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Bridgewater announces 15 new policy wins in 2010

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Bridgewater Systems, a specialist in intelligent broadband controls, today announced that during 2010, 15 mobile service providers selected its policy control/PCRF solution to innovate with new services, optimize their network, and enable the transformation to 4G.

With the new customer wins, Bridgewater demonstrates its policy leadership and flexibility to support network transformation, service innovation, and 3G network optimization. Specific examples of these new wins include:
-Machine-to-Machine (M2M): After a competitive process, Bridgewater was selected by a leading M2M mobile data-only virtual network operator that provides M2M services to leading Tier 1 operators worldwide;
-Transformation to 4G LTE: Bridgewater won several new deployments of its integrated PCRF and Home Subscriber Server (HSS), to enable service providers, including Cellcom and Agri-Valley, to launch LTE services. The Bridgewater EPC 500, a unique solution that combines PCRF and HSS, leverages Bridgewater’s complete and integrated intelligent broadband controls portfolio;
-Convergent Quota Management Across 3G, 4G, Wi-Fi and Fixed Networks: Bridgewater extended a 4G deployment to win the 3G PCRF, Wi-Fi, and Fixed components for this Tier 1 operator, providing a common broadband controls solution across all of its access networks. In addition to fair usage and traffic management, this deployment will provide shared quotas across any access network;
-Bill-Shock Prevention: Bridgewater won several new customers for bill shock prevention, to provide metering and quota management based on different roaming tariffs. In addition to supporting re-direction on threshold breach, Bridgewater’s myPolicy smartphone client will provide service plan personalization to advise on thresholds and notifications;
-Private LTE Broadband: Bridgewater was uniquely selected to provide its PCRF and HSS, part of our integrated Evolved Packet Core solution, to a market leader offering private LTE broadband solutions to the public safety market. Bridgewater’s PCRF will play the crucial role of prioritizing applications, devices, and Quality of Service (QoS) as part of an integrated end-to-end LTE solution for the public safety market;
-Parental Controls and Session/Application-Based Usage: Through partner Cisco, this Tier 1 operator in EMEA will deploy the Bridgewater PCRF solution on the Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS) platform, to enable parental controls and new services based on application-specific usage.

The Bridgewater Policy Controller is a market-leading policy engine which supports 3GPP PCRF Release 7, 8 and 9 standards and multiple access networks from a common platform. The Bridgewater Policy Controller provides real-time network, application, and subscriber policies to manage mobile data growth and deliver personalized services across abroad set of multi-vendor network enforcement points.

Graham Finnie, Chief Analyst, Heavy Reading. “Policy control will continue to dominate the market in 2011, with significant growth in all major geographic markets.  Our network operator survey work tells us that we can expect to see increased demand for dynamic policy control solutions that enable sophisticated new services and business models to be developed, while still leveraging these systems to manage and ease congestion.”

David Sharpley, Senior Vice President, Bridgewater Systems. “Our 2010 policy momentum validates the tangible business value and flexibility that can be derived from our carrier-grade policy control solution. Bridgewater is at the forefront of delivering innovative policy use cases that leverage our extensive policy experience and our unique approach of enabling service, policy, subscriber, and device controls that allow service providers to create exciting new services while simultaneously managing network congestion.”

Roaming regulation has little impact on cost-conscious consumers’ mobile phone habits, says research

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EU roaming regulation is having little impact on consumers’ mobile usage habits while abroad, new online research from mobile roaming expert MACH and YouGov has revealed today. Although 56 per cent of respondents with a mobile phone stated that they were aware of the rules regarding roaming, 77 per cent of these said that it had made no difference to how they used their mobile phone when travelling abroad.

Despite the introduction of legislation specifically designed to lower the cost of using a mobile phone within the EU, the perceived expensive nature of roaming charges appears to continue to weigh heavily on consumers’ minds. More than one-third (38%) of online respondents indicated that they did not use their mobile phone at all while abroad, with 54 per cent of these identifying the cost of usage as a reason why.

Regardless of this current reluctance and as the mass-market uptake of sophisticated smartphone devices continues to grow, there is a growing consumer desire to use mobile phones for social networking and micro-social blogging while abroad. 50% of all online respondents with a mobile between the age of 18 and 34 said they would most like to access some form of data service (e.g. Facebook, Twitter or email) when travelling abroad, with 62 per cent of these highlighting cheaper roaming rates as the factor which would encourage them to do so. 

According to Paul Merry, senior analyst at Informa Telecoms & Media, “There is a clear demand to use mobile data services while abroad but the perception that doing so will lead to unacceptably high bills often prevents users from doing so. In their home market, users are accustomed to paying flat–rate fees to use mobile data services, but when they roam it is often usage based, which impedes visibility on cost.” Merry added: “There is significant latent demand among mobile users to access the Internet from their mobiles when travelling and it is up to operators to stimulate this demand with a combination of pricing and effective marketing. Technology solutions can also play a role in stimulating usage of roaming services and operators should thoroughly assess whether to deploy those which have proven most effective in doing so.”

Artur Michalczyk, Chief Product Officer, MACH commented: “Technology solutions such as MACH’s Retail Roaming Solution enable operators to develop bespoke roaming tariffs which are tailored to complement their individual customers’ needs and usage patterns. MACH’s new Data Roaming Engine, to be launched in Q2, will enable operators to effectively empower their subscribers to select the services they wish to use abroad – the holidaying consumer may opt for Facebook-only access and the small business user for Email-only access. We expect that operators implementing these services, which offer users transparent and predictable cost, will see significant uptake in the use of data services while roaming.”

Movius launches next generation conferencing for mobiles and tablet PCs at Mobile World Congress

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Movius, a specialist in unified communication services, today unveiled the worldwide launch of its latest conferencing portfolio for mobile network operators – giving them advanced and user-friendly video and audio options to suit business customers with equipment ranging from the latest 4G/LTE-ready devices to standard mobiles.
 

This latest multimedia conferencing capability builds on Movius’ current conferencing solutions by providing a charging-enabled feature to address the needs of pre-pay customers. At the same time, this latest release is designed to be easy to deploy for the growing number of 4G client and mobile web users. This makes it both simple to use and conveniently accessible to a greater share of the carrier’s customer base.
 
“Movius multimedia conferencing will bring audio and video conferencing out of the boardroom and corporate world and into the streets, the playgrounds and the living rooms of consumers and business users everywhere,” said Movius President and CEO Dominic Gomez.
 
“By bringing conferencing options to the mobile device in an easy-to-use way, we see massive potential for network operators across the world – from the most advanced markets where people are using smartphones and carrying tablet PCs – to developing markets where the mobile is the only device most people have as their entry into the network – so they want it to do as much as possible for them.
 
“We believe our development will help operators everywhere meet the needs of the growing mobile enterprise market.”
 
Movius research and development teams have targeted these two parts of the market – the bandwidth-rich 3G and soon to be 4G/LTE world, littered with smart phones and new devices such as tablet PCs – and the developing markets, where many people possess just a single mobile handset. This enables bringing a large untapped user base into the communication and collaboration ecosystem with their preferred and most convenient means of communication.
 
“In advanced markets, we see simple-to-use video conferencing appealing to the younger market and also among young professionals, while in developing markets simply the ability to conference for the first time should appeal to both consumers and businesses,” said Gomez.
 
“The corporate world will remain the domain of the studio quality conferencing facility but at the same time the growth of video as a day-to-day medium, the increase in bandwidth availability and the rise of the smartphone are all combining to create the true ‘mass market’ reach for conferencing for the very first time.”
 
The Movius multimedia conferencing solution provides a real-time audio and video experience that is browser-based and doesn’t require any client to be installed on the tablet PC or other end-user device.

Allot MobileTrends Report shows significant growth in global mobile data bandwidth usage in H2, 2010

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Allot Communications, a supplier of service optimization and revenue generation solutions for fixed and mobile broadband service providers worldwide, announced today that its Allot MobileTrends Report shows that mobile data bandwidth usage continued its phenomenal rise with 73% growth during the second half (H2) of 2010.  Video streaming continues to drive this growth as it remains the fastest growing application type, accounting for 37% of mobile bandwidth, says Allot.

The H2 2010 MobileTrends Report reveals that YouTube is responsible for a tremendous 17% of mobile data bandwidth usage and continues as the single most significant website for video streaming, accounting for 45% of total video streaming traffic. The report also shows the continued exponential growth experienced by social networking applications such as Twitter and Facebook, which grew by 378% and 267%, respectively, underlining the natural synergy that exists between social media and the mobile Internet.  The use of VoIP and IM applications also continued to grow rapidly with an 87% increase, demonstrating their ongoing appeal for subscribers.

This Allot MobileTrends Report also reveals that Google’s Android Market lags far behind Apple’s App Store with only 9% of the overall app store download traffic.  However, its rapid 177% growth rate may influence this balance in the near future.

“Our MobileTrends findings demonstrate that mobile operators must understand the value that over-the-top applications provide to users rather than just focus on the amount of bandwidth they consume,” said Rami Hadar, President and CEO of Allot Communications.  “As networks move towards 4G/LTE and convergence, understanding this value is likely to become even more critical as operators will be expected to provide a more enriched and personalized experience for their users.”

Findings from the Allot MobileTrends Report also include:

– YouTube remains one of the single most popular mobile Internet destinations, accounting for 17% of mobile data bandwidth.

– File sharing represents a significant 30% of mobile bandwidth.

– Apple’s App Store is responsible for 89% and Google’s Android Market is responsible for 9% of overall app store download traffic.

– Skype continues as the undisputed VoIP market leader, accounting for 87% of mobile VoIP bandwidth.

The Allot MobileTrends Report data was collected from July 1 to December 31, 2010 from leading mobile operators worldwide with a combined user base of 210 million subscribers. Allot gathered the data using the long term reporting capabilities of Allot NetXplorer, Allot’s centralized management and reporting system. The length of the collection period allows accurate identification of usage trends and patterns, reducing the influence of temporary events in the monitored networks.

Active users of mobile money services to double in next two years, says new report

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According to the latest analysis from Juniper Research, the need to access basic financial services by users in developing countries will drive the short term growth of active mobile money users globally to exceed 200 million by 2013. Currently well under 100 million people use these services it says.

Juniper Research’s new report – ‘Mobile Money Transfers & Remittances: Markets, Forecasts & Vendor Strategies 2011-2015’ – also cautions that whilst there are several high profile examples of extremely successful mobile money services, each new rollout needs an established, robust and extensive local distribution network to ensure access to the service. 

Howard Wilcox, Senior Analyst at Juniper Research gave more details of the market opportunities: “Our report reveals the sheer number of mobile money services, with more launches in the first eleven months of 2010 than in the whole of 2009. However, there are still many developing countries without these services, plus we’re seeing typically at least three services per country.” 

Further findings from the Juniper Research Mobile Money Transfer report include:

·  The market has been boosted recently by person-to-person money apps in developed countries to enable people to easily make social transfers such as split the cost of meals, or pay the babysitter

·  Nearly 40% of active users in 2015 will be in the Africa & Middle East region

Cambridge launches new backhaul platform

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Cambridge Broadband Networks has today launched its 10Gb/s multipoint microwave backhaul platform. VectaStar Radio Controller (RC), the latest development of the company’s VectaStar microwave backhaul and access solution, is said to be designed to meet the growing capacity requirements of mobile operators around the world.

The RC is a native Ethernet VectaStar hub that currently supports doubling of sector performance to 300Mb/s, with planned upgrades this year to deliver 600Mb/s and 1Gb/s. The small footprint RC can control up to 8 VectaStar sectors and aggregate traffic from up to 240 Remote Terminals in a single 1U hub. Those features are said to exceed the requirements of network planners designing the dense backhaul networks required to support exponential growth in demand for mobile data services.

“According to Cisco, mobile data traffic nearly tripled in 2010 but until now operators have been stuck between a rock and a hard place when it comes to backhauling that traffic,” said Graham Peel, CEO of Cambridge Broadband Networks. “They tell us that, for a significant proportion of cell sites, fibre isn’t practical for cost or operational reasons and we know that traditional microwave technologies don’t have the flexibility to manage peak traffic demands efficiently.

“The VectaStar Radio Controller solves the problem with 300Mb/s sector performance immediately available, and an upgrade path to 1Gb/s before year end. Additionally our point-to-multipoint platform architecture is inherently efficient, both in the way it manages mobile data, and in its use of human and capital resources. Those elements combine to create the industry’s most cost effective mobile backhaul and access platform.”

The RC is based on a Gigabit Ethernet backplane supporting up to 10Gb/s sustained operation and is a software upgradable platform to allow for planned performance enhancements and new network standards.

John Naylon, Head of Development at Cambridge Broadband Networks, commented: “Higher capacities and latencies well under 1ms are a must for both HSPA and LTE backhaul. So is the ability to support IP traffic and all-IP architectures. VectaStar Radio Controller gives network designers all of these things in a small, efficient platform; the flexibility and performance of the radio controller gives our existing and future customers a backhaul platform for the future.”

With the introduction of the Radio Controller, designers can plan their high speed data networks with backhaul performance measured in 100’s of Mb/s aggregated seamlessly to 1Gb/s or 10Gb/s network interface ports, confident in the knowledge that they have a system to support their needs into the future, says Cambridge.

Ciena unveils new Carrier Ethernet solutions for 4G mobile evolution

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Ciena, the network specialist, today announced the expansion of its Carrier Ethernet Service Delivery (CESD) portfolio with the addition of new switching products designed to address LTE backhaul networking requirements. Featuring flexible connectivity options and traffic-type awareness, the new platforms are said to empower service providers to meet the rapidly growing demand for data services with speed, scalability and resiliency, while reducing network complexity and lowering operating costs.

It is widely accepted that the proliferation of next-generation mobile devices and associated data applications is forcing network operators to invest in additional capacity and move to 4G technologies to accommodate growth and support new service demands. To do that, service providers are increasingly turning to high speed, low latency LTE technologies that improve network performance and lower operating costs while supporting the need for additional bandwidth all within their existing spectrum. As a result, however, operators are facing more pressure on the critical wireless backhaul portion of the network that ensures the traffic flows between cell towers and the terrestrial core network. 

When planning the migration to 4G, service providers must ensure their backhaul networks contain these three design attributes: scalability to ensure rapid response to evolving bandwidth needs, partially driven by an increase of IP-connected devices; management to allocate capacity and prioritize different data traffic types to meet performance demands of a variety of end-users; and quality of service control to optimize bandwidth availability and reliability and ensure timely application delivery – an increasingly complex task due to unpredictable traffic spikes from applications like streaming video or music and ongoing maintenance complexities.

The company claims that, by deploying Ciena’s Carrier Ethernet solutions for LTE wireless backhaul, wholesale capacity suppliers and mobile network operators can realize up to 30 percent savings in capital expenses and up to 80 percent reduction in turn-up times at a base stations as compared to alternative packet technologies1.  Ciena’s portfolio offers a number of architectural advantages, including:

  a.. sophisticated network resource provisioning and optimization to more efficiently control, manage and monetize unpredictable traffic over the network;
  b.. MEF-compliant Carrier-Ethernet based infrastructure options for network access, coupled with scalable, converged optical Ethernet solutions to simplify transport in aggregation or metro core networks and configure the backhaul network to be transparent to the wireless layer’s IP protocols;
  c.. a common service-aware operating system to address a multitude of backhaul scenarios – depending on the availability of fiber, the degree of multi-tenancy, and various generations of radio base stations – for greater cost and resource savings; and,
  d.. state-of-the-art protection capabilities for detecting and recovering from network disruptions to ensure high network availability and seamless service delivery. 

Teleca acquires UK based SurfKitchen

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Teleca, a supplier of solutions and services to the mobile and connected devices industries,today announced that it has acquired UK based SurfKitchen. The company, which has approximately 55 employees, helps mobile operators and their partners overcome the discoverability, usability and fulfillment challenges associated with the delivery of mobile applications and services.

The acquisition is said to strengthen Teleca’s ability to offer its products and solutions to the operator market, while SurfKitchen is said to gain access to Teleca’s global reach, customer portfolio, cost effective services and scale.

SurfKitchen will stay as an independent business unit within the Teleca organization, and the company will focus globally on the operator segment, concentrating on business development, sales & product R&D. SurfKitchen will leverage Teleca’s extensive global services for its customer deployment.

The acquisition is also said to fit well into Teleca’s strategy of expanding its mobile software outsourcing services to all relevant industries. In 2009, Teleca created a unit to deliver mobile apps, which has already achieved significant customer wins in the media and entertainment industry. Now through SurfKitchen, Teleca says it can offer the operator segment significant advantages, including complete end-to-end apps solutions, full content and subscriber management services, more than 80% market coverage, a first-rate partner network and increased competitiveness.

“This acquisition brings together two companies with very complementary skill sets”, says Michel Quazza, Chairman and CEO of SurfKitchen. “We get access to Teleca’s strong presence in the connected devices industry and its extensive partner network, while Teleca can offer its deep knowledge of embedded systems to our operator customers. The result is true end-to-end services that benefit the whole industry and will provide unique differentiation”.

“The mobile- and connected devices industries are moving from software enabled hardware businesses to hardware enabled software businesses”, says René Svendsen-Tune, CEO at Teleca. “We see rapid growth in the overall market of content and application consumption, and through this acquisition we can offer mobile operators, platform providers and other layers in the mobile industry complete solutions for applications and content delivery”.

Myriad announces ‘Alien Dalvik’ for Android apps

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Myriad, a global specialist in mobile technology having shipped over 3.7 billion software applications on more than 2.2 billion phones, today announced the launch of Myriad Alien Dalvik, enabling Android apps to run on non-Android platforms. The launch is said to open up the Android experience to new audiences, generating new revenue opportunities for mobile operators, OEMs and app store owners.

Building on the launch of Dalvik Turbo, Alien Dalvik signifies Myriad’s latest Android development by enabling Android apps to operate on a much wider range of platforms and devices. As a result, operators, OEMs and application store owners can now easily access the Android ecosystem and deploy Android applications across multiple device operating systems, all without compromising performance, it says.

Alien Dalvik enables the majority of Android applications to run unmodified, allowing application store owners to quickly kick start Android application store services by simply repackaging Android Package (APK) files.

From a user perspective, Alien Dalvik is completely transparent. Alien Dalvik applications appear as native and can be seamlessly installed on device without user disruption. All the user sees is that he now has access to a wider range of applications, thus encouraging a higher frequency of downloads and increased ARPU.

“The proliferation of Android has been staggering, but there is still room for growth. By extending Android to other platforms, we are opening up the market even further, creating new audiences and revenue opportunities,” said Simon Wilkinson, Chief Executive Officer, Myriad Group.

From application components to complete device integration, Myriad provides best-in-class Android solutions. As a founding member of the Open Handset Alliance (OHA), Myriad has been playing a key role in Android solutions since its early days. When partnering with Myriad for Android application development or porting, operators, OEMs and application store owners will benefit from Myriad’s rich heritage in Java technology and unique Android expertise.

New report identifies “compound threats” as biggest mobile security risk

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AdaptiveMobile, a specialist in mobile security, today launched its 2011 Global Security Insights in Mobile report, which examines the latest emerging trends in mobile security. The report reveals the shift towards a new, more sophisticated type of threat facing mobile subscribers and network operators – the ‘compound threat’ – which uses multiple attack vectors (SMS/MMS/email/web/voice) to compromise different aspects of a handset simultaneously. These threats are built with the primary aim of extracting money, with a secondary knock-on effect for the mobile networks of damaged reputations and a loss of trust.

With mobile subscriptions hitting five billion, cyber criminals – usually part of highly organised global gangs – are shifting their focus away from traditional PC-based scams towards the mobile world, says Adaptive. As such, the report looks at the rise of the Smartphone market – now at 20 per cent penetration globally and set to hit 37 per cent in Europe and 44 per cent in the US by 2012. It examines the risks that mobile users face today and is the first analysis of its kind to take a 360° view of the mobile security landscape. It identifies key trends that AdaptiveMobile predicts will have the greatest impact on the market over the coming year and analyses the impact and consequences of the four types of compound threat to surface to date:

1)  Advanced Mobile Malware: One of the most dangerous types of compound threats to emerge to date, the first occurrence of which was identified in October last year. Monitoring users’ access to banking sites, it harvests log-in details through a combination of routes. It is an evolution of existing PC spyware that has been redesigned specifically to record or forward conversations on Smartphones.

2)  Converged Messaging Spam: These are 411-type spam attacks that are on the rise globally where users receive an SMS prompting a reply in response. In the most coordinated of such attacks, users also received a matching email from fraudsters further validating the scam.

3)  IP Reputation: A growing type of compound threat that is becoming increasingly problematic for operators – devices sending email spam over mobile networks. This results in mobile devices becoming infected with PC malware and severely impacts the IP reputation of the operator’s network.

4)  Credit Attacks: Threats that seek to trick or stealthily make the subscriber dial a premium rate number. The compound nature is apparent in the parallel use of malware, SMS and voice calls to monetise the attacks.

“The past year, more than any other, Smartphone threats, viruses and privacy concerns have hit the headlines,” says Gareth Maclachlan, COO, AdaptiveMobile. “However there’s still a lot of confusion amongst consumer and enterprise subscribers as to where the real threats lie and what can be done to combat them – particularly as the threats and handsets are becoming more sophisticated and therefore complex.”

The findings of the AdaptiveMobile 2011 Global Security Insights in Mobile report are said to provide a stark warning to mobile users, network operators and the wider ecosystem. Whereas historically mobile threats have been crude and designed to reap big returns quickly, this new breed of compound threats are intelligent and built to go unnoticed for as long as possible. As such, mobile security is rising in prominence as a business issue with threats starting to have more serious consequences for network reputation, performance and subscriber trust.

“Traditional approaches to protecting subscribers can simply no longer provide adequate protection. Trying to tackle mobile security in a piecemeal fashion by protecting individual services – such as SMSC or email filters – simply cannot suffice when what we’re now seeing are multi-bearer threats that requires a much broader approach to network protection. With that in mind we predict that compound threats will seriously shake up the telecoms and security markets over the coming year,” Maclachlan concludes. “With the next generation of attacks continuing to emerge, so does the need for an intelligent approach to mobile security – keeping the industry one step ahead of the criminals to ensure that such threats do not reach mobile users in the first place.”

The Global Security Insights in Mobile report is based on analysis of the network traffic of AdaptiveMobile’s global customer base and threat statistics from anti-virus partners.

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