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PMC-Sierra to buy Wintegra for mobile backhaul play

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PMC-Sierra has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Wintegra Inc, a provider of network processors optimised for mobile backhaul equipment.

Mobile networks worldwide are reaching a breaking point driven by the explosive growth in video and data traffic fuelled by the rapid adoption of 3G and 4G smartphones, tablets and netbooks. Carriers are entering into multi-year upgrades of their mobile backhaul equipment as they transition from TDM to packet-based architecture. Packet-based mobile backhaul enables carriers to cost effectively scale bandwidth capacity to accommodate the increasing levels of media streaming that drives the projected 10 times growth in mobile data traffic over the next three to four years.

Wintegra’s WinPath™ family of network processors – combined with their field-proven networking software – is used in 3G/4G base stations, fibre and microwave cell-site routers, as well as radio network controllers deployed globally in mobile networks. These single-chip solutions enable carriers to increase throughput on their mobile backhaul networks while successfully scaling and migrating to packet-based architectures.

The acquisition accelerates PMC-Sierra’s product offering in the IP/Ethernet packet-based mobile backhaul equipment market segment, which is expected to grow 35 percent annually from $1.2 billion in 2009 to $5.5 billion in 2014, according to Infonetics research1.

This acquisition fits strategically with PMC-Sierra’s overall efforts to accelerate the transition of existing communications equipment to converged, packet-centric solutions. Today, PMC-Sierra is the leading provider of residential access with Passive Optical Networking (PON) solutions as well as end-to-end multi-service Optical Transport Network (OTN) solutions for Metro networks. Wintegra extends PMC-Sierra’s offerings into IP-based mobile backhaul solutions required by carriers as they upgrade their infrastructure to capture growing 3G/4G wireless data service revenues.

“Carriers are moving rapidly to IP-based mobile backhaul and Wintegra’s product offering is uniquely positioned to enable this packet transition and breakthrough the bandwidth bottlenecks faced in mobile networks,” said Greg Lang, President and Chief Executive Officer of PMC-Sierra. “Combined with our broad portfolio of communications infrastructure products, PMC-Sierra is leading the industry in the migration to IP-based networks in mobile backhaul, metro optical transport, and residential Fiber-To-The-Home.”

“We’ve already been partnering with PMC-Sierra to create mobile backhaul solutions that combine our multi-service WinPath processors and networking software with PMC-Sierra’s extensive portfolio of framers and mappers,” said Kobi Ben-Zvi, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Wintegra. “Given the strong strategic fit between the two companies, joining forces will allow us to further accelerate the industry’s transition to IP-based networks.”

Wintegra has 165 employees with the majority of its R&D development team located in Ra’anana, Israel and Austin, Texas. The acquisition of Wintegra expands PMC-Sierra’s presence in Israel, where its FTTH business is based. Wintegra’s founders, Kobi Ben-Zvi and Robert O’Dell, will join PMC-Sierra and bring an exceptional team with strong expertise in silicon design, networking software, and system integration.

Under the terms of the deal, PMC-Sierra will pay Wintegra $240 million in cash consideration less an estimated net cash amount of $27 million on Wintegra’s balance sheet at the time of closing, for a net purchase price of $213 million. PMC-Sierra intends to use its existing balance sheet cash to finance the acquisition. Further, up to an additional $60 million of cash consideration may be paid if certain growth and performance milestones are reached by the end of 2011. The acquisition has been approved by both companies’ board of directors and is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2010 subject to customary closing conditions and regulatory approvals. The transaction is expected to be immediately accretive to PMC-Sierra’s earnings.

 

Seenearly creates your own mobile history

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“Romantic partners can mutually agree to monitor each other”

I’ve long argued that mobile operators missed a trick by not offering synched back-up for customer data, messages and contacts at a couple of Euro a month add-on. Now they are seeing a host of competitors step into the breach.

This app, from Seenearly, seems to have put a different spin on such services by showcasing the app’s top snooping potential. Its own press release suggest that parents might use it to monitor their children, employers their employees, and green-eyed lovers can drive themselves crazy tracking the exact movements of their “romantic partner”. Really?

Seenearly press release

Seenearly is an Android application that tracks all the activity on your mobile phone and lets you monitor it online.
Seenearly resides as a low-level, anonymous background app on your handset, automatically syncing the contents of your phone to an account on the Seenearly website.
The app then tracks all handset usage and sends the information back to a real-time, online account that can be accessed 24/7. The accessible information includes calls, SMS and email content, browsing history, address book, applications that have been installed or deleted and the phone’s location.

Peter Karsten, CEO of Acquad, commented: “Seenearly is all about keeping you informed – we track all the activity on a handset and collect this information in one place. Having access to this information is enormously powerful – it can allow consumers to understand their mobile habits, protect against identity theft or cyberstalking and help keep an eye on loved ones. Interestingly, we don’t gather any more information than the typical Google app in the Android Market. The difference with Seenearly is that the end-user can see what information has been collected.”

Seenearly suggests that it can help its users in a number of ways:
•    By understanding their phone habits, consumers can ensure that they are on the correct mobile tariff and save money
•    Employers can monitor the smartphones of their staff to understand what they are accessing using company property
•    Worried parents can monitor their child’s phone to check for signs of cyber-bullying and other problems
•    Romantic partners can mutually agree to monitor each other

How much extra coverage does digital dividend spectrum give you?

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How much extra coverage does digital dividend spectrum give you?

Here’s a map showing the coverage enhancement NokiaSiemensNetworks says it is getting from an LTE base station operating in the 800MHz spectrum band.

The lighter colour is its 3G coverage in the German town of Kyritz at 2100MHZ, and the darker magenta shade is LTE coverage at 800MHz.

With NSN announcing today that Deutsche Telekom is launching LTE in the 800 band this year, this gives an idea of why operators like 800MHz for rural coverage.

Aside from coverage NSN was coy, at a recent London LTE demo and event, in sharing what it thinks LTE performance stats will be at 800MHz.

As you may remember, Vodafone Germany was happy recently to state that it expects 3Mbps actual throughput for a typical rural user at launch, using the same frequency. One of the compounding issues for operators in this band in Germany is that they have only 10Mhz each to play with, given there are three operators licensed within a 30MHz block.

 

IPWireless and Samsung partner on mobile broadcast

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IPWireless, a specialist in developing enabling IMB technology, today announced that the company has signed a co-operation agreement with Samsung Electronics to develop and demonstrate phones with broadcast capabilities based on the 3GPP IMB standard. IMB is capable of streaming live video and broadcasting and storing popular content on the device for later consumption – both resulting in significant offloading of data intensive traffic from existing 3G unicast networks and an improved customer experience.

“The IMB standard gives an opportunity to breathe life back into the possibility of using part of the 3G spectrum for broadcasting and datacasting, allowing major infrastructure vendors and handset manufacturers, such as Samsung, to refocus their mobile broadcast technologies on the underused TDD band on UMTS [3G] networks,” said David McQueen, Principal Analyst, Informa Telecoms & Media. “With mushrooming data traffic caused by the advent of wireless-laptop-connectivity products and smartphones, thereby increasing bandwidth demands on mobile operator networks, the IMB standard is gaining increasing mobile operator interest for use as an overspill for data-intensive multimedia. IMB also has the further advantage of being able to operate in spectrum that many mobile operators have already acquired so negating the need to build a separate and distinct network.”

“The explosive growth in mobile data created by media friendly devices is creating the need for a more innovative 3G network delivery solution like IMB,” said Dr. Bill Jones, Chief Executive Officer of IPWireless.

“As a leader in 3GPP mobile broadcast, we are dedicated to the development of the ecosystem so that operators and their hardware partners are able to confidently and swiftly deploy IMB solutions. We are delighted to be working with Samsung, a market leader, to demonstrate the tremendous potential for mobile broadcast.”

IMB was defined in the 3GPP release 8 standards, and was recently endorsed by the GSMA as their preferred method for the efficient delivery of broadcast services. Mobile operators are exploring using the IMB wireless technology within a little used tranche of 3G spectrum called Time Division Duplex (TDD) spectrum. This spectrum already forms part of the 3G licenses held by many European mobile operators, but has remained largely unused because of a lack of appropriate technology.

Currently, 3G TDD spectrum is available to over 150 operators across 60 countries covering more than half a billion subscribers.  IMB enables spectrally efficient delivery of broadcast services, in TDD spectrum based on techniques that are aligned with existing FDD WCDMA standards.

This allows for a smooth handover between IMB and existing 3G networks.

Elisa targets LTE at 1800MHz by 2012

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Networks head says vendor selection ongoing, though NSN is “Plan A”

Finnish operator Elisa expects to be re-using its 1800MHz spectrum for LTE by 2012, according to its head of Access Networks, Dr Eetu Prieur.

The operator recently won a licence at 2.6GHz, but also holds permission from the regulator to use 1800MHz for LTE. Prieur said that LTE at 1800MHz would double the 5.8km2 coverage per site that could be achieved at 2.6GHz, and also allow the operator to reuse its existing antenna lines. 1800MHz is also easier to re-farm than 900MHz, he said, as there are more frequencies in the band and less GSM traffic.

Elisa would also be able to re-use the site plans they have for GSM1800 and UMTS2100 services, he said, meaning sites and masts could be reused.

The only delay would be brought about by the lack of devices that have 1800MHz capability, he added. But he expects 1800MHz devices to be available 6-12 months behind other modes, which he regarded as not a big hurdle.

As for vendors, Nokia Siemens Networks has the existing contract providing Elisa’s pilot network, but the operator is carrying out vendor selection right now for LTE, Prieur said. “Nokia Siemens has the existing contract,” he said, “but that could change. Vendor selection is still ongoing.”

With the principal advantage of 1800MHz LTE being coverage, what about capacity – does Prieur see a role for small cells, or femtocells, in LTE?

“I think operators will squeeze the macro network and ony then go to more expensive solutions like using small cells. Adding a small cell means you need fibre to go to the femtocell for backhaul,” he said.

Nor does Prieur appear to think that voice over LTE is any kind of issue to be worrying about soon.  “We’re completely satisfied that data is on LTE and voice on 3G. Dropping back to 3G for voice, that’s fine. It’s probably not going to be fine for ever but it seems too early for us to think about that [VoLTE],” he added.

Prieur also appeared to pour cold water on one plank of Nokia Siemens’ marketing around LTE.

Speaking at an event to demo LTE technology in London, Christian Fredrikson, head of sales for Network Systems, NSN, had said that the vendor has 20,000 LTE-ready Flexi base stations installed with customers. This would enable those customers to switch from WCMDA radio to LTE, merely by a software upgrade.

“We are the only ones who can do a complete software swap from W-CDMA to LTE in under 20 minutes,” Fredrikson said.

But Prieur said that the ability to move to LTE through a software upgrade would be extremely rare. “I regard LTE as a hardware upgrade,” he said, “because it is a new radio module. That is normal.”

 

But what of NSN’s vision of having Flexi nodes in the network, just ready and waiting to be switched over to LTE?
Prieur’s view is that to be able to move to LTE, an operator will need to have the “latest” base stations as well as be able to re-use the same frequency bands they are using for their 3G or 2G services. That will be a very small selection of operators, he said.

“If you have a brand new GSM base station at 1800MHz then you could upgrade to LTE that way if you have the ability to re-use that spectrum. But usually that’s not going to happen,” he said.

Prieur also punctured some orthodoxy around mobile data demand, saying that in Elisa’s experience it has been linear, rather than exponential. Elisa has seen a steady volume of mobile data per user, at around 1.9Gb per user per month, with growth in data volumes mainly driven by new users moving to 3G, rather than an explosion of data volume per user. Currently, over half of Elisa’s customers are 2G users, so there is plenty of scope for increasing data use by migrating data users, he said.

Very heavy users could be moved to LTE, he said. That would also extend the life of Elisa’s HSPA network by offloading those intensive users off that network, he added.

 

European Payments Council releases Trusted Service Management specifications for mobile contactless payments

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The European Payments Council (EPC), the decision-making and coordination body of the European banking industry in relation to payments, and the GSMA, which represents the worldwide mobile communications industry, have today published a joint paper titled ‘Mobile Contactless Payments Service Management Roles – Requirements and Specifications’.

The paper describes the provision and lifecycle management – including distribution, configuration, activation, maintenance and deletion – of banks’ mobile contactless payment applications when integrated with a mobile phone. It also outlines the role of the ’Trusted Service Manager’ (TSM), which is to support banks and mobile operators aiming to promote mobile contactless payments.

The paper closes an existing gap in the new Near Field Communication (NFC) ecosystem; its release follows a public consultation period, during which market feedback was received and carefully considered.

The paper defines a minimum set of requirements for a TSM to interface with banks and mobile operators. TSMs facilitate the distribution, configuration and activation of the bank’s payment application on the Universal Integrated Circuit Card (UICC, also known as a SIM card) within bank customers’ NFC handsets.

The EPC and GSMA anticipate that this joint project will boost commercial relationships between issuing banks, the mobile network operators and TSMs, resulting in the expedited deployment of mobile contactless payments in SEPA and around the world. In addition, the agreement on TSM specifications allows interested parties to develop services in the role of a TSM.

Dag-Inge Flatraaker, Chair of the EPC M-Channel Working Group, comments: “Building a common architecture for mobile contactless payments is a key objective of the EPC’s initiatives for mobile payments in the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA). The implementation of interoperable and user-friendly mobile payment solutions makes it even easier for bank customers across 32 SEPA countries to access state-of-the-art SEPA payment services.”

“This is an important step forward as it is the first time that mobile operators and banks have worked together on a common vision which will ease the way for contactless payments,” said Alex Sinclair, Chief Technical Officer and Chief Strategy Officer, GSMA.

ITU defines “true” 4G

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ITU’s Radiocommunication Sector (ITU-R) has completed the assessment of six candidate submissions for the global 4G mobile wireless broadband technology, otherwise known as IMT-Advanced. Harmonization among these proposals has resulted in two technologies, “LTE-Advanced”  and “WirelessMAN-Advanced” being accorded the official designation of IMT-Advanced, qualifying them as true 4G technologies.

In its recent meeting in Chongqing, China, ITU-R Working Party 5D, which is charged with defining the IMT-Advanced global 4G technologies, reached a milestone in its work by deciding on these technologies for the first release of IMT-Advanced. In the ITU-R Report, which will be published shortly, the LTE-Advanced and WirelessMAN-Advanced technologies were each determined to have successfully met all of the criteria established by ITU-R for the first release of IMT-Advanced. The Report is expected to be approved by ITU Member States at the ITU-R Study Group 5 meeting in Geneva in late November 2010.

Sierra Wireless introduces new LTE wireless modules Sierra Wireless AirPrime

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Sierra Wireless has announced the launch of a suite of new products designed for LTE networks, which will provide users wireless access at download speeds of up to 100 megabits per second (Mbps) and upload speeds up to 50 Mbps. Out of the gate, the Sierra Wireless portfolio will support all major network technologies and offer compatibility with existing 2G and 3G services.

Leading Sierra Wireless’ new LTE product launch are three additions to the AirPrime MC Series of Intelligent Embedded Modules: the AirPrime MC7750, MC7700 and MC7710. The three variants offer different network technology and frequency band combinations, as well as support for both Linux and Windows, allowing manufacturers to develop products once and easily repurpose that development work for other regions and customers. The AirPrime MC7750 module supports LTE, EV-DO and HSPA+ networks, while the AirPrime MC7700 and MC7710 modules support LTE and HSPA+ in different frequency bands.

The new AirPrime MC Series embedded modules allow manufacturers to take advantage of the latest generation of high-speed mobile networks, delivering up to 100 Mbps download speeds and 50 Mbps upload speeds, integrated GPS capabilities, and broader compatibility than previous technologies. Compatibility with existing 2G and 3G networks ensures users stay connected whether they’re in major cities or traveling across the country, and supports international roaming.

The Sierra Wireless AirPrime MC series modules for LTE networks also support Qualcomm’s Gobi application programming interface (API). This interface helps streamline integration efforts, spur application development among third-party developers, and delivers greater flexibility to device manufacturers.

“Sierra Wireless’ new wireless modules use our industry-leading, multimode 3G/LTE MDM9200TM and MDM9600TM integrated chipsets to provide broadband connectivity via a wide range of mobile network technologies, including 2G, 3G and LTE networks,” said Fram Akiki, senior director of product management with Qualcomm CDMA Technologies. “Furthermore, these chipsets are compatible with Qualcomm’s Gobi API in order to deliver support for a growing ecosystem of software providers’ solutions for connectivity, location, and manageability, giving consumers new ways to leverage their mobile broadband connections.”

Manufacturers are already using these new capabilities to incorporate high-speed wireless connectivity into a variety of upcoming devices, including notebook, netbook, and tablet computers; connected consumer electronics products such as personal navigation devices; and home or enterprise-class routers. Sierra Wireless already has several design wins for these modules with multiple device manufacturers.

“With its unprecedented flexibility and throughput, LTE technology is opening up new opportunities for the next generation of mobile computing, multimedia, and HD video applications,” says Dan Schieler, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Mobile Computing for Sierra Wireless. “This series of intelligent embedded modules will help our customers take full advantage of new LTE network technologies and lead the industry in providing innovative products for this market.”

In addition to the new AirPrime MC Series embedded modules, Sierra Wireless plans to introduce new AirCard USB modems and mobile hotspots in the first half of 2011 that also support the latest LTE network technologies and data rates. As with the embedded modules, the new AirCard products will be backward-compatible with existing 2G and 3G networks to provide the widest coverage and best possible customer experience for end users as operators expand their LTE network roll-outs.

The AirPrime MC7750 and MC7700 modules are now sampling. The AirPrime MC7710 module is expected to be available for sampling during the first half of 2011. Test samples of Sierra Wireless’ new LTE AirCard products are expected to be available to operators and network infrastructure partners by end of 2010.

2010 study of mobile Web trends said to show continued explosion of mobile-friendly content

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dotMobi, the mobile Web solutions company behind .mobi — the only ICANN-approved Internet address created specifically for labeling content that works on all mobile phones — today announced highlights of its third annual study on mobile Web trends.

The dotMobi “Mobile Web Progress” study examined websites available via the world’s most-used global top-level Internet domains: .com, .net, .org, .info and .mobi.

The 2010 study is said to demonstrate that the mobile Web is continuing its ‘explosive’ global growth. The 2008 study showed 150,000 mobile-ready websites, while the 2010 study showed approximately 3.01 million sites, representing an incredible two-year growth of more than 2,000 percent. And that growth level significantly outpaces early desktop growth.

Web analysts Netcraft found that, between 1996 and 1998, the size of the desktop Web grew from 150,000 sites to 2.0 million sites, a growth rate of only 1,333 percent compared to the mobile Web’s 2,000 percent growth in the equivalent timeframe.

“Many brands and businesses are seeing that mobile is a vital, unique channel and not just a smaller desktop Web. Big brands are now adopting mobile Web strategies, but we still have a long way to go, given the ubiquity of mobile phones compared to computers,” said Trey Harvin, CEO of dotMobi.  “A recent Morgan Stanley report noted that the ‘mobile internet is ramping faster than desktop internet did and will be bigger than most think’. Businesses of all sizes need to prepare for the change in how people will access content by embracing the mobile Web.”

“Small business owners must engage their growing mobile audience as large brands have. Tools like Dreamweaver and WordPress enabled this to happen on the desktop Web by making site creation fast, easy and cheap. Developments like jQuery Mobile, DeviceAtlas and goMobi are now making this happen for the mobile Web,” added Harvin.

To better understand how the world’s most popular websites are handling mobile phones, dotMobi looked closely at the top 500,000 websites as determined by Alexa, the Amazon.com intelligence company.

Within the Alexa top 1,000 sites, 40.1 percent of all sites are mobile-friendly. These sites represent the world’s most popular Web properties, like Google, Facebook and Yahoo!

Beyond the top 1,000, mobile friendliness still holds strong but is not yet as widespread. Of the top 10,000 Alexa sites, 29.7 percent perform well on mobiles. Once the input data is broadened to include the top 500,000 sites, the total number of mobile-friendly sites drops to 19.3 percent.

dotMobi’s Director of Engineering, Ronan Cremin, said, “The study demonstrates that apps are shifting to become a part of a broader mobile Web strategy rather than the strategy itself. While some brands build individual apps for multiple platforms like iOS, Android and BlackBerry, businesses are increasingly choosing a mobile Web solution for their content, as many of the Alexa top 1,000 have already done.”

“As more tools come to market and HTML5 support spreads, mobile Web apps will displace most ‘native’ apps. Brands can now build a single mobile Web presence that works across all mobile devices without the limitations, costs and maintenance issues of multiple app platforms. The mobile Web lets you address all of your mobile customers, not just those with iPhones and Android handsets,” Cremin added.

“Companies that have focused on good mobile user experiences and mobile-friendly websites now have strong advantages in competing for visitors, sales, and customer loyalty,” Harvin said,  “And these advantages are already positively impacting sales at their desktop websites.”

mimoOn announces first generation LTE femtocell mi!Spectrum Air Interface Scheduler

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mimoOn, a software defined radio (SDR) software company, today announced the first generation of it’s high-efficiency mi!Spectrum Femtocell LTE Air Interface Scheduler, now fully compliant with the new Femto Forum APIs for air interface scheduling and network monitoring.  By utilising the new Femto Forum API’s mi!Spectrum will reduce integration costs and time, accelerating development and deployment of femtocells for LTE.

This new generation of QoS, CQI, and interference-aware air interface schedulers will significantly improve spectrum efficiency and minimize potential interference between macrocells and femtocells. Detailed specification of the new schedulers will be released in December 2010. The mi!Spectrum schedulers will run on mimoOn’s own mi!Femto stack, as well as any other vendor’s stack supporting the FemtoForum Scheduler / NMM APIs.

Thomas Kaiser, mimoOn CEO, said: “The new mimoOn mi!Spectrum Scheduler and mi!Femto Stack will enable operators to achieve significant gains in Femto and Macro network spectrum efficiency.  mimoOn has chaired the Scheduler API and NMM API specification work in FemtoForum, which greatly helped us to be one of the first companies launching products compliant with the new APIs.”

Willem Mulder, mimoOn VP IP & Standards, added: “New degrees of freedom in the LTE OFDMA air interface have enabled us not only to significantly improve spectrum efficiency, but also minimize potential interference between macro- and femto networks.”

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