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Juniper Networks addresses operator profitability with raft of announcements

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Juniper Networks today announced a portfolio of products, solutions and partnerships that deliver open, scalable and secure solutions for mobile operators seeking profitable growth from the accelerating smartphone revolution. Juniper’s new network solutions for the mobile Internet integrate the scale and simplicity of IP with the pervasive connectivity of mobility allowing mobile operators to monetize smartphone growth and lay a solid foundation for higher bandwidth, rich media applications.

“By 2020, there will be billions of smartphones and tens of billions of machine-to-machine devices on the market which will accelerate the move to IP-based mobile architectures and new business models. To capitalize on these dynamics, Juniper offers mobile operators a differentiated pathway to profitability,” said Manoj Leelanivas, executive vice president and general manager of Junos® Application Software, Juniper Networks.  “Juniper is providing solutions that immediately lower cost, orchestrate data and video delivery to maximize precious RAN resources, and offer a service innovation platform to unleash new services that operators can monetize.”

The new network for mobility combines the strengths of IP and mobile technologies together in a single portfolio. As the mobile landscape expands from traditional voice and SMS to multimedia applications, mobile operators require graceful migration to LTE, without forklift upgrades, while building intelligent IP service orchestration. Juniper’s unique portfolio of solutions unifies the legacy and new technologies with breakthrough performance, scale and open APIs for mobile operators to rapidly introduce new services.

Today Juniper, whose products and solutions are used by more than 300 service providers worldwide, introduces the following new mobile network solutions:

 

  • MobileNext — The Industry’s First Open Mobile Core: Delivering on Project Falcon, Juniper announces MobileNext, the first open mobile core network with a programmable platform for service innovation. MobileNext provides 2G/3G and LTE evolved packet core functions with the MobileNext Broadband Gateway providing GGSN/P-GW/ S-GW, MobileNext Control Gateway providing SGSN/MME, and MobileNext Policy Manager providing PCRF functions. Running on the Juniper Networks® MX 3D Universal Edge platform, the MobileNext Broadband Gateway is a suite of software that offers industry leading scalability of mobile sessions, set up rates and forwarding capacity and a programmable platform for rapid service innovation.
  • MobileNext Consumer Services: Delivered on a single platform, MobileNext provides simultaneous 2G/3G and LTE services with seamless handoffs and low latency for quality of experience for end user applications. Operators can gracefully migrate to LTE while maintaining customer satisfaction.
  • MobileNext Business Services: Delivering new monetization opportunities for operators, Mobile Business Services offer a network-based solution that reduces latency and cuts costs by combining APN technology within the mobile operator’s network, with the Junos Pulse client-based solution via an SSL VPN. For on-the-go employees with smartphones and laptops, MobileNext Business Services provide seamless corporate access for the dynamic enterprise, anytime, anywhere.
  • Service Delivery Gateway: Also based on the MX 3D portfolio, the Service Delivery Gateway provides a rich suite of vital IP functions such as Carrier Grade NAT, Firewall, Traffic Direct for offload, Video Optimization, Dynamic Subscriber Awareness, and Application Load Balancing on a single Junos® platform. This integration of services delivers up to 36 percent TCO savings and improved experience over current deployments which use a long chain of expensive point products.
  • Expanded Media Flow Portfolio: Through integration of the Juniper Media Flow Solution with video optimization leader Openwave Systems, Juniper’s expanded Media Flow portfolio with its integrated Video Optimization Solution reduces the cost of delivering mobile video and maximizes RAN investment while improving subscriber quality of experience. The combined solution including Juniper’s MobileNext and Media Flow together with Openwave Systems Media Optimization product provides intelligent caching, traffic steering, dynamic video compression and transcoding for video streams to mobile devices.
  • Expanded Security Solutions for Junos Pulse: Juniper is delivering an expansion of the Junos Pulse Mobile Security Suite to new devices and customers –which includes anti-virus, anti-spam, malware protection, and remote device lock and erase to protect against loss or theft. Service providers can bundle these capabilities as part of a turnkey solution for hosted mobile security offerings to help drive incremental revenue while delivering peace of mind to customers who are at risk from malicious security threats.

 

To help mobile operators prepare, plan, deploy and optimize their mobile networks, Juniper also announced new Mobile Internet Professional Services which include LTE and IPv6 readiness assessments, mobile video optimization services and managed security services, all designed to streamline operator migration to LTE.

“With mobile data traffic growing exponentially, not only do operators have to scale their networks to meet the demand but also personalize subscriber experiences,” said Jennifer Pigg, vice president, Yankee Group. “Our service provider clients are clamoring for innovative solutions such as Juniper’s new network and MobileNext that lower their cost per bit while, increasing the value per bit.”

 

IKIVO and Ocean Observations Team up to Deliver Essential Experiences on the Android Homescreen

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Ocean Observations, award winning design agency, and IKIVO, market leading supplier of UI solutions based on open web standards, today jointly announce their partnership to deliver Fipplr, a progressive Android Homescreen. Fipplr improves content and social service experiences thanks to purposeful feeds and an unconventional take on graphic design.

“Many homescreens fail to provide meaningful interactions and access to information adapted to users’ motivations and context. A majority of homescreens focus on mundane widgets like clocks and weather reports,” says Sofia Svanteson, founder and CEO of Ocean Observations. “There is a large group of users who want a truly connected service experience that easily adapts to their situations. Fipplr empowers users to customize their phones with information they crave.”

By responding to user interactions with smooth animations and precise reactions, Fipplr removes the tedious opening and closing of applications, and jumping back and forth to access information. Users gain access to real-time feeds that focus on one topic; for example a Twitter widget filters on mentions of a certain profile or feeds with a specific hashtag. New interaction methods, enabled by integrating device sensors, improve the experience. Rotating the device from portrait to landscape presents an expose view and a single swipe movement is enough to modify a profile.

“IKIVO and Ocean share the philosophy that it takes meaningful design and great technology to solve problems,” says Brad Sipes, CEO of IKIVO. “Ocean has a way of quickly isolating usability issues and creating design benefits. With IKIVO Enrich we bring development early in the design process, quickly adopt changes, and shorten the time from early concept to implementation. We believe marrying Ocean’s great design and IKIVO’s powerful Enrich UI solution has enormous potential.”

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Juniper Networks and Bridgewater to Partner on End-to-End Mobile Packet Core Solution

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Juniper Networks  will resell Bridgewater Sytems’ complete control plane portfolio globally, as an integral component of Juniper’s MobileNext core network solutions for 2G/3G and LTE networks.
Juniper Networks has selected Bridgewater’s intelligent broadband controls suite including the Bridgewater Home Subscriber Server (HSS) and Bridgewater Policy Controller/PCRF, both anchored by Bridgewater’s Subscriber Data Broker (SPR), as part of its MobileNext open mobile core solution for 2G, 3G, and LTE.
The Bridgewater portfolio also includes Bridgewater’s unique control-plane-in-a-box solution – EPC 500 – a
pre-integrated network system that includes HSS, PCRF and Subscriber Data Broker and is designed to accelerate
time-to-market for LTE trials and commercial deployments.
This partnership will yield best-of-breed, end-to-end mobile packet core solutions that allow mobile operators to
optimize existing 3G networks, migrate networks to 4G, and innovate with new services using Bridgewater’s
intelligent broadband control solutions.
The partnership will strengthen Juniper Networks 3G and LTE mobile packet core offer with the industry’s most
comprehensive pre-integrated control plane solution offering proven scalability, performance, and market-leading
functionality that helps operators drive revenue growth while simultaneously supporting ever-increasing mobile data
growth.
Mike Marcellin, Vice President Product Marketing and Strategy, Juniper Networks, said, “Mobile operators need a highly-scalable and efficient packet core to meet the pressure to scale bandwidth and drive profitability. Our comprehensive mobile portfolio coupled with our partnership with Bridgewater, enable mobile operators to deploy 3G today and transform seamlessly to 4G/LTE.”
David Sharpley, Senior Vice President, Bridgewater Systems, said, “Bridgewater is pleased to partner with Juniper as it delivers innovative, high-performance packet core solutions to  mobile service providers worldwide.  Juniper’s selection of Bridgewater’s PCRF and HSS validates our market and  product leadership in comprehensive, carrier-grade intelligent broadband control solutions.”

See NEC’s various cloud solutions at Mobile World Congress

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Mobile World Congress 2011 (Stand No: Hall 8 – 8A125)
http://www.nec.com/mwc

Cloud computing is the key to transforming telecom carrier business for immediate
and substantial benefits into the future.

NEC’s C&C Cloud proposition. It’s based on our expertise in integrating computers
and communications, and especially designed to provide carriers with a new platform
for real and sustained revenue growth.

Visit the NEC Stand at Mobile World Congress 2011 and you’ll see how there are no
limits when NEC takes care of the clouds.

Featured topics:       
 Cloud Platform Solutions
 Cloud Applications: Vertical Solutions – SaaS applications
 Mobile BroadBand Solutions: LTE – Backhaul – Femtocell – OSS
 
Show Details:  
 NEC @ MWC 2011
 Stand No: Hall 8 – 8A125
 http://www.nec.com/mwc

We look forward to seeing you at our stand!

Deutsche Telekom and FT-Orange explore network and service sharing

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Deutsche Telekom and France Telecom-Orange have said they will “explore potential areas of cooperation in a defined set of technology fields”.

The two groups have agreed to talk about specific areas of potential cooperation in the following areas:

  • radio access network sharing in Europe
  • improving WiFi user experience while roaming
  • equipment standardization
  • Machine-to-Machine (M2M) standards and quality of service for cross-border services
  • a set of new growth business development domains
  • technical cooperation on home media servers, development of cross border e-Health services, connected cars technology and in-car infotainment services, content and technical enablers for TV and video services

It seems that the cooperation is in fact a bit further on than the “talks about talks” stage, as the two telcos have already created a machine-to-machine cooperation agreement and a joint project on the improvement of the WiFi user experience while roaming.

The specific cooperation agreement for M2M is aimed at increasing the quality of service and standards for cross-border machine-to-machine (M2M) communications. The agreement, which initially covers France, Germany, Belgium and Luxembourg, aims to include all mobile network operators affiliated to the two groups, and to expand globally through partnerships with other mobile network operators.

In time the operators see the agreement forming a foundation for a seamless network that can offer reliable cross-border services anywhere in the world.

On WiFi, both groups are jointly exploring solutions for improving their customers’ experience and roaming conditions on each others WiFi network. Both groups share the conviction that the international traveller of tomorrow will want to be able to download large amounts of data, for private or business reasons, without having to be burdened with the choice between WiFi access and 3G mobile access.

“Operators are expected to increase quality of service and to eliminate barriers and borders when using services,” said Ed Kozel, Chief Technology and Innovation Officer, Deutsche Telekom. “We are confident that the cooperation with France Telecom-Orange in dedicated areas will enable both of us to bring sustained benefits to our customers.”

“With this collaboration, our two groups will be able to address new growth opportunities as well as operational efficiency issues in a limited and targeted set of business domains for the benefits of our respective customers, while maintaining our individual strategies,” said Elie Girard, Executive Vice President Strategy and Development of France Telecom-Orange.

ITU calls for international broadband commitment

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Governments need to take urgent action now to support mobile broadband growth. So says ITU Secretary-General Dr Hamadoun Touré, who added that accelerated fibre roll-out and greater spectrum availability will be imperative if network bottlenecks are to be avoided.

Smartphone users already consume on average five times more data capacity than users of ordinary mobile phones. With the number of smartphones set to rise from today’s global estimate of 500 million handsets in use, to almost two billion by 2015, operators are already having to employ multi-pronged strategies to keep up with demand – and not all are succeeding.
 
“Mobile operators have been investing billions to upgrade and improve the capacity and performance of their networks, but in some high-usage cities, such as San Francisco, New York and London, we are still seeing users frustrated by chronic problems of network unavailability.
 
“Robust National Broadband Plans that promote extra spectrum and the faster roll-out of the fibre networks which are essential to mobile backhaul are vital to support the growing number of data-intensive applications,” says Dr Touré. ITU analysis shows 98 countries have National Broadband Plans in place, with this number set to increase over the next year.
 
Mobile broadband is increasingly the technology of choice for hundreds of millions in the developing world, where fixed line infrastructure is often sparse and expensive to deploy. ITU estimates that the number of mobile broadband subscriptions will reach one billion in the first quarter of 2011. With ninety per cent of the world now covered by a mobile signal, it is clear that mobile is a key tool to bridging the digital divide. By 2010, 73 per cent of total mobile cellular subscriptions were from the developing world.
 
In 2010, Dr Touré led the creation of the Broadband Commission for Digital Development to highlight the need for governments worldwide to promote broadband as a key development tool and push broadband network roll-out more proactively.
 
The Commission is co-chaired by President Paul Kagame of Rwanda and Carlos Slim Helú, Honorary Lifetime Chairman of Grupo Carso. Dr Touré and Irina Bokova, Director-General of UNESCO, are Vice-Chairs. It comprises some of the leading lights of the mobile industry, including Alcatel Lucent’s Ben Verwaayen, Bharti Airtel’s Sunil Bharti Mittal, China Mobile’s Wang Jianzhou, Ericsson’s Hans Vestberg, Denis O’Brien of Digicel, Paul Jacobs of Qualcomm and César Alierta of Telefonica, alongside other prominent business figures, including Sir Richard Branson, John Chambers of Cisco and Paul Otellini of Intel. Top policy-makers and regulators on the Commission include the European Commission’s Neelie Kroes and the FCC’s Julius Genachowski.
 
The Commission’s report, delivered to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in New York last September, recommended that world leaders focus on building a ‘virtuous broadband development dynamic’, and urged governments not to limit market entry, not to tax broadband and related services too heavily, and to ensure ample availability of spectrum to support mobile broadband growth.

In anticipation of ITU’s next World Radiocommunication Conference (WRC) in January 2012, operators in Europe and the US have already begun campaigning for increased spectrum for mobile communications, and for harmonized spectrum allocations in contiguous blocks for latest-generation technologies.
 
Operators from other regions seem certain to follow suit, as new high-revenue-generating mobile broadband services like mobile TV take off worldwide.
 
Some views are that access to unused broadcast spectrum – so-called ‘white spaces’ – might also help alleviate the spectrum squeeze. The ‘digital dividend’ of spectrum freed up by the progressive global move to digital radio and television seems certain to be high on the agenda of national delegations when they convene in Geneva for the four-week-long WRC-12.
 
The conference, held every three to four years, is the global body which negotiates and manages the binding international treaty governing spectrum allocation. Coming at a critical juncture in the future growth of the sector, the 2012 event is expected to welcome over 2,500 senior delegates from around the world.
 
For the moment, alleviating the capacity crunch is leading operators to employ a range of strategies – from investment in WiFi networks and encouraging users to install their own femtocell devices, to tiered pricing to penalize heavy data users, and regulatory approaches that would ask incumbents to open access to their fibre networks to competitors to provide critical backhaul for mobile data traffic.
 
In addition, says ITU, more in-ground fibre is needed to move the growing volume of mobile data traffic from operators’ increasingly rapid radio access networks to their faster core networks, to optimize speed and call processing. At present, most backhaul is performed on standard telecommunications twisted copper pair loops, which offer top speeds of around 34Mbit/s. Carrier-grade fibre backbones are around 300 times faster, as well as being optimized for packet-based data traffic, rather than circuit-switched voice.

Alcatel-Lucent supports Telefónica’s commercial femtocell deployment in Spain

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Alcatel-Lucent today announced it has been selected by Telefónica for its commercial, femto-based small cells deployment in Spain – extending 3G coverage in indoor locations and high-traffic public areas, and targeting a better user experience for Telefónica’s residential and business subscribers.

“We work closely with our customers to design new network and business models and are committed to help them deliver quality services to their subscribers, indoor and outdoor. This deployment with Telefónica in Spain illustrates our leadership in the small cells space and will enable us to show the flexibility of femtocells to deliver innovative applications,” said Federico Guillén, Alcatel-Lucent’s global account leader for Telefónica.

Cavium Networks, Kontron and Tata Elxsi partner to demonstrate LTE eNodeB aolution at MWC 2011

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Cavium Networks, a provider of highly integrated semiconductor products that enable intelligent processing for networking, communications, and the digital home, and Cavium’s PACE Partners Kontron and Tata Elxsi announced today that they will showcase a high performance wireless broadband solution at the Mobile World Congress 2011 in Barcelona from February 14 to 17. The solution brings together the  Cavium OCTEON II multi-core processor as part of Kontron’s open standard hardware running Tata Elxsi’s LTE eNodeB L2/L3 software stack.

Targeted at Macro base station manufacturers for use in single and multi-sector LTE eNodeB products, the joint solution offers 3GPP Release 8 compliant LTE Layer 2 and Layer 3 processing that is capable of delivering up to 450 Mbps of aggregate throughput from a single AdvancedMC module featuring the OCTEON II CN6335 cnMIPS64 6-core processor.

The combined Cavium, Kontron and Tata Elxsi LTE eNodeB solution will be demonstrated at the following booths: Cavium (Booth 2C05, Hall 2), Tata Elxsi (Booth 2C106, Hall 2) and Kontron (Booth 2A28, Hall 2).

The Cavium OCTEON II CN63XX processor family provides the highest performance and integration for next generation 3G/4G/LTE wireless base station platforms, providing up to 9GHz of compute with a large 2MB L2 cache, DDR3 memory controller, security acceleration for SNOW 3G and KASUMI, TCP/IP, DPI, QoS and packet processing acceleration. PowerOptimizer technology limits maximum power from 7 to 17 watts from low-end to high-end. The OCTEON II processors have been designed into a range of tier-1 OEM systems ranging from eNodeB to packet-core platforms and services rich wireless infrastructure gateways.

The Kontron AM4211 ATCA Mezzanine Card (AMC) module can be configured with ATCA node blades and MicroTCA platforms (Picostation, Microstation to Macrostation). It is designed to support 1x 10GbE to the front and software configurable interfaces to the Fabric with either 2x PCIe x4 or SRIO which expands its application usage when configuring systems in combination with standards based third-party Digital Signal Processing (DSP) AMCs.

For control plane functions the Kontron AM4211 provides GbE on Ports 0 and 1 connected to the CN6335 processor and is fully software compatible with previous generation Kontron AMC packet processing modules, AM4204, AM4210 and AM4220, all based on OCTEON Plus processors from Cavium Networks. It is configurable with the Kontron MicroTCA 1U carrier-grade platform OM6061.

Tata Elxsi has architected its LTE eNodeB L2/L3 protocol stack to leverage the advanced hardware acceleration capabilities available in Cavium’s OCTEON II multi-core processors, thereby delivering market-leading performance and scalability. The Tata Elxsi L2/L3 protocol stack also exploits the ability of the Cavium OCTEON II to support multiple virtual operating systems including Linux and Simple Executive to accelerate data plane performance.

Tata Elxsi LTE eNodeB L2/L3 stack has been integrated with 3GPP Release 8 compliant Layer-1 implementations and tested with real UEs. The entire software stack has been architected in a highly modular fashion to offer flexibility to OEMs to make modifications to specific layers of the stack with ease, if required. Tata Elxsi also offers updates and upgrades to support newer platforms and advanced releases like Release 9 and beyond.

“LTE Operators’ goals of maximizing coverage and capacity, while lowering total cost of ownership, mandate powerful solutions with small and flexible footprint and very low power,” said YJ Kim, General Manager, Infrastructure Processor Group at Cavium Networks. “Proven 4G wireless software expertise from Tata Elxsi and telecom module expertise from Kontron enables breakthrough 4G base station solutions using Cavium’s OCTEON II processors to meet these challenging goals.”

“The speed at which we can collaborate and develop such a powerful design speaks volumes to 4G LTE equipment vendors who simply cannot waste any time to get to market,” said Marc Leclaire, AMC, MicroTCA, ATCA Switch product manager at Kontron. “This highlights Kontron’s capability for the communications market – help bring leading silicon and software innovations to market sooner by packaging them on common open standard ATCA, MicroTCA and AMC hardware.”

“Through this partnership with leading silicon and hardware providers like Cavium and Kontron, Tata Elxsi offers proven LTE software with industry-leading performance that is both scalable and cost effective,” said Nitin Pai, Vice President of Marketing at Tata Elxsi.

Meet the new Nokia. Same as the old Nokia.

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All change and nobody’s to blame…except him

What are Nokia and Microsoft actually partnering on?
Come on, you know this. Windows Phone will be Nokia’s new main smartphone platform. At the OS level for its smartphones, this is a switch from the path Nokia was taking from Symbian to MeeGo.

What about Symbian?
It’s going to be a franchise platform.

Like Macdonalds?
Sort of. Actually, probably more like Wimpy.

What happens to MeeGo?

Well, its VP has been released to spend more time with his family, but it’s still alive – as a “project” and for future devices. “At least” one MeeGo device will be released this year. Parked, essentially, for the time being.

Has anyone called Intel?
Good point.

What happens to Ovi?
Not a single mention of it in any of the three releases Nokia put out this morning. One sentence said, “Nokia’s content and application store will be integrated with Microsoft Marketplace for a more compelling consumer experience”. Not even mentioning it by name? Surely glosses over one of the biggest issues, porting all those apps, pointing all those developers to Windows, “integrating” to Windows Marketplace.
So as Nokia and Microsoft plan to build a new ecosystem, it looks like Ovi gets parked. In terms of the major “native” serivces, some Nokia services, like Maps, will be preferred. Some Microsoft entities, like Bing and adCenter will be the winners.

So when can we expect to see Nokia Windows 7 phones?
“Success requires speed. We will be swift.” said Elop. But until the later press conference, who knows. 2012, though, isn’t it? Perhaps one rushed through for Nokia World later this year, at a push?

What does this all mean for Nokia?
Even they’ve got no idea. They’re refusing to make any predictions or forecasts for the remainder of the year. 2011 and 2012 will be “years of transition”. How the markets love uncertainty, though. Shares took an immediate 10% fall.

What does it mean for operators?
It’s one fewer top level OS, which is a positive and a negative. Less of a support issue, less market confusion over platforms, the chance to deliver operator-cutomised WP7 on Nokia devices. But it’s potentially a greater OTT threat in the apps and services space, given the combined power of Microsoft and Nokia. Nokia did make note of its operator billing capabilities, though, in terms of driving sales in developing markets.

Nokia used to laugh at Microsoft’s attempts to break into mobile. How did it come to this, where Microsoft represents Nokia’s best chance of a high level future in mobile?
Where to start? A combination of technical inflexibility – a “legacy” OS that was unable to allow developers to keep up with the UIs of other platforms, plus slow development of the new OS, plus confusion over the developer environment  – and market perception, all spiced with a healthy dose of denial .

So presumably all the people responsible for this mess have been sent to tan reindeer hides as punishment?
Er, no, not really. Jo Harlow, who was senior VP of smartphones… is now in charge of Smart Devices. This includes “creating a winning Windows Phone portfolio”, so pretty much the most important strategic job in the company. Mary MacDowell who was in charge of Mobile Phones, is now in charge of …Mobile Phones. Tero Ojanpera, previously head of Services, is now…head of Services – which includes the crucial job of building developer relations.  Niklas Savander, who was VP of markets, is now…VP of Markets. You get the idea…

So we’re not playing the blame game, then?
Well, as we said, the bloke heading up MeeGo…he go.

So it was all his fault, then?
Rather. The cake was perfect, the icing was delicious, but the cherry on top was off. He had to go.

CommuniGate launches Pronto! Mobile

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CommuniGate Systems, a specialist in scalable Unified Communications technology, has today launched Pronto! Mobile. The next generation of CommuniGate Systems’  Unified Communications application suite Pronto! version 4.0 now adds Pronto! Mobile, a mobile application enabling operators to deliver value added communication applications under their own brand to business and residential subscribers.

Pronto! Mobile is a secure white-label mobile VoIP (mVoIP) application that includes network address book (NAB), instant messaging (IM), group chat, file transfer and conference calling, which is owned, branded and controlled by the operator. According to recent research by Allot Communications, demand for global mobile data bandwidth soared by 200% in 2010. With VoIP and IM the second-fastest growing services up by 87%, operators need to take advantage of this huge demand.

“The communications market is moving toward mobile devices, mobile VoIP, and mobile unified communications, and the opportunities for revenue and first mover advantage are significant.” comments Brent Kelly, Senior Analyst and Partner at Wainhouse Research, “Mobile UC apps make mobile business customers much stickier because of the value and capabilities they receive; it also increases ARPU.  However, many operators are not well equipped to capitalize on this trend. CommuniGate Systems’ Pronto! is an excellent way for operators to deliver compelling mVoIP and UC applications that can exceed those offered by other providers in terms of quality, capability, and service delivery.”

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