Subscribe
Home Blog Page 1030

James Parton leaving Telefonica’s BlueVia

admin
-
0

O2's well known head of marketing for its BlueVia developer platform, James Parton, is leaving Telefonica. BlueVia announced in a blog post today that Parton will be moving on to a new post.

BlueVia is an important touchstone within the industry because its open telco API approach has gained traction with developers, and has been mostly well received by a community that is historically suspicious of mobile operator developer relations.

Parton was involved in what might be termed O2's prototype for Blue Via, Litmus, so has a long background in fostering the development of applications that take advantage of telco and telephony APIs.

Parton will become Director of European Marketing at Twilio, beginning in June. He is Twilio's first hire outside the USA. Twilio provides cloud-based telephony infrastructure APIs to businesses to help them build voice and text communications into their apps. Existing customers include EBay, Hulu and Intuit.

That's an interesting jump over the fence for Parton, but one that very much makes sense. (UPDATE: There's a post from James giving a little more detail here: ibegyourparton.co.uk/goodbye-telefonica-hello-twilio )

Meanwhile, there is a vacancy for a head of marketing at Blue Via. Fill your boots.

Denizbank Joins Turkcell’s NFC Platform

admin
-
0

Denizbank has joined Turkcell Cep-T Cuzdan Platform, enabling its customers to make contactless payment with their handsets using Near Field Communications ("NFC") technology.

Denizbank, differentiating itself with innovative and technological products and services, presents NFC based payment options to its customers to enable them to make contactless payments via mobile phones.  People wishing to use Turkey's first offline, no name prepaid card, which can realize their transaction without having to contact the center and buy a physical card, can simply SMS to apply with their mobile phones and simultaneously start shopping with their prepaid cards.  With this new application, all Denizbank customers can shop without a password in an easy, fast, and secure manner using their mobile phones the world over wherever the MasterCard PayPass (contactless payment) is accepted.

On the other hand, Denizbank marks a first for Small and Medium Sized Enterprises, by gaining Business Card, the NFC feature.

Having underlined Turkcell's history of firsts in the area of mobile financial services, Chief New Technology Business Officer Cenk Bayrakdar commented that "We have started a new era in shopping through Cep-T Cuzdan, which is one of the world's first commercial NFC Services.  In converting physical wallet to mobile world, Cep-T Cuzdan presents Turkcell customers with the ease of contactless mobile payment in a secure and practical manner and enables them to experience the advantages of mobility.  Through this cooperation, we are glad to introduce Denizbank customers to the convenience of Cep-T Cuzdan."

Murat Celik, Chief Digital Age Banking Officer at Denizbank commented that "Denizbank, closely monitoring developments in the banking sector, following up on the innovations in other industries, and using new technologies in its products and services will transfer the credit cards onto SIM cards via the NFC system at no cost to the customer.  During this process, we took into consideration the increasing attention on NFC and potential needs of our customers.  Indeed, Denizbank will continue to build on its innovative approach going forward."
 

Swisscom Launches Hosted Unified Communications Offering

admin
-
0

Swisscom introduces hosted Unified Communications solution for SME market using Broadsoft platform; also debuts residential VoIP service
 

Swisscom is using a BroadWorks voice application platform to introduce a hosted unified communications (UC) service for SMEs, and a residential VoIP service.

BroadSoft’s BroadWorks platform will deliver:

  • Compatibility with the customer’s SIP phones and legacy hardware
  • IMS-ready platform to enable applications such as web-based call management, call forwarding to all devices, hunt groups, and receptionist capabilities.
  • Workforce mobility: a single number that can ring to an employee’s deskphone, mobile, smartphone or home phone, as well as one-click capabilities to move calls from one phone to another without hanging up.

“In determining the best solution partner for these new Hosted Communications offerings, it quickly became evident BroadSoft was uniquely positioned to enable the delivery of new, innovative communications and entertainment services for our enterprise and residential customers,” said Sacha Fürer, Head of Voice Services Development, Swisscom. “The ability to launch and scale innovative hosted voice and unified communications services from a single carrier-grade platform provides in our view an advantage in what has become an increasingly competitive market.”

In addition to leveraging BroadWorks for the SME Hosted Voice solution, Swisscom is also now able to offer first-line VoIP for its fibre customers.

“Through BroadWorks, we believe Swisscom brings a significant competitive differentiator to market as the only IP hosted communications service available to Swiss small and medium-sized businesses,” said Leslie Ferry, vice president marketing, BroadSoft. “The combination of Swisscom’s broad portfolio of communications solutions and commitment to high-quality services with the proven BroadWorks platform will help set the standard for making the promise of integrated communications and entertainment a reality for businesses and consumers."

Alcatel-Lucent slumps into €221 million Q1 operating loss

admin
-
0
Alcatel-Lucent slumps into €221 million Q1 operating loss

CEO confident in order pipeline and cost control to return to profitability

No operating segment within Alcatel Lucent was profitable in the first quarter of 2012, with the networks, software & services and enterprise division all contributing losses.

The company's executives, CEO Ben Verwaayen and CFO Paul Tufano, said that a combination of a lower than expected volume of sales, plus a higher than expected ratio of low margin business within its sales mix, had lead to operating losses for the company of €221 million for the quarter and a reduction in gross margin to 30.3%.

Verwaayen described this margin position as being "at the bottom of the trough" rather than reflecting a fundamental shift in the long term nature of the business. This low margin position was recorded despite the company having taken €1 billion off its annual operating costs, and cutting another €100m in the first quarter of this year.

Of particular note was a delay in expected GSM contracts in China, where the central bidding process has been delayed to the second quarter. Verwaayen also said that Europe had performed poorly as a region. European sales were down 22% on a year on year basis.

The networks division recorded an operating loss of €143 million, with wireless networks sales down 30% year on year. Wireless sales have progressively declined over the past four quarters, decreasing from a Q1 2011 figure of  €1.11 to €788 million for the 1Q 2012.

The company would not necessarily seek to focus just on growing revenues, CEO Tufano said. He said that it would instead seek to address profitability by concentrating on high margin business at the expense of revenues, if necessary. Tufano added that LTE had in fact retuned better than expected margins, although they are not at the level of legacy technology such as 2G. The company has over 20 LTE contracts, a strong position in LTE in the USA, Verwaayen said, and was in a good position to expand that in other territories.

But the Al-Lu CEO said that he was more positive about Al-Lu's position for the rest of the year.

"Our order book looks strong for the rest of the year. We do think we will do quite well in China. We also have revenue growth in WCDMA in China and other territories, and we also have a very strong order book in the USA, which is a good place to have strong orders in," he said. A growing preference for operator investment in customer experience solutions was another area where Al-Lu could grow high margin orders, he said.

That said, Verwaayen clearly cautioned that Al-Lu was expecting a tough year, driven by prevailing economic conditions.

"I think you would want us to be very prudential," he said. "We are saying we will be cautious. We are not speaking to say the things you'd like to hear, we're going to say the things we think at the time. But we are confident in our pipeline to come back, confident that we understand what happened in Q1, we understand clearly the robustness needed in the operation."

Verwaayen said that since he took over he had taken the action necessary to turn Al-Lu into a profitable company (despite this quarter's operating loss). Now the challenge was to make the company a "robust" company, able to sustain its performance despite macro conditions.

Ericsson sees fall in European networks sales

admin
-
0
Ericsson sees fall in European networks sales

Ericsson's network sales in Western and Central Europe were down 29% year-on-year for the first three months of the year as a result of "cautious operator spending", the vendor said.

That reduction in spending was partially offset by modernisation projects, where Ericsson has made a strategic decision to increase its share. It added that it expected the average duration of these projects to be within 18-24 months. The company said that the lengthy project times reflected the increasing technical complexity of many network upgrades, and the need to conduct upgrades within specific maintenance windows.

Meanwhile, Ericsson's global services business grew 22% for the quarter in Western & Central Europe, and its Support Solutions unit saw sales decrease 37%.  

Networks sales in the Mediterranean region were down 10%, services up 7% and Support Solutions down 39%. On a global basis, networks sales were down 18% year on year for Q1. Several markets were down as well as Europe, including Russia, the Middle East and India. The USA was a strong performer, however.

 

 

 

 

Professional services grew 18% year on year on a global basis, whilst the Support Solutions unit grew 12%: OSS sales were flat, and BSS sales had a slow quarter, with the main growth coming from TV and Ericsson's IPX business. Sales from the Telcordia operation are equally split between Support Solutions and Global Services

Neul opens live white space network in Cambridge

admin
-
0
Neul opens live white space network in Cambridge

Tests one smart meter, predicts other M2M applications will follow

Neul, a provider of white space networking equipment, has deployed a city-wide network to support trials and live tests of whitespace technology and applications in Cambridge, UK. The company said the network is the world's first city-wide white space network.

The network is using five base stations to cover Cambridge, and one base station in a "rural community" south of Cambridge. Neul is also operating an Operational and Management Centre, and providing support for multiple geo-location databases that keep track of the frequency use of TV transmissions and wireless microphone frequency usage.

White space spectrum is the "spare" spectrum between the channels used by TV and other UHF users. White space networks are designed to take advantage of that spectrum by using dynamic databases that identify spectrum that is available for use. Neul said that there are around 20 white space channels available in Cambridge, corresponding to 160MHz in total in the UHF band between 470MHz and 790MHz. (Neul points out that this is more spectrum than was made available in the whole 3G auction.)

A statement from Neul to Mobile Europe said, "The trial was explicitly set up to test the premise that dynamic spectrum access using geo-location enabled devices would be capable of coexisting with TV broadcast and wireless microphones. And the good news is that, following extensive trials with a wide variety of parties, it does! Good news for the industry. White space is now 'good to go' for commercial deployment."

Neul said that its network is now likely to become a "hotbed" of device innovation – providing developers with a real world network within which to test their applications. It has already ben approached by several device vendors, meaning that several new applications could go live over the coming months, the company told Mobile Europe.

The current trial is taking live readings from one specially adapted smart meter, provide by Bglobal Metering. Neul said that the smart meter reading is designed as a proof of concept, and that a wider roll-out is planned in Lancashire (in North West England) soon.

Neul's position is that whitespace technology is ideally suited to the support of the internet of things – the billions of connected devices that are predicted to be deployed over the next decade. LTE

Neul is behind the open Weightless white space radio protocol for M2M applications – that it hopes to make a standard for M2M applications in whitespace spectrum. It said that Weightless reduces the overhead on transmit packets to a bare minimum, while maintaining a high level of secure encryption. Devices will attempt to transmit, rescheduling their transmit packets as required. This allows devices to transmit reasonably quickly in what could potentially could be 'noisy' shared/free-to-air spectrum.

This lightweight nature also ensures that an extremely high density of devices can be maintained – up to a million per cell. This is the vision that will enable ubiquitous long range communication devices, Neul said.

“Mobile networks are great for people but terrible for machines," Co-founder and board member Glenn Collinson said. "At Neul we are today demonstrating that the smart city can happen now with 'Weightless'."

"Mobile broadband is too expensive for 'things' in the smart city. Also mobile broadband means battery powered devices would need changing far too often. And all those sensors would load the cellular networks to such a level that there would be little network capacity left," he continued.

Neul said other M2M/embedded applications could include:

  • Intelligent street lighting, that illuminates as people and vehicles approach
  • A 'smart bin', which self-compacts, is solar-powered, and alerts the relevant council when it is full and needs collecting
  • Smart meters (both from Bglobal and other vendors) (Neul has already got a trial version of this in place)
  • Parking space sensors, that alert a central database as to which parking spaces are empty, so that citizens can check on their phone via an app and a 3G connection where their nearest empty spaces are
  • Road sensors that sense the condition of roads and help gritting lorries to co-ordinate their efforts, deploying to the most appropriate areas in optimal patterns
  • The possibility of installing geolocation sensors on supermarket shopping trollies, so supermarkets have a cheap, long-battery-life solution that helps them to find errant trollies
  • Asset tracking: Neul anticipated extending its network considerably along a local road in the immediate future to track, for example, freight lorries inbound and outbound from Felixstow

How much does network congestion cost the operator?

admin
-
0

Adding "real time cell awareness" could save an operator with 120,000 base stations €1.48 million a month in lost revenues, network assurance company CommProve has said today.

CommProve said that a "congested" base station could cost an operator €1700 per month per base station. Basing its calculations on an operator with 120,000 base stations, CommProve has extrapolated losses to that monthly loss of nearly €1.5 million.

Commprove provided the following table to show its working, which it said came from data collected from its own network operator customers:

Example Use Case*: (Euro)
Monthly revenue from 1 BTS with congestion €55,500
Monthly revenue from 1 BTS without congestion €57,200
Number of BTSs full coverage 120,000
Estimated number of congested BTSs 8,400
Estimated number of congested hours (in a month) 75
Revenue loss saving per month €1,487,500

Full release and details here.

Vodafone adds device security management for enterprise

admin
-
0

Another operator adds device security as a service

Vodafone UK has added Vodafone Secure Device Manager for medium and large businesses to its portfolio of security solutions. Its software, powered by AirWatch, is designed to allow businesses to connect mobile devices, including employees' own devices to their corporate networks securely.

Operated through a management portal, Vodafone Secure Device Manager enables devices to be tracked and monitored, and any lost or stolen device can be ocked or ‘wiped’ of all corporate data. The software is available for OS including Android, Blackberry, iOS, Symbian, Windows Phone and Windows Mobile.
 
The Secure Device Manager can be deployed through the cloud or as an on-premise solution and includes a ‘Bring Your Own Device’ (BYOD) option meaning employees can use their own devices, representing an increased cost saving for many businesses.
 
Peter Boucher, Enterprise Commercial Marketing Director at Vodafone UK, says “In today’s highly competitive and technology-obsessed marketplace, businesses must adopt new devices that help them work smarter, but in the midst of so many cyber-threats and security breaches some companies are cautious about new innovations. Vodafone supports British businesses by offering simple-to-use services that give organisations the confidence to make best use of business-enhancing technology. Vodafone Secure Device Manager is part of Vodafone’s on-going commitment to help businesses find better ways of working.”

Pricing starts at £1.83* (exc. VAT) per device with set-up fees from just £300.00.
 

Vodafone’s C&W take-over: sweaty assets, increased sharing

admin
-
0
Vodafone’s C&W take-over: sweaty assets, increased sharing

Some further thoughts on the C&W take over

Vodafone's proposed acquisition of Cable and Wireless Worldwide would give it direct ownership of a fibre network that runs within 100 metres of about 30% of its UK base stations. With Vodafone currently leasing much of its backhaul network, much of it from BT, the operator is attracted by the prospect of turning off, or reducing to a trickly, an ongoing operational expense that is only likely to increase in line with bandwidth demand.

A Vodafone executive said that the operator's preferred option would be to link base stations within 100m directly to the core network through fibre, rather than microwave. So that throws up the possibility of Vodafone having up to 30% of its base stations connected by fibre, directly to C&W's (soon to be Vodafone's) core network.

There's a couple of interesting aspects to this. The first is that C&W already has some wholsale mobile backhaul contracts with other operators. Vodafone has advised us that it knows this to be the case, and it was confirmed for us by C&W. Neither party wants to divulge how many contracts there are and who they are with, as this is treated in commercial confidence.

But what that means is that when Vodafone does the deal it will be taking over backhaul contracts for, say, O2 or EE, effectively becoming a wholesale provider to its competitors. Vodafone said to us that it would appraise all contracts when  it completes its takeover, scheduled for the autumn. But in principal it wants to continue the backhaul wholesale business, if possible.

A second item to consider is that Vodafone shares many of its sites, and much of the infrastructure at those sites, with O2. Through their Cornerstone partnership the operators jointly order and manage the passive elements of their networks – ie towers, antennas, power, cooling etc. They have been consolidating their sites since the partnership was founded in 2009. Last autumn, we reported that the operators were ordering at least 60 new masts a month for joint use, for instance.

So far, the Cornerstone partnership doesn't extend to active elements, or to backhaul. But if 30% of Vodafone's sites are to sit on the end of nice fat fibre connections wouldn't it make sense for O2 to somehow benefit from that, given it now shares so many base station sites with Vodafone? Again, a Vodafone spokesperson confirmed that the operator would like to see O2 benefit from the increased capacity, and said the operator would "hope O2 might want to use it". In other words, we could see O2 and Vodafone sharing the same physical infrastructure for backhaul, with the infrastructure owned by Vodafone. As O2 would presumably be paying for the privilege, it would help Vodafone offset some of the costs of deployment, of course.

Vittorio Coloa, on a media briefing call, said that the growing demand for bandwidth meant that all l operators will have to sweat assets, passive and active, and that "there will be increased sharing" as a result of that. It's too early for details, he said, but it certainly seems like Vodafone has thought through the increased sharing opportunities the C&W network could give it.

A third aspect of this is Vodafone's relationship with BT. Vodafone is currently a customer for BT's access links, of course, and that is likely to continue, especially for sites that are not near C&W's network. Vodafone is also a provider of services back to BT, acting as host operator for BT's enterprise-focussed MVNO. But muddying those commercial waters will be Vodafone's direct entry as a competitor to BT in the enterprise communications market, providing services across fixed and mobile networks. As BT's MVNO host it would then be providing mobile airtime and data connectivity to one of its key enterprise competitors. Of course, it competes already with BT at the mobile level, but this ability to provide in-house Unified Comms across its fixed and mobile assets is new, and puts it directly in BT's way. No wonder Colao said his first call today, once he was done with the analysts, would be to BT.

Deutsche Telekom to deliver Lookout security app to European customers

admin
-
0

Deutsche Telekom (DT) has announced a partnership that will see it deliver Lookout’s mobile security app to its European customers. The partnership focuses on distribution and joint innovation, bringing Lookout’s mobile security to DT’s European customers. Lookout offers mobile device protection against malware, data loss, and device loss. Deutsche Telekom and Lookout teams will collaborate on mobile protection solutions at Telekom’s Innovation Lab in Berlin.
 
“The topic of mobile security and device health is becoming a focus for our customers,” says Heikki Makijarvi, SVP of business development at Deutsche Telekom. “As the penetration of smartphones and mobile internet devices increases, we feel it is important to offer our customers not only the best network, but also deliver industry-leading security and device health applications that protect and optimize the mobile experience.”
 
“As mobile devices become the primary computing device for consumers, Deutsche Telekom is passionate in providing customers with the best security and privacy,” said John Hering, CEO and founder at Lookout. “By offering tools that promote mobile security and health, Deutsche Telekom is empowering people with the confidence to do more on their phone.”

The Lookout Mobile Security app enables people to find a missing device when it is lost or stolen, manage phone security, and backup precious data.

Lookout said that it identified more than 1,000 instances of mobile malware in 2011, a significant increase since 2010. It’s partnership with DT is its frst European strategic partnership. Currently over 40% of its users are based in the USA.

Earlier this month, Mobile Europe reported on the opportunity for mobile operators in offering security services and applications to end users.

1...1,0291,0301,031...1,638Page 1,030 of 1,638
- Advertisement -

Subscribe to Our Daily Newsletter

It takes just one minute to register for the leading daily B2B newsletter for the telecoms industry, and it's free.

SIGN UP

Subscribe to Our Daily Newsletter

It takes just one minute to register for the leading daily B2B newsletter for the telecoms industry, and it's free.

SIGN UP
DOWNLOAD OUR NEW REPORT

5G Advanced

Will 5G’s second wave deliver value?

DOWNLOAD REPORT