Starhome, a provider of roaming services for mobile network operators, today announced that it has filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Roamware, Inc., AT&T Mobility LLC and T-Mobile USA, Inc., in the United States District Court for the District of Delaware.

Starhome's complaint alleges infringement of Starhome's patents by defendants' provision of international roaming wireless telephone services to subscribers and telecommunications companies. The Complaint accuses the three of infringing United States Patents 6,920,487 and 7,231,431, each entitled "System and Methods for Global Access to Services for Mobile Telephone Subscribers." Starhome is seeking damages and a judgment enjoining further infringement.

"Starhome's products and services provide innovative wireless mobility solutions to enhance international roaming," said Neta Bloch, General Counsel of Starhome. "Starhome appreciates the significant value our patents confer to our business and intends to aggressively protect our rights."

The Patents cover the core technology of the Starhome Intelligent Call Assistant (ICA) solution and the Starhome Home Short Code (HSC) solution, among other services.

The Starhome HSC solution is said to be one of the first and most fundamental roaming solutions of the VHE (virtual home environment) concept. The solution can convert unrecognized home short codes into valid phone numbers and provide mobile operators with a basis to increase their revenue potential from both the inbound and outbound international roaming market.

The Starhome ICA supplements the HSC solution. ICA overcomes international dialing difficulties by automatically correcting or completing misdialled numbers. As the majority of these calls are never redialed, ICA significantly increases roaming revenues for operators. ICA has a user interface that, among other capabilities, can allow combinations of seamless call completion, native-language voice interaction and post-dialing SMS notification, and support for prepaid or postpaid communities with respect to both inbound and outbound roamers.

Eitan Achlow, CEO of Starhome explained: "Over the course of the last 10 years, Starhome has spent a considerable amount of time and resources in developing the Home Short Code and the Intelligent Call Assistant solutions, both of which are included in our patent-protected portfolio. Starhome invests heavily in intellectual property and realizes the importance of protecting these innovations and technology."

Qualcomm has announced it has sampled its first dual-CPU Snapdragon chipsets. The Mobile Station Modem (MSM) MSM8260 and MSM8660 solutions integrate two of the company's enhanced cores running at up to 1.2GHz.  Targeted at enabling high-end smartphones, the MSM8x60 solutions are said to be third-generation chipsets from the company's expanded Snapdragon platform.

"Qualcomm's first-generation Snapdragon chipsets set a new standard for advanced smartphones and smartbook devices, and our second-generation solutions are already shipping in volume," said Steve Mollenkopf, executive vice president of Qualcomm and president of Qualcomm CDMA Technologies.  "We are very excited by the innovation our customers are already showing as they begin designing products based on our dual-core MSM8260 and MSM8660 chipsets."

The MSM8260 for HSPA+ and MSM8660 for multi-mode HSPA+/CDMA2000® 1xEV-DO Rev. B feature two enhanced CPU cores running at up to 1.2GHz for high levels of Web application and multimedia performance, including a GPU with 3D/2D acceleration engines for Open GLES 2.0 and Open VG 1.1 acceleration, 1080p video encode/decode, dedicated low power audio engine, integrated low power GPS, and support for 24-bit WXGA 1280 x 800 resolution displays. 

Qualcomm's Snapdragon family of chipset solutions includes: First-generation products: QSD8x50 with 1GHz enhanced core; Second-generation products: MSM8x55 and QSD8x50A with 1GHz enhanced core including multimedia optimizations and 1.3GHz enhanced core, respectively: and third-generation products: MSM8260, MSM8660 and QSD8672 with dual-CPU architecture featuring enhanced cores running at up to 1.2GHz and 1.5GHz, respectively.

Vesta, a global specialist in electronic payment solutions, has announced that it has expanded its contract with mobile operator Telefonica O2 to manage all of its electronic top up transactions for prepaid customers.  Vesta's European headquarters in Dundalk has managed phone-based and SMS top-ups for the operator since 2007.

The recently launched service provides a unified customer experience across all of O2's direct top-up channels, including phone, live agent, web and SMS.  The enhanced service provides new features, such as ‘scheduled top-up', where an O2 customer can choose to have credit automatically added to their phone on a particular day.  In addition customers can now store multiple payment cards on their accounts and send credit to multiple gifting "buddies".

"O2 conducted an extensive analysis on the revenue and cost benefits of our service compared to other providers.  We are pleased that Vesta came out on top and look forward to assisting O2 realise even greater revenue and cost savings with our new solution," said Lorcan Burke, Vice President of European Sales and Marketing for Vesta.

Vesta's Mobile Payments Platform provides end-to-end, fully managed payment services, including prepaid top-up, bill payment and mobile broadband payments for many leading mobile operators worldwide. 

"Increasing customer value and reducing costs are paramount to our growth and continued success," said  Eoghan Patton, Business Delivery Manager, Telefonica O2.  "Vesta has added value to our product offering, streamlined the top up process for our customers, and eliminated the risks inherent in real-time transaction processing."

In addition to building out a comprehensive suite of payment channels, Vesta is providing O2 with full indemnification against fraud, and providing the operator with full compliance with the rules and regulations around protecting card holder data. 

Mentum, a wireless access and backhaul network planning and optimisation company, today announced the completion of its acquisition of Ascom's network planning business. The acquisition includes the TEMS CellPlanner and TEMS LinkPlanner product lines, intellectual property, customer contracts, member staff, equipment and office located in Kista, Sweden.

With the acquisition, initially announced on April 16, Mentum has assumed all of Ascom's product-related commitments and will honour the currently committed TEMS CellPlanner and TEMS LinkPlanner roadmap and will continue to sell and support the products. Ascom's network planning unit and Kista office location will be seamlessly incorporated into Mentum's core business.

"The addition of TEMS CellPlanner and TEMS LinkPlanner to our family of products enables us to bring together some of the strongest solutions and competencies in the market space. Ascom customers will benefit from the breadth and depth of our solutions, our commitment to unsurpassed quality and our renowned R&D and world-class technologies that have led to our strong leadership position in the network planning industry," commented Bernard Breton, Chief Operating and Strategy Officer at Mentum.

Huawei today announced the debut of its first branded handset in the UK in conjunction with O2. The G7002, an entry level 2G touch screen phone, and the pay-as-you-go handset features a 1.3 megapixel camera, 2.4" LCD touch screen, MP3/MP4 player and Micro-SD card lot.

"We are pleased to be partnering with Huawei to bring the G7002 to our customers,'' said Steve Alder, General Manager Group and UK Devices at O2. "The G7002 makes owning a touch screen phone even more affordable and helps us continue to offer a great range of products to our customers.'

"Huawei is committed to providing high-quality tailor-made handsets to customers, and the launch of the G7002 reflects our flexible branding strategy based on individual operator needs. '' said Nicola Philbin, General Manager of Device, Huawei UK & Ireland.

According to a new research report from Berg Insight, mobile location-based service revenues in Europe are forecasted to grow from € 220 million in 2009 at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 12 percent to reach € 420 million in 2015. Local search, navigation services and social networking are believed to become the top applications in terms of number of users. Berg Insight estimates that one third of all mobile subscribers in Europe will use some kind of location-enhanced application on a regular basis by 2015. The social networking category is forecasted to experience the highest growth in the coming years.

"Location-based services are finally on the verge of mainstream acceptance. Increasing sales of smartphones are driving end-user awareness of mobile Internet services and applications in general. On-device application stores enable access to mobile services for a broader audience at the same time as flat-rate data plans make pricing more transparent. More and more developers are now adding location support in their applications to enhance the user experience", said André Malm, Senior Analyst, Berg Insight. He adds that integration of GPS in handsets is an important driver. "The installed base of GPS handsets in Europe has recently surpassed 15 percent of total handsets and will increase to 50 percent three years from now."

The revenue model for many mobile applications in the consumer segment is shifting from premium fees to ad-funding. This is especially the case for location-based services where now also navigation services are becoming free for end-users and developers monetise their offerings through ads and various bundles. However, revenues may not grow at the same rate as usage because the mobile advertising ecosystem is still nascent. It will take some years before a successful model has been established that allows advertisers to reach out to a critical mass of active users, and this is especially the case for emerging location-based advertising, concludes Berg.

Turkcell, a communications and technology company in Turkey, announced today that it has developed one of the world's first location-based Web 2.0  micro-blogging platforms. "Gezenzi", which roughly translates as "share traces of your life", launches today and is a permission-based service which enables members to use a Gezenzi map to exchange information about places they encounter in their daily lives and travels.

On a Gezenzi map, users share location information by keying in text, comments and even multi-media content (including images and – shortly – audio and video files).  This information could be about restaurants, travel, beaches, the weather, sports,  recommendations, etc, in any particular place in the world. Users can micro-blog information via SMS/MMS, mobile phones or the Web and can track the latest movements and comments of other Gezenzi subscribers. Blog entries on Gezenzi will appear based on specific locations rather than on when they were posted.

Cenk Bayrakdar, Turkcell's Chief Product and Service Management Officer, noted that: "Turkcell is delighted to be launching this innovative new service.  We have no doubt that it will be very well-received and become a much-used application for micro-bloggers both here in Turkey and on their travels worldwide. We would encourage people to visit the Gezenzi website and find out more. With around a dozen mobile services applications as of March 31st 2010, Turkcell continues to lead the way in the development of Turkish mobile technology. I would like to thank my Turkcell colleagues for their continued innovative thinking and cutting-edge work.''

By the end of 2010, Gezenzi is expected to also be available to users in English through some Turkcell subsidiaries such as life:) in Ukraine.