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Another Scandinavian WiFi company goes global

The Scandinavian countries were the first to allow commercial wireless LAN operations in the European area. Scandinavian companies are now emerging as the first global players in the hot-spot market, with Micsom and Wificom doing deal after deal ...

French -based Wificom, founded in Helsinki, and Finnish Miscom, are two leading WLAN software companies which have decided to join forces. Wificom is an established "wireless broadband software" supplier, and Micsom provides software for location based services.

They have announced a merger, only a month after a strategic agreement between American "mobile access" pioneer, iPass Inc, and Wificom.

In the June announcement Wificom, said that its deal with iPass "will enhance the reach of the iPass Global Broadband Roaming service by integrating Wi-Fi (802.11b) hotspot locations operated by Wificom."

Today, iPass can claim to deliver "the world's largest access network with over 100,000 broadband access points around the world."

Now the merger bbetween Wificom and Micsom "will create a leading wireless broadband service management software company in Europe," and the merged company will operate under the name of Wificom Technologies.

Wificom is only two years old, but has used those two years to develop - and test in the market - an SAB product which, it says, "is a complete solution for billing, authentication, roaming, pricing, content management and network management of hotspots."

The lesson: the Scandinavian block is also the only European region to allow third-generation mobile phone companies to set up without having to pay billions of Euros in up-front licence fees.

While the rest of Europe has been stalling on wireless advance, Swedish, Norwegian and Finnish - and Danish - companies have acquired a two-year lead - and a similar scenario is probably going to be played out in 3g wireless.

Today Wificom's clients include several service providers in Italy, France, the UK, Benelux and Turkey.

Micsom was founded in the early 2000 by Professor Olli Martikainen, a respected person in the European mobile industry and one of the pioneers behind GSM in the 80's. Micsom has invested heavily in R&D and has developed an operator-grade platform for broadband wireless operators. Micsom adds value in managing the complexities of high-speed wireless by enabling wireless access, service creation and location-based applications on top of standard networks. Micsom's clients consist of large telecom operators in Finland.

The Micsom Traffic Manager is an operator-grade solution for authentication, authorisation, and accounting (AAA) as well as traffic management. With Micsom's products a service provider can integrate different WLAN & Bluetooth Local area networks into a seamless system.

Also, they can integrate this system into multiple operations support systems and aggregate the content as a mass customised profile- and location-specific user experience. Micsom was founded by professor Olli Martikainen in 2000 and is headquartered in Helsinki, Finland.