The head of Huawei Communications Technologies Labs has said it will be possible to automate “the entire society” in the future as 5G wireless technology fuses with cloud computing and big data.

Dr Wen Tong made the statement in a release outlining the vendor’s vision for 5G, which it believes will emerge between 2020-2030.

Nokia Siemens Network has announced that it is working on a linearly scalable big data platform designed specially for the telecoms industry.

The platform prototype was completed in five months with the help of eight of NSN’s partners at its innovation centre in Silicon Valley and is capable of crunching one million messages a second.

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.

Openet has acquired start-up Forkstream to help operators improve network access decisions within their policy and charging infrastructures.

Forkstream's technology enables operators to define policies for routing mobile data streams within and between different access networks while ensuring a seamless user experience, according to a statement released by Openet.

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.