Embedded SIM technology will account for 83 percent of the total revenues generated by the global connected car market over the next five years, according to new research.

Global shipments of cars with embedded mobile technology are expected to reach 36 million in 2018, with Europe accounting for 49 percent of the market.

The UK’s incumbent operator BT has announced a new suite of solutions targeted at helping enterprises deal with the BYOD problem, particularly focusing in on Wi-Fi and wireless LAN device connections.

The market for NFC mobile payments is slowly growing alongside the burgeoning roll-outs of NFC-enabled handsets, NFC-ready Point of Sale (POS) terminals and Trusted Service Manager (TSM) solutions.

According to research from Berg Insight, NFC mobile wallet services are now commercially live in 13 countries as of the end of March 2013.

Wireless network solutions provider Altobridge has launched a platform at the Small Cells World Summit that enables multi-layered caching both at the base station and on subscribers’ mobile devices, to aid operators in freeing up their core macrocell radio access networks.

Altobridge’s Data-at-the-edge software enables operators to provide content at the edge of their networks together with help from Intel’s low-power single and multi-core Atom processors, which can be placed in small cells as well as in the Management Gateway located in the core network.

RAN analytics vendor Actix is recommending that operators should take a new approach and issue network traffic reports to subscribers in order to ease congestion and boost customer satisfaction rates.

In a statement, Actix claimed that in most major cities, 45,000 voice calls are generated per square kilometre and 800,000 3G data connections are made each day.

Nokia Siemens Networks is collaborating with MediaTek to help operators to reduce the spectral capacity required on GSM networks when refarming spectrum to LTE and WCDMA.

Specifically, the two companies are implementing Orthogonal Sub-Channel (OSC) support for Voice services over Adaptive Multi-user channels on One Slot (VAMOS) handsets.

New research is proving how Wi-Fi is becoming increasingly important this year as operators look to offload more data traffic and develop next-gen carrier-grade Wi-Fi offerings to better monetise data.

Mobile operators will offload almost 50 percent of data traffic generated by smartphones, tablets and other 3G/4G devices to Wi-Fi and small cell networks in 2013, according to Juniper Research’s new report “Mobile Data Offload & Onload: Wi-Fi, Small Cell & Carrier-Grade Strategies 2012-2017”.

T-Mobile Netherlands has selected transaction management software vendor Openet to provide its charging platform for mobile services.

Openet’s “Evolved Charging” solution promises a flexible catalogue of mobile services, enabling operators to quickly define and launch dynamic pricing models, innovative device plans and support comprehensive combinations of services for its pre-paid and post-paid subscribers.

Austrian operator A1 Telekom Austria has conducted a successful demonstration of LTE Advanced aggregation using base station technology provided by Ericsson and Nokia Siemens Networks, as the operator prepares to bring ultra-fast mobile broadband to the home of the edelweiss.

A1 has already made the first development stage of the LTE standard available over the last two years, enabling its subscribers to enjoy data speeds of up to 150Mbps per cell.

                                         At a press briefing announcing that it has reached the 500,000 customer mark for its 4G LTE services, UK operator EE poured scorn onto its competitors’ efforts to roll out the next gen technology and hinted about expanding its network to cover major transport routes.

EE’s director of network integration and LTE Mansoor Hanif said that while EE respects its competition, he had doubts that other operators realise how hard it is to successfully roll out 4G LTE services in the UK.

Qualcomm Atheros has announced an integrated 3G/4G LTE small cells processor portfolio designed for pico, metro and enterprise small cells, as part of a big push into the network infrastructure market.

The vendor’s new FSM99xx portfolio features 28 nanometre chipsets and software designed to support operators’ concurrent 3G and 4G networks, dual carrier 4G with carrier aggregation, as well as hosting advanced Wi-Fi capabilities.

The global Wireless LAN (WLAN) equipment market, which has seen continuous growth over the last three years, is seeing a rare dip in market share as the industry transitions to centrally managed WLAN architectures.

In the first quarter of 2013, the WLAN market, which includes enterprise access points, WLAN controllers and Wi-Fi phones, declined by 7 percent to €767 million, according to Infonetics.