What demands will be placed on the backhaul network by the deployment of LTE? And what technologies will meet those demands most efficiently in terms of capex and opex?
Lance Hiley and Julius Robson of Cambridge Broadband Networks set out the capacity and cost challenges of LTE for the backhaul, and look at how next generation microwave technology can address them.
You can view this webinar here.
ZTE, a global provider of telecommunications equipment and network solutions, has debuted its high-speed LTE-Advanced system at the P&T/Expo Comm China in Beijing. The expo is the largest event for the IT and telecom market held in Asia.
ZTE claimed the demo generated a downlink peak rate of more than 1Gbit/second at the expo.
LTE-Advanced introduces carrier aggregation, enhanced antenna, relay, Coordinated Multi-point Tx/Rx (CoMP) and other key technologies. ZTE expects that LTE-Advanced based ZTE base stations will be available by 2012.
“ZTE is committed to pushing LTE & 4G technology and industry development, we are dedicated to providing competitive, customised mobile broadband solutions to our customers to help them succeed.” said Li Jian, President of ZTE CDMA<E Production Line.
ZTE Corporation says it has been continuously investing in LTE and technical evolution, and has almost 4000 engineers dedicated to the work. As of the first half of 2010, ZTE had applied for more than 2600 LTE/SAE patents and submitted 5400 proposals to the 3GPP.
Telecom data analytics company Subex has said a share placement, which is intended to raise Rs300-400 million (€4.8 – €6.4 million), has been delayed.
The company said that although delayed, the proposed preferential placement “will happen within the next few months”.
“The investment has got delayed due to certain procedural delays at the fund that is investing. Thus, the reason for the delay is unrelated to Subex. We will complete the process positively within a couple of months and expect to raise between Rs. 300 to 400 million”, said Subash Menon, CEO, Subex.
Subex announced in August that it would be issuing a maximum of 8 million shares at Rs80 to the investment arm of an un-named telecoms operator. If that price has remained constant, then it looks as if the placement will now be at just over half the maximum initial quantity – raising Rs300-400 million.
Subex markets its Revenue Operations Centre (ROC) and managed services model to provide data analysis into telco operations. Its revenues have grown 24% over the past five quarters – during which the company has won 14 managed services contracts and 7 deals for its ROC platform.
Subex shares on India’s National Stock Exchange are currently trading at around Rs62.
The market for wireless chargers could be worth $4.3 billion in total revenue by 2014, if projections released today by In-Stat are proved correct.
In-Stat has based its numbers on a consumer survey that showed that 40% of consumers would be willing to pay an extra $50 for a wireless charging solution. It added that 44% of consumers find current solutions “an annoyance”.
Qualcomm is one company to address the wireless charging opportunity with its eZone product. Sony and Samsung have also developed the idea. But In-Stat warned that the lack of compatibility could hold the market back. “Widespread adoption of wireless charging technology will be difficult without standardization since users do not want to carry multiple chargers, wired or wireless, to plug in their phones while traveling,” a note from the company said.
“Few device vendors have the power to drive their own standards and build their own ecosystem,” says Jim McGregor, Chief Technology Strategist. “Sony, Apple, Qualcomm, and Samsung are perhaps the only players with the strength, breadth of product line, and customer loyalty to create an environment capable of supporting a proprietary wireless charging technology.”
The research by In-Stat found the following:
• 28.3% of survey respondents indicated lack of standards as the most annoying issue in charging mobile devices.
• Early adopters of wireless charging will be users of niche devices.
• As with other technologies, prices are expected to degrade rapidly to about half of current pricing by 2014.
• Tightly coupled inductive charging systems are expected to be the early market leader.
• Of the integrated charging solutions, over two thirds are expected to be in cars.
Inside the Nokia board room…
“That’s it Anssi, right out. All the way please. Yes, you can take your special pen holder. And shut the door now. And the gate.”
*slam*
“Has he gone? Sure?”
*picks up special red phone*
“Hi Eric, it’s Stephen. Yeah, he’s gone … Yeah even the pen holder. Now, aboot* this Android thing…”
——————-
Nokia announced today that Anssi Vanjoki, Executive Vice President and a member of Nokia Group Executive Board will leave the Group Executive Board on October 12, 2010. As previously communicated, his employment with Nokia will end after his 6 month notice period. Vanjoki has been the head of Nokia’s Mobile Solutions unit, and as of October 12, 2010, Stephen Elop, Nokia President and CEO will be the acting head of the Mobile Solutions unit.
CEO Stephen Elop, speaking on behalf of the Nokia management team, said, “The management appreciates the role Anssi has played in Nokia. The company thanks him for his contributions over the years and wishes him all the best in the future.”
——————-
*No, for once it’s not a typo.
Vodafone Global Enterprise – the business within Vodafone which manages the communications needs of its largest multinational customers – today announced the acquisition of two telecom expense management (TEM) companies: Quickcomm and TnT Expense Management.
Vodafone Global Enterprise says it already has a strong track record in expense management and the two acquisitions will propel Vodafone into being a leading TEM company for multinational organisations.
Quickcomm, a developer of TEM software, is headquartered in Sydney, Australia and has offices in the US, UK and Singapore. Quickcomm will continue to sell and provide ongoing support for its products, as well as becoming a fully integrated part of the Vodafone Telecoms Management solution.
TnT Expense Management is a services provider of TEM. It is headquartered in Sandy Hook, Connecticut and has offices in New York, the UK, Germany and France. Its managed telecoms expense service, based on expert analysis as well as automated bill processing, is said to be a strong addition to Vodafone Global Enterprise’s existing services team.
The value of the gross assets being acquired are US$6.9m for Quickcomm and US$2.8m for TnT Expense Management.
“Our 570 multinational corporate customers tell us that they want Vodafone Global Enterprise to help them reduce cost, increase visibility and improve management control across their global footprint,” said Nick Jeffery, CEO of Vodafone Global Enterprise. “These acquisitions will benefit our customers by providing even greater visibility and control of their fixed and mobile spend and this, in turn, will further the business case for multinationals to adopt unified communications solutions.”
Mobiquant technologies has launched iPhortress, said to be the first appliance dedicated for the management and security of iPhone and iPad fleets with minimal deployment, integration and maintenance costs. iPhortress is said to enable enterprises to centrally manage the professional use of iPhones or iPads by the employees, either corporation or individual-owned.
The latest iPhone and iPad are packed with business-oriented features and new applications and, as a consequence, employees are increasingly bringing their own device to work. However, the lack of internalized security solutions challenges the ability of IT Departments to integrate employees’ iPhones or iPads into the company infrastructure.
Enterprises are thus in a difficult position, having to choose between employee’s need satisfaction and lowering risks to the enterprise posed by smartphones and their ability to store enterprise data or access the enterprise infrastructure.
iPhortress is said to solve this dilemma. With iPhortress security managers can afford to provide device and security management for employees’ iPhones and iPads centrally and remotely. iPhortress enables remote installation, automated enrolment, provisioning of devices all over the air to improve employees and IT administrators productivity . Building on Mobiquant’s multi-award winning Mobile MobileNX Smart Engine, iPhortress combines the CIO/CSO endorsed technology with usability approaches for a plug and play installation in the existing infrastructure that can be completed in less than an hour.
Opera Software and Netsweeper have announced a partnership that will provide added security and Internet content filtering to operators who ship and distribute the Opera Mini browser.
With Netsweeper’s technology, Opera will be able to offer mobile operators increased ability to block phishing, fraud, viruses, trojans, malware, access to adult content or other sites, services that are deemed inappropriate, and also add in an extra level of security, especially for enterprise networks. The new solution is said to leverage the latest caching technologies and is capable of processing interactive, user-generated Web 2.0 content that will further strengthen online user protection.
“Our operator customers have requested the ability to control and filter content for our Opera Mini browser, due to legal requirements in the countries where the operators are established,” said Christen Krogh, Chief Development Officer at Opera Software. “This partnership with Netsweeper, which has the most advanced and scalable solution in the market today, will make Opera Mini very attractive to the world’s operators.”
Netsweeper’s content filtering and web threat management solutions operate in real-time as Netsweeper’s artificial intelligence engines are notified of the URLs browsed by users and categorized immediately. Netsweeper presently has categorized over 3.8 billion unique URLs with an accuracy rate of 99.9 percent. In addition, Netsweeper has developed ways to identify and block viruses, spyware and other malicious applications, thus protecting both the operator’s network and the individual subscribers.
“Netsweeper is pleased to partner with an industry leader such as Opera,” said Perry Roach, CEO, Netsweeper. “With the mobile market expanding rapidly and the number of mobile devices with Opera Mini growing worldwide, this partnership represents a fantastic opportunity for not only our businesses but for the operators as well– who will have a distinctive, competitive advantage in the market.”
Julien Oudart is VP Sales & Marketing mobile marketing company Sofialys. Here he writes for Mobile Europe on the topic of apps – asking if html5 means the end of apps. What do you think?
YouTube is revamping its mobile site at http://m.youtube.com, making its mobile application obsolete. This move further validates industry speculation that HTML5, along with better processors and cloud services, might just mean the demise of applications. In such a case, industry experts say developers will need to take heed. Most importantly, it cuts through the highly fragmented phone market working on any HTML5-compliant mobile browser, including iPhone and Android. According to some industry specialists because the browser is not within Apple’s iAd white picket fence, it has more advertising revenue options.
This article aims to discuss the arrival of HTML 5 and its impact on companies in the media and advertising world. To what extent will HTML5 be used in the near future? Does it’s creation really mean the demise of mobile applications? What would this mean for developers and Google and Apple? How would this affect the mobile ad industry and what new revenue could it generate?
A lot of evidence points to the decline of apps, or at least the slowing down of apps over the next few years. A recent report published by IBA suggests that app sales will peak by 2013. At an OMMA Mobile conference that took place in New York earlier this year, agency delegates firmly concluded that HTML5 is the future of mobile advertising, and Apple certainly seem to confirm this view with the recent introduction of iAd. Launched on 1st July, Apple’s new service – which is HTML5 compatible and will offer advertising inside mobile apps, initially on the iPhone and iPod Touch – promises to combine the emotion of TV advertising with the interactivity of internet advertising. The company claims that the deals it has already secured represent almost half of the total forecasted mobile ad spend in the US for the second half of 2010. A force to be reckoned with without a doubt, (if the figures are to be believed), with Apple taking more than $60m in bookings for the new network even before its official launch date.
Other industry experts are also convinced that applications will become redundant in a 4G world. Indeed, when we consider the fact that a brand will soon be able to simply just build a HTML5 website which consumers can then store as a bookmarked icon on their iPhone’s home screen, it does seem to point to the redundancy of applications. And Saj Cherian, principal at US-based Valhalla Partners, in Vienna (VA), has a valid point when he says that Apps have proliferated primarily to address the shortcomings of device processing power and network bandwidth. As faster smartphones gain mass adoption, 4G networks are stood up, and more processing is done in the cloud, we will inevitably go back to the Web. He believes that we will get the rich user experience we have come to know via apps by merely browsing the Web. HTML5 will be a catalyst as well as a host of other enabling technologies, such as better browsers and cloud-based services. Indeed, according to the 2010 Mobile Web Usage Forecast by mobile Internet firm Volantis, HTML5 could become the standard platform for browsers and mobile web applications. Moreover, the forecast predicted that the greatest pull toward the mobile web would be gaming and social networking. 55% said social networking would encourage them to use mobile web and 17% said they would use the mobile web to access games. Others however, believe Games will be the exception rather than the rule as they are more processing intensive and better merchandised / monetized via application store downloads.
However, whether HTML5 will take over from apps is another question – and one that has sparked raging debate over the past few months. While there is little doubt that the advent of HTML5 is definitely good news for the mobile advertising industry (it is a way for advertisers to create richer experience and increase interactivity with end users – through enhanced designs, animation and visuals), there is strong evidence to suggest that both worlds will be able to happily co-exist, for the time being at least.
HTML5 will be increasingly used for mobile websites and more – as a general rule anything that improves user experience on mobile web is something the industry is looking at closely. In addition to YouTube’s afore-mentioned experimental HTML5-based version of their site, TechCrunch has reported that NetFlix is flirting with HTML5, too, especially as it pertains to embedded browsers in TV-based devices. And the New York Times’ website now embeds some video clips without resorting to Flash. The revamping of the YouTube website is a particularly significant move and one that has a direct impact on the mobile marketing and advertising industry. As the world’s biggest online and video community, it is a platform on which marketers are able to find virtually any audience they want to target and create innovative advertising and video content that allows the community to interact with the brand. YouTube enables brands and marketers to increase sales and exposure in various different ways; in addition to running video advertising, such as InVideo Ads or YouTube video ads, brands also sponsor contests, create brand channels and add their own original content to the PC and mobile versions of the site.
This has particular relevance in view of a recent Morgan Stanley report indicating that within 5 years more users will connect to the Internet via mobile devices than desktop PC’s. Given that YouTube consumption on mobile devices has also grown considerably (playbacks were up 160% in 2009 over the previous year), it is more than fitting that the site has opened up the concept of accessing video on the go. The company is currently rolling out an updated version of the mobile site and which is not only faster but also offers a user interface that incorporates larger, more touch-friendly elements and features and functionalities such as search query suggestions.
Ceragon Networks, a provider of high-capacity, 4G/LTE-ready wireless backhaul networks, today announced a multi-year agreement for microwave systems with TELE2, Russia. With the agreement, Ceragon is helping TELE2 subsidiaries in Russia to build out multiple high-capacity, carrier-grade networks to backhaul voice and data traffic for mobile telephony and broadband internet access. Shipments relating to the agreement are already underway.
For the past several years, TELE2 Russia has been installing new cellular networks all throughout Russia. With 17.3 million customers in 37 regions, TELE2 Russia is said to be the fourth largest mobile operator in the country.
TELE2 Russia’s objective is to offer premium communication services to customers at affordable prices. The operator chose Ceragon’s FibeAir IP-10 platform, said to be a cost-effective, high-capacity wireless backhaul solution that serves a wide range of capacity requirements, from a single base station to traffic-intensive hub sites. FibeAir IP-10 provides best-in-class microwave radio performance, and enables simplified network design and maintenance, which further reduces CAPEX and OPEX. When paired with Ceragon’s RFUs (Radio Frequency Units), network traffic and spectral efficiency are further optimized, providing more capacity per Hz and longer link spans.
“Ceragon’s microwave solutions provide TELE2 with a highly reliable, cost-efficient backhauling solution,” said Ritvars Krievs, CTO of TELE2 Russia. “The unique features of the FibeAir IP-10 help minimize network costs in selected areas while maintaining the high-quality services TELE2 customers expect.”
“Operators that serve diverse geographical areas such as TELE2 subsidiaries in Russia, must plan their networks carefully to ensure high customer service and a positive ROI,” said Ira Palti, President and CEO of Ceragon. “Ceragon’s FibeAir IP-10 solutions enable TELE2 Russia to build out their backhaul networks cost-effectively, with the best use of spectrum assets, fewer network elements, and improved network uptime.”
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