Patent Box legislation could change outlook for European telecoms companies

06 February 2012
Posted in News Analysis

"Businesses would be well advised to begin planning now in order to determine whether and how to add Patent Box to their profit-making armoury."

UK legislation of patent tax structure has implications for European telecoms companies, say Laura Hoyland and Jeremy Morton, of CMS Cameron McKenna LLP.

A final consultation on the UK’s draft ‘Patent Box’ legislation will close on 10th February. Patent Box is the government’s proposed tax relief regime designed to encourage technology innovation and development in the UK,

particularly relevant given the continuing trend to migrate highly mobile intellectual property to minimise tax. After a phasing-in that begins in April 2013 and continues for four years, qualifying patent profits will eventually enjoy a 10% rate of corporation tax. This presents significant opportunities for European telecoms businesses, provided they begin planning well in advance.

Mobeam lights up with $1.5 million for LED couponing tech

06 February 2012
Posted in Press Wire

Mobeam has added $1.5 million finding to a 4.9 million Series A venture round announced in October 2011. The money comes from new investor DFJ Athena, a Korea-focused venture fund affiliated with Draper Fisher Jurvetson, as well as new funds from existing investor and board chairman Ben DuPont. DFJ Athena’s founder and managing director, Perry Ha, also joins mobeam’s board of directors.

The funding follows the company’s announcement in December that it is partnering with Procter & Gamble to bring a mobile couponing system to market. Mobeam’s technology enables mobile phones to be scanned by point of sale laser scanners.

Ericsson claims first LTE to WCDMA voice handover

02 February 2012
Posted in Press Wire

Handover of voice call from LTE to WCDMA used Single Radio Voice Call Continuity (SRVCC)

Ericsson has said that on the 23rd December 2011, it and Qualcomm successfully performed a voice handover based on the 3GPP-standardised functionality Single Radio Voice Call Continuity (SRVCC).  SRVCC support enables a single radio in the handset to execute a handover of a voice call from an LTE network to a 3G network.

The voice call handover was established on December 23 last year using Ericsson infrastructure and Qualcomm's Snapdragon S4 MSM8960 3G/LTE multimode processor.

Johan Wibergh, Head of Business Unit Networks, Ericsson, said, "By accomplishing this advanced LTE handover technology together with Qualcomm, we now ensure that operators can meet consumers' expectations on a high-quality voice over LTE service. Operators will be able to maintain their quality brand for their voice business when they launch voice over LTE."

Over-the-air OS upgrades threaten networks

01 February 2012
Posted in Press Wire

Over-the-air updates to mobile operating systems are in danger of harming the performance of mobile networks, especially at peak times, according to data optimisation specialist Flash Networks.

Flash said that it hsa found that operating system upgrades sometimes consumed more bandwidth than YouTube videos, creating "significant bottlenecks".

Operating system upgrades typically consist of functionality and security patches that are distributed at scheduled times over global mobile networks. For example, Microsoft accumulates security patches over a period of one month and then dispatches them all at once on “Patch Tuesday”, the second Tuesday of each month. Microsoft also releases other smaller updates on a daily or bi-weekly basis. Normally pushed out in the background without any intervention from the subscriber, this distribution creates a block of network data of up to 10 MB per user that moves simultaneously “over the air” while connected to the network. This burst in traffic can bring networks dangerously close to full capacity if the upgrades coincide with busy hours, such as commuting times, or popular browsing times late in the evening.