Too much time and investment required, argues messaging firm

Airwide, a privately-held messaging company with 145 mobile operator customers, is not seeing much operator enthusiasm for OneAPI, the GSMA initiative to develop common network APIs that can be used by application developers.

"Mobile operators are waiting to see which way OneAPI will go before they commit on it," says Jay Seaton, Airwide CMO. "They have more urgent priorities in working out how they fit into the app store market right now, and to stop third-parties taking all the revenue. As it stands at the moment, OneAPI doesn't specify much."

OneAPI was hatched by the GSMA in January 2008 and initially focused on the five most likely APIs they thought they could turn into common APIs: messaging, location, charging, user profile (demographic, as well as whether the customer is pre-paid or post-paid) and a data connection profile.  GSMA's thinking is that mobile users can have much more interesting and personalised applications if developers have access to network APIs compared with applications written  for specific handsets (such as the iPhone), although it remains to be seen how enthusiastic application developers will be in working directly with network operators. However, if developers can have access to common APIs, they won't have to duplicate their efforts to meet the proprietary requirements of individual operators.    

Despite Seaton's scepticism, the GSMA Association did announce at MWC 2010 the first commercial OneAPI pilot, which involves Canadian operators Bell Mobility, Rogers Communications and TELUS.

"A common set of APIs will benefit the entire mobile industry by making it much more attractive for developers to create innovative applications and services by utilising the capabilities and information provided by operators about their networks," said Michael O'Hara, Chief Marketing Officer at the GSMA in  statement. "Our OneAPI initiative will help eliminate fragmentation and aid the growth of the mobile applications ecosystem, resulting in a larger addressable market, encouraging innovation, enhancing the customer experience and creating new revenue opportunities for mobile operators and developers alike."

If Seaton's assessment is right, however, there won't be much more OneAPI activity anytime soon. "OneAPI is years away," he says.

 As part of its portfolio, Airwide helps network operators expose their APIs to application developers through its messaging gateway product.  

Airwide Solutions and Tecnotree have announced that they have entered into a non-exclusive global distribution agreement.  Under terms of the agreement, the companies will make available to operators world-wide a portfolio of next generation messaging infrastructure, OSS/BSS and value-added services solutions. The collaboration is expected to help both companies more extensively serve mobile operators in developed markets like Western Europe, and emerging markets like Africa and Latin America.

Emerging regions are increasingly tapping into mobile phone technology to improve quality of life in the region.  For example many operators are now offering low-cost and, high-quality value added service to millions of people in the developing world.  As a key underpinning of these services, operators need infrastructure that meets the increased demand, conforms to security and reliability requirements, and offers flexibility for tomorrow's yet unseen innovative service offerings. Together, Airwide Solutions and Tecnotree can provide comprehensive, out-of-the-box solutions that meet these types of need.

Additionally, Airwide's and Tecnotree's comprehensive portfolio is of interest to operators in developed markets like Western Europe, enabling operators to optimize their service delivery infrastructure, create an efficient service creation environment for launching profitable services in the shortest time-to-market, monetize their network investments by enhancing 3rd party services and applications, and drive new revenue from existing assets making them ad-funded, for example.

"Working together with Airwide will extend our value and reach we can provide to operators in both emerging and developed markets. Together we can offer powerful VAS solutions to operators worldwide, satisfying their needs for today and tomorrow. We expect this to be a fruitful relationship for both our company and our joint customers," said Leena Koskelainen, Director, Tecnotree VAS Solution Center.

 "We are very pleased to work with Tecnotree and expect the comprehensive nature of our combined solutions, as well as our mutual experience in both developed and emerging regions, will bring high value to operators in all parts of the globe," said Antero Norkio, head of channels for Airwide Solutions.  "With the portfolio from two leading providers of next-generation messaging and VAS solutions, we have the tool set that enables operators to create segmented, interactive and profitable services." 

Samsung today introduced a range of new enterprise mobility solutions at MWC 2010. Samsung enterprise solutions, delivered in collaboration with partners, are said to encompass key mobile enterprise solutions such as Enterprise Email, Enterprise IM, Security, MDM (Mobile Device Management), UC (Unified Communications), CRM (Customer Relationship Management), SFA (Sales Force Automation), BI (Business Intelligence) and vertical applications.

Samsung is actively discussing with major mobile operators to commercially launch the solutions in 2010. Most of the enterprise solutions showcased at MWC are expected to be commercially available by end of 2010. 

"The Enterprise Mobility Solutions we've presented today at Mobile World Congress, really cement Samsung's place as a major player in the enterprise mobility market" said WP Hong, Executive Vice President of Mobile Communications Business at Samsung Electronics. "Support from leading enterprise partners and major operators, has proven Samsung's commitment to deliver the comforts of the office computing environment to the smartphone – true mobility without compromise."

The Samsung Enterprise Mobility Offering comprises a suite of solutions & devices specifically targeted to the needs of the enterprise customers. Samsung smartphones support the most robust enterprise solutions on Microsoft Windows Mobile, and soon offer enterprise solutions on Android platform. Samsung will expand the capability to offer enterprise solutions on LiMo as well as bada, its own platform in 2011, giving enterprise customers both the choice and flexibility they want.

In recent months, Samsung has greatly expanded its channel support structure with major carriers' enterprise sales teams and has built strong relationships with premium solution partners such as Cisco, Formotus, Microsoft, Spring Wireless, Sybase, and Wipro. Samsung will continue to expand its collaboration model with major enterprise players such as Oracle, SAP and IBM in coming months.

NEC has announced at Mobile World Congress  that it is supporting Telefónica O2 in its trial of LTE 4G next-generation mobile services in the UK.  O2 deployed NEC's microwave backhaul solution, PASOLINK, to provide a high-capacity, resilient transmission link to one of O2's key LTE trial sites in the Slough area, Berkshire, UK.  

NEC's PASOLINK is used to carry high-definition video streaming, mobile gaming, high-speed file transfer and video conferencing.

"NEC provided us with the high performance and flexible access link to trial our next generation LTE mobile service," said Nigel Purdy, Head of Networks, Telefónica O2 UK Limited. 

Also at MWC, NEC announced its "Intelligent Converged Platform" for mobile backhaul which comprises the evolution of NEC's mobile backhaul solutions and services to plan, build and operate next-generation mobile broadband for mobile operators.

"The massive demand for smartphones and data, along with plans for next-generation mobile network technologies such as LTE, has brought network quality and time to deployment right to the heart of a successful strategy for mobile operators," said Richard Hanscott, vice president, NEC Europe.  "Our backhaul solution, PASOLINK, has led the industry in high-quality network provision and we continue to lead the way with an insight and understanding of the evolving requirements and challenges faced by mobile operators."

Comverse has coupled its industry leading Business Support System (BSS) and mobile internet solutions to help operators capitalise on the explosive growth in data traffic — not only in terms of providing the right quality of service to end users, but also to extend revenue opportunities by implementing new data-centric business models. 

For each mobile data network, operators establish rules, or policies, for the plethora of services now available to subscribers, such as on-line gaming and streaming video. However, standalone policy solutions are not a complete answer. A merging of network policies with pricing policies is required: The subscriber data held in the BSS is key to delivering the required subscriber experience in the network.  

What limits and conditions, for instance, are imposed on the use of these services? And what is the bandwidth and network priority applicable to these services? Too often, these policies are haphazard, uncoordinated, or even conflicting — and in some cases, operators just offer flat-rate plans with unlimited service. 

"Operators have discovered that flat-rate pricing for unlimited data usage is not working, both in terms of maximising value and providing quality service for all subscribers, who are demanding a ‘perfect' experience," said Gabriel Matsliach, President of Products and Operations at Comverse, the world's leading supplier of software and systems enabling value-added messaging and content services, converged billing and active customer management and IP communications. 

"Bringing together capabilities from Comverse ONE Billing and Active Customer Management with those from the Comverse Mobile Internet HUB," Matsliach said, "allows telecom operators to seamlessly manage all policy dimensions holistically to capture all revenues as defined by the operators' monetisation policies while ensuring a satisfying user experience."   

With the combined solution, operators can better manage network capacity, offer segmented price plans, prevent bill shock for subscribers, deliver Quality of Service (QoS) guarantees, and impose fair use limits on high users, says Comverse.

"It is clear that policy must be managed on many levels to unlock value for both the operator and subscriber," Matsliach says. "You must consider subscriber data, application needs, device capabilities and network conditions. Now more than ever, an operator's network operations and IT department must work as one, so operators can define rules once and can apply them transparently."

Tektronix Communications, a worldwide provider of Network Intelligence and communications test solutions, today announced at Mobile World Congress its LTE monitoring solution for Evolved Packet Core (EPC) networks based upon the Iris suite of products, which includes the GeoProbe G10, a new high-speed 10GE probe, three new analyzer applications and a common platform that provides a single, integrated framework for current and future applications.

Tektronix Communications' LTE EPC solution provides real time, end-to-end network visibility and trouble-shooting capability for operators deploying LTE networks. With increasing customer expectations for high-quality multimedia services, and with mobile data traffic on the rise, network operators around the world are looking towards LTE as a more efficient and profitable means by which to deliver bandwidth intensive applications, such as voice over IP, streaming video, video on demand, at a lower cost and with a higher quality of service. As part of the Network Intelligence portfolio, the LTE EPC monitoring solution supports operators migrating from both the 3GPP (GSM/UMTS) and 3GPP2 (CDMA) technologies.

From the radio access network to the core, LTE networks utilize all-IP architecture for more efficient management of networks and deployment of new services. With heightened customer expectations for bandwidth intensive applications and the high cost of customer churn, network operators need to ensure that key network and service quality metrics are met, which represents a significant challenge for many operators since they will be operating their LTE networks along-side their legacy 2G/3G networks. In addition to changes made in the mobile access network (e.g., such as the Node B combined with the RNC to make single element), the LTE EPC network is made up of the MME (Mobility Management Entity), the Serving Gateway, the PDN Gateway (Packet Data Network) and the PCRF (Policy and Charging Rules Function). With many new and unproven network elements, interfaces and interoperability challenges in the mix, network operators will want to proactively minimize unforeseen problems and to quickly identify them before customers are impacted. 

"Tektronix Communications' LTE EPC monitoring solution provides operators with a scalable, end-to-end monitoring solution that can grow as their network expands or as new technologies or enhancements become available", said Mark Driedger, vice president and general manager of Network Management for Tektronix Communications. "In addition, our solution supports multiple 2G/3G/4G technologies and interfaces, so operators who are planning to roll-out LTE alongside their existing legacy networks will be able to leverage many of the same tools and workflows to ensure that their network and services are running smoothly and profitably."

Key to the Tektronix Communications LTE EPC monitoring solution is the GeoProbe G10 probe, a high-speed IP probe optimized to handle high-speed IP traffic. The GeoProbe G10 provides LTE operators with an affordable, high-speed probing platform that can scale with their growing data traffic needs, in addition to providing a more efficient means to reduce backhaul traffic over IT-infrastructure (WAN/LAN). The LTE EPC monitoring solution provides mobile operators with a complete tool set that collects signaling and media data from the network, correlates the data end-to-end across the network, and then provides advanced analysis tools for end-to-end network monitoring and troubleshooting.

The Iris LTE EPC monitoring solution complements Tektronix Communications' portfolio of LTE test solutions that includes the K2Air and NSA: the only LTE protocol analysis solution available on the market supporting LTE-Seamless deep-dive monitoring of wireless and wireline LTE interfaces, including Uu interface monitoring capability. With capabilities to monitor multiple UEs simultaneously per cell sector in real-time, as well as support for aggregation of multiple antenna-based signals (MIMO) and the multi-technology analysis, K2Air helps to enable the efficient roll out of LTE networks and services.

FTS, a global provider of billing, customer care and policy control solutions for communication, content and service providers, today announced that it has partnered with Steria France to create the "Steria Agile Billing" solution enabling a new relationship between operators and their customers that goes beyond 'simple' billing.  The solution addresses developments in the telecommunications industry that have required operators to improve their pricing and billing processes to include more intelligence and flexibility in order to provide increasingly customized services to the consumer.

With the growing range of access technologies (3G, DSL, fiber optic, etc.), content services (music, video, games, applications, etc.) and billing models (on demand, a la carte, subscription, and even user-defined hybrid models): the era of simple billing is now a thing of the past.

To support this market shift, Steria has partnered with billing and policy control specialist FTS Ltd to create and launch the "Steria Agile Billing" solution, which will allow the service providers' marketing team to fully convey the richness and complexity of their service offering, with minimal rollout times and no technical constraints. The joint solution puts customer preferences at the heart of service providers' offering, affording them the flexibility for solutions to be precisely customized, therefore improving customer experience while optimizing revenues.

The solution created by Steria and FTS provides operators with a next-generation billing platform that is agile and intuitive, allowing the rapid launch of new offerings in line with the complexity of the constantly changing service provider environment.  Marketing teams can now independently configure new services, new offerings or attractive special promotions in record time.

"Our solution makes the customer central to the billing system by monitoring their usage in real time", commented Nir Asulin, VP Operations, FTS. "An extremely intuitive modelling system, the DO Tree^TM, allows the marketing function to build pricing rules and models which take into account each customer's usage patterns and the richness of the choices they make. We are very pleased with this partnership with Steria, as the complementary nature of our companies allows us to broaden our future prospects together."

"With Steria's expertise in the telecommunications market and our familiarity with the business challenges facing this sector, we can now provide a next-generation billing offering that addresses the difficulties faced by the market which we witness first-hand," said Thierry Gohon, Director of Telecoms Development, Steria France. "Testing a new offering, attracting a specific target audience to a new type of service, even rewarding certain behaviours, 'Steria Agile Billing' provides the responsiveness operators need to meet their major business challenges: pricing, customization and time to market. These challenges are central to the transformation projects we are currently conducting for the major players in a constantly changing market."