HSL has announced it will be giving away a free femtocell, for use with 2G and 3G mobiles, to each mobile network operator visiting its stand at the Mobile World Congress. In conjunction with the promotion, the HSL FemtoNet service will also be made available by HSL so that operators receiving a free femtocell can experience the capabilities of the HSL 2.75G Femtocell.

The promotion, says HSL, is part of an overall strategy to deliver femtocells to subscribers who suffer from inadequate mobile coverage. By giving mobile network operators the opportunity to evaluate the HSL 2.75G Femtocell through the promotion, mobile subscribers are a significant step closer to being able to benefit from HSL's femtocell in their homes and offices, says HSL.

The FemtoNet service allows an operator to outsource the operation of their own femtocell network using any of three different outsourcing models. HSL FemtoNet supports the use of IP or TDM links to connect with an operator's MSCs and SGSNs for circuit switched and packet switched services respectively. For this promotion HSL are making available their own MSC with FemtoNet to demonstrate the capabilities of the HSL 2.75G Femtocell.

According to HSL, unlike all users of existing 3G femtocells, users of the HSL 2.75G Femtocell are not restricted to requiring 3G mobile handsets. The HSL 2.75G Femtocell provides voice, messaging and data service to subscribers using any current 2G and 3G mobile handset that supports such services. Where the HSL 2.75G Femtocell also differs from existing 3G femtocells is that it does not provide 3G data but instead provides fast EDGE data that when coupled with existing home or office WiFi provides a superior wireless data service, says HSL.

fring, the mobile application that lets users communicate and share web-based content from mobile devices, has announced that fring on iPhone is now available over 3G networks. The announcement immediately follows iPhone's long awaited decision to allow third party VoIP applications running over 3G networks onto its iPhone App Store.

fring has been available over WiFi internet connection since launching on the iPhone App Store back in April 2008. The announcement means iPhone fring users can now make free voice and video calls over 3G or Wi-Fi internet access, and, depending on their access and preferences at any given time, easily switching between the two to stay connected any time, anywhere.

In addition to enabling voice and video calls over the internet over 3G and Wi-Fi to other fring users, fring users can call their friends on Skype, GoogleTalk and MSN and all their friends on regular phone lines via Skype-Out and hundreds of popular SIP services.

fring is a mobile communication hub that lets users make free calls, video calls, live chat, update profiles, share files and talk with fring friends and friends from several Instant Messaging services like MSN, AIM, GoogleTalk and Skype, in addition to interacting with popular online social networks including Twitter, Facebook and more, all from one integrated fring contact list.

"fring users and our team alike are very excited that Apple have allowed independent iPhone VoIP applications over 3G networks, letting users make voice and video calls over whichever internet access suits their needs at any given place and time." Avi Shechter, Co-Founder & CEO of fring continued, "This decision reflects the trend we have enjoyed over the past four years, as incredible devices and fring's rapidly developing technologies let our users communicate and share social internet experiences over their preferred internet access points wherever they are."

In addition to the iPhone/iPod touch, fring supports many other devices on multiple platforms including Symbian S60, Android, Windows Mobile, J2ME, Linux and Intel's Moblin devices.

Centile, the European specialist and provider of Hosted PBX and Unified Communications Platforms, is launching its latest platform named ‘ISTRA Mobile' at the Mobile World Congress 2010 in Barcelona.  

ISTRA Mobile is a mobile carrier driven PBX Services Platform which allows mobile operators and MVNEs/MVNOs to provide business subscribers with advanced PBX features of the office telephone system delivered directly to mobile handsets from the network.

Additionally, a carrier branded provisioning and end-user management portal and a set of blended mobile phone and desktop applications are all part of the carrier's PBX service package.

A Mobile Carrier's launch of the service is made easy with a low up-front investment and a ‘Pay-As-You-Grow' business model based on user activations.

Nadahl Shocair, Executive Director Strategy & Business Development at Centile states, "The ISTRA Mobile platform finally allows mobile operators to reduce churn and quickly add valuable business subscribers with increases in ARPU driven by this ‘PBX add-on service' to the business tariffs while delivering increases in cumulative mobile minutes, local and international call traffic".

Centile's ISTRA Mobile Platform will be launched at Mobile World Congress 2010 in Barcelona.

Easytalk, an alternative Spanish service provider, has selected the DIGITALK Multiservice Platform to launch new IP products across its European markets in early 2010.

Easytalk have already migrated their existing prepaid services to the DIGITALK SIP Application Server to gain immediate inherent improved operation efficiencies and cost savings. The group offers its customers high quality telephony services at competitive prices for both fixed and mobile markets, including calling cards, call shops, premium numbers, and also offers wholesale switch partitions to small distributors that want to develop their own business with greater flexibility and control. Easytalk plans to introduce a home residential service in early 2010 to expand customer reach with a wider service portfolio.

The crux of Easytalk's decision to invest in platform technology derived from the advanced management and billing features of the DIGITALK Multiservice Platform that provides the control and performance needed to offer the right services quickly and to manage customer payments.

Jose Luis García-Nalda, Associate Director of Easytalk commented: "In our opinion DIGITALK is one of the best companies offering top telephony technology in the prepaid telecom business. We have been working before with other providers but none of them gave us the flexibility and potential we need to be successful in this competitive ethnic market."

"The DIGITALK support team and management vision was key to Easytalk's decision. We are very happy to work with companies that are always one step forward. We are confident we will be able to fully exploit DIGITALK potential to become a one of the top players in our market. "

ip.access, a developer of 2G and 3G in-building wireless solutions, today announced that it has 'significantly enhanced' the capabilities of the nanoGSM product range with a new system release 4.1 that supports "plug and play" customer self installation and a range of other features said to extend the performance and capabilities of the system.

By enabling enterprise customers to directly install the nanoGSM BTS on their own premises, mobile operators can save up to half the total cost of a picocell deployment. This in turn expands the range of sites and businesses where nanoGSM can be deployed economically.

To support "plug and play" installation, the nanoGSM system includes automated BTS pre-configuration prior to delivery to the customer, and templated site creation within the BSC. Once the customer has installed the picocell, it connects automatically with the chosen BSC and can then either come directly into service, or send a notification to the network management system for the site to be finalized with automated handover configuration.

The new System Release 4.1 expands and extends the features and performance of the ip.access nanoGSM picocell which, with live deployments in more than 50 operator networks worldwide, is the most popular picocell in the world. Enhancements include a new capability to hand over a call directly from a nanoGSM BTS to the operator's 3G network for better network capacity management, and a fully dynamic AMR capability which enables much greater call density per BTS, thereby improving the efficiency and payback of the whole system.

Commenting on the release, ip.access CEO Stephen Mallinson said, "ip.access continues to innovate and expand the capabilities of our nanoGSM system by improving the value it delivers for our many mobile operator customers. It's a misconception that picocells are hard to deploy; in fact installing picocells is easy.  Our plug'n'play capabilities make it possible for the installation to be carried out by the end-customer, saving substantial costs."

ip.access will be showcasing the nanoGSM "plug and play" capability, alongside its other 3G picocell and femtocell solutions at Mobile World Congress.

Marking the third anniversary of the merger between the Microwave Communications Division of Harris Corporation and Stratex Networks, Inc., Harris Stratex Networks announced today that it has changed its name to Aviat Networks. 

The new brand is said to represent a culmination of the Company's transformation over the last three years from that of a specialized microwave backhaul equipment supplier into a provider of advanced IP wireless network solutions, with a comprehensive portfolio of migration solutions and lifecycle services.  Today, Aviat Networks says it is ideally positioned to help operators successfully evolve their existing networks toward an all-IP broadband future, expand into untapped rural and remote markets, and capitalize on the explosive growth of mobile data traffic around the globe.

"Today's unveiling of Aviat Networks marks a significant milestone in the evolution of our Company.  The Aviat brand embodies our commitment to quality and innovative products, highly individualized services, operational excellence and industry leadership," said Harald Braun, president and CEO of Aviat Networks. "In markets around the world, advancements in wireless network capacity have often been constrained because carriers are grappling with operational network limitations and cost-related challenges that historically haven't been sufficiently addressed by telecom equipment vendors.  Instead of ‘handshake' assurances that do little to mitigate the perceived risk of IP migration, operators need practical and innovative solutions that help them bridge seamlessly from the legacy network of today to the network that will fuel their success in the future."

Network optimization specialist Actix has announced the establishment of a Self-Optimizing Networks (SON) Centre of Excellence in Dresden, Germany.

Actix' Dresden unit, which has traditionally been the centre for all automatic optimization research and development for Actix and which is closely linked to a number of advanced radio optimization research groups, has already been designing and building multi-technology SON systems for some time.

With additional investment in staff and resources, Actix says its SON Centre of Excellence will allow a full focus on the rapid acceleration of SON system development to meet customer requirements for LTE deployments, combining expertise from across the company to build a telecoms grade SON network node.

The Dresden SON Centre of Excellence builds on almost 20 years of automatic diagnostic and optimization experience within the company. The Centre of Excellence is part of the company's existing R&D resources in Germany, and will continue to work closely with operators that are in the planning stage for the deployment of 4G networks.

"Actix is taking its prime mover role in this area very seriously," said Bill McHale, Actix CEO. "The new SON Centre of Excellence builds on our team's unrivalled experience in automatic diagnosis and optimization, and helps make sure we are focused on building these systems in a way that matches customers high expectations."

Actix will be demonstrating a working centralized SON system during the upcoming Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

Mobile security platform specialist, Accumulate, will get a new shareholder when PayEx, a Nordic specialist in payments, invests in the mobile technology provider. Together with the existing owners' contribution, the company will get over $2 million in new venture capital. Among current owners are the Sixth AP Fund and private investors and, says Accumulate, the capital will be used to further develop the company's business area for mobile payments and mobile security.

"Accumulate's mobile security platform has great potential. PayEx use it for its service "PayEx Mobil" launched in July 2009. "PayEx Mobil" has already many users and the mobile payment solution arouses great interest every time we show it. As one of the leading players in the Nordic market for overall payment services, and now also as a partner and owner in Accumulate, we look forward to many new and exciting commercial projects", says Krister Fingal, president of PayEx.

Accumulate markets two mobile platforms, said to be with more than nine million users: Mobile Everywhere – secure transactions for identification and payments; and Flexion – payment and access and usage rights solutions for mobile retail of content and services.

"Our existing and new owners see a great potential in Accumulates technology. For example, our partnership with PayEx and their mobile payment solution PayEx Mobil has attracted great interest. With our patented technology for mobile payment and identification and the new capital, we can now accelerate the pace of development and opening up in more markets", says Stefan Hultberg, CEO of Accumulate.

IMImobile, the global service creation partner for operators, media providers and enterprises, has announced the launch of DaVinci Social, a white-labeled service that will enable people to easily manage their mobile digital social-life.  Users will have immediate access to all of their communications, social networks and communities and ensure their content and contacts are safe, all from one place on their mobile.

IMImobile says DaVinci Social will enable operators to offer a competitive social service, and rapidly launch their own service without the associated high operational costs.  Operators will also benefit from DaVinci Social's flexible architecture to innovate and differentiate their service by extending it into other third party services and applications.

The service provides a seamless experience across the handset, WAP and Web enabling consumers to remain in full control of their digital social-lives.  Users can keep connected with friends from multiple social networks, update their status information, send pictures and videos and receive IM and email notifications, all managed from a single interface.  Contact information, photos, video and messages can be backed up and synced onto the cloud from the mobile and PC, ensuring the consumer's contacts are always up to date and their content is safe. 

Anu Shah, head of IMImobile Europe said: "DaVinci Social fulfills some of the most fundamental needs of consumers today; to be able to easily stay in touch with everyone they want to and protect personal contacts and valuable digital content in the event they loose or change their handset. 

"DaVinci Social places the operator at the heart of a consumer's daily activities. Combined with an intuitive user experience built on IMImobile's open technology, it is a spring-board to launch other consumer services such as music, content and advertising.' 

The service incorporates an award winning user experience and can be offered as a fully managed service.  DaVinci Social is powered by IMImobile's unique flexible and modular open API DaVinci technology that works as a catalyst for innovation by bringing together multiple services and third party applications enabling operators to respond rapidly to the latest market trends.

DaVinci Social is part of the DaVinci services and products portfolio that brings together music, social networking, mobile advertising, mobile marketing, voice and messaging services.

SwissQual, the independent Swiss network quality measurement company, has carried out drive testing on the new TeliaSonera LTE network in Stockholm. The measurements were made using the Samsung Kalmia LTE 4G modem mounted in the SwissQual Diversity Optimizer platform. The Diversity Optimizer, in common with all of the probes in the SwissQual Evolution range, is said to have been designed to easily integrate new handsets and modems for emerging technologies such as LTE.

The drive test is said to have collected very interesting measurement results from the new TeliaSonera 4G data service.   Downlink data throughputs up to 47 Mbps and TCP latency as low as 20 ms were recorded.   This is approximately 5 times better than the performance typically seen in 3G HSPA+ networks, says SwissQual.

Says Magnus Hylen, SwissQual Product Manager commented:  "The Diversity Optimizer measurement probe has long been recognised for ease of integration and use with a multitude of measurement devices and interfaces including the scanner which we use for LTE testing.  Configuring the Optimizer for the new Samsung Kalmia LTE modem took just a matter of minutes before measurements could be started. By using the Swedish Internet Infrastructure Foundation's server to test data download and upload, we can be sure that there were no bottlenecks in the IP connection.   This is crucial for accurate and reliable throughput assessment, especially at the speeds we now see with LTE.   Naturally LTE is in its infancy.   This meant that we saw regular disconnects and modem restarts.   However, this is something we have experienced with all new mobile technologies during the early phases of the rollout.    Apart from these issues, the performance that we have recorded is really impressive and sets a new baseline for mobile high speed data services."

SwissQual already provides a Voice over IP testing solution. Together with the Samsung LTE modem this allows SwissQual to provide a complete solution for LTE 4G, testing both data and voice services.

Said John May, SwissQual's CEO:  "SwissQual offers the perfect solution for determining VoIP quality over LTE networks. The SQuad algorithm was designed from the very beginning to provide a true measure of quality in VoIP applications. With LTE we expect the emergence of VoIP implementations using a much wider range of smart coding and processing capabilities including wide band. With our most recent version of SQuad, an ITU-T P.OLQA candidate, we are offering a solution that is already well proven for this new technology."