Israel-based Wi-Fi vendor Wavion Inc. is moving on to U.S. turf with a new line of 802.11n base stations, designed to bring Gigabit capacity and 450Mbit/s speeds in outdoor areas, and promising service providers a 50 percent reduction in capital and operating expenditures compared to competing Wi-Fi offload systems.

"Wi-Fi emerged from the enterprise, indoor market," says Wavion CEO Tal Meirzon. "They just put an indoor [base station] outside, but people who want to design a real outdoor system have real challenges."

The main challenge in the outdoors is interference, and Wavion gets around that by combining adaptive beamforming technology and Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) technologies. Its boxes also support SIM-based authentication for a seamless handoff from the wireless network.

The company is also touting its Interference Immunity Suite, which is what it calls a series of unique capabilities that make the platform robust enough for the outdoors and easily installed on cell towers, poles and rooftops.

Why this matters
More wireless operators are turning to Wi-Fi to ease the strain of traffic on their network, and they have their pick of vendors from which to choose. Wavion isn't as well known in the U.S. as competitors like BelAir Networks Inc. and Ruckus Wireless Inc. , but it's hoping to make its mark by focusing on outdoor carrier installations. It already has customers in the U.S. in the muni-Wi-Fi market, and the company says it's in trials with operators for its new base stations.

Given how much ground they have to cover, wireless operators may be choosing more than one vendor to work with on Wi-Fi offload. Both AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T) and Verizon Wireless , for example, are plotting large Wi-Fi deployments even as they deploy Long Term Evolution (LTE) networks.

For more
Check out our new Mobile Internet Offload Briefing Center and the following stories for more.

— Sarah Reedy, Senior Reporter, Light Reading Mobile