature set like expensive conference systems but without the expense.
It is not necessary to turn the system on if you want to use it. Like the DECT telephone the system is always on. If you want to connect to internet, the user doesn't have to wait for the system to start up. Direct access and no waiting time.
With the IP connectivity next to telephone connection, new applications are possible.
therefore the following categories have been developed:
The Internet gateways, Internet access devices and VoIP base stations, which provide access to the Internet, to the fixed line telephone network, to the home computer network and to value added services.
The terminals: cordless phones, hands free speaking systems, Internet radios, in-home audio distribution devices, additional but as yet unknown product categories which provide the applications and the services to the consumer.
The terminals themselves can be classified into further sub-categories;
The profile “Wideband voice with basic interoperability”, which is suited to cost-effective cordless phones with basic telephony services and a minimum set of supplementary services.
The profile “Internet data and audio streaming”, which is suited to products which need direct access to the Internet for appropriate applications and which need appropriate mechanisms to stream audio in real-time, an Internet radio for example would need this profile.
The profile “Wideband voice with extended interoperability” for cordless telephony applications which provide a wider range of supplementary services.
The profile “Intelligent networking” (in) to support auto-configuration and self-administration features to make the products very easy to handle by the consumers.
A profile “Home Control” which enables low power devices to also operate in the CAT-iq network and to follow Home Control tasks like switching lights or lowering shutters from abroad.
A profile which describes the “Adapted Power Control” of a product, this may be one feature of an existing profile or the introduction of an own, small profile.
“Just works” and “Plug & Play” are frequently used keywords in the consumer product business without meeting the most important consumer requirement: A good consumer product has to be intuitively operational; a strong market requirement to networking devices is that these devices find each other and configure themselves without extensive user interaction. CAT-iq includes new technologies and procedures to administer and configure a CAT-iq based network, so that the consumer is not bothered with inquiries he cannot understand.
End-users, consumers are looking for contributions in improving the environment in their own familiar surroundings and it is a matter of course that an innovative technology considers this demand; CAT-iq supports this with Adapted Power Control. This feature is mandatory in the new CAT-iq Technology.
The adapted power control is a feature which adjusts the level of power to a minimal level which is required for reliable, High Quality communication.
Market size
CAT-iq predecessor DECT has more than 600 Million devices in the market today, CAT-iq itself will address opportunities on top of that creating a mass market.
Technology
The CAT-iq technology offers efficient, affordable, robust and reliable radio chipsets which are context aware and therefore well adopted to their use, but at the same time the chips offer space for further innovative challenges and improvements such as integration.
Since CAT-iq is based on the mature and worldwide available DECT technology, it adopts the advantages of this technology: guaranteed quality of service, backward compatibility to installed DECT base, battery lifetime, range, intuitive use, further features as known from cordless phones, and scalability.
