Flash Networks, a global provider of intelligent mobile Internet solutions, announced today the availability of its next generation Harmony Video Optimization, a policy-based solution said to enable better data optimization for increased operational efficiency for operators and advanced video streaming shaping for improved user experience. Based on Flash Networks' video solution already deployed by Orange Romania, the new video optimisation solution is said to be designed to help mobile and converged operators efficiently manage the growing amount of video content available over the mobile Internet.

"With the growing adoption of video-enabled devices and increasing popularity of video content, the amount of traffic traveling over mobile operators' networks is skyrocketing," said Peter Jarich, Research Director at Current Analysis. "To deal with this dramatic change in consumption, operators will need to improve their network efficiency while ensuring a smooth and enjoyable video experience for all users, in order to reap the most benefit, both in terms of revenues and customer loyalty."

The Harmony Video Optimization solution enables operators to optimise video traffic based on various parameters including date and time, network congestion, and subscriber information. Due to 'highly efficient' transcoders and a 'unique' system architecture, Harmony Video Optimization has a low footprint, resulting in a solution that is up to five times more cost-effective than other solutions, the company claims. Flash Networks says it doesn't limit its optimisation to a pre-selected list of sites, but sits at the heart of the network, inspecting, identifying, and then optimizing all video traffic for a 'superior browsing experience and maximum data reduction'.

"To cope with the growing amount of mobile video traffic, operators are seeking solutions which will squeeze the most out of existing capacity," said Merav Bahat, Vice President of Marketing at Flash Networks. "With our new, policy-based video optimization solution, we can offer operators the flexibility to provide smooth, high-quality video, while ensuring maximal cost-effectiveness."

The solution is part of the Harmony Mobile Internet Services Gateway which is said to enable operators to enhance user quality of experience, reduce operational expenses, and manage and monetise access to the open Internet by applying 'best-in-class' services to mobile data traffic.

Tango Telecom, a provider of messaging, real-time charging and policy control solutions, today announced the launch of LBR, a pricing solution for mobile operators, enabling the discounting of voice, SMS and data rates based on traffic in a particular cell. According to Tango, the LBR solution will allow operators to optimise pricing for any service based on location and time of day/week depending on available network capacity and the subscriber's profile.

"Our Load-Based Rating solution was developed to meet key challenges faced by mobile operators operating in highly price sensitive markets who need to offer pricing plans that literally change dynamically with cell load. This proven system greatly stimulates subscriber usage at off peak times and allows the operator to differentiate themselves in highly competitive environments. As a bonus the LBR solution dynamically frees up bandwidth to allow the operator capture further revenues, particularly at peak times from higher ARPU users. A winning solution all round," explains Rory O'Toole, VP of Global Channel Sales. "The system is proven to both grow revenues and smooth network traffic through the day".

Operators, says Tango, will profit from reduced churn and network congestion and increased total revenues from existing network infrastructure investments, while an improved quality of service and highly discounted call rates will benefit subscribers, it says.

Huawei and Aircom International today jointly announced a partnership to drive product interoperability and system integration.  The tie-up is claimed to secure future OSS (Operation Support System) and interoperability of network management products, ensuring that only minimal customisation and testing will be required by network operators implementing a Huawei/Aircom solution.

The integration technology partnership is said to be focused on network performance and configuration management. Aircom network planning tools OPTIMA and DATASAFE will be integrated with Huawei's wireless solutions via its iManager M2000 management system.  iManager M2000 is the unified platform that provides centralised management to all wireless technologies of Huawei, including GSM, UMTS, CDMA, WiMAX, LTE and more.

"As the leader in mobile networks, Huawei's robust investment in LTE research and development has accelerated the commercialisation of LTE technology.  It is essential that Aircom technology integrates with Huawei solutions as seamlessly as possible, to guarantee a positive user experience for network operators," said Ricky Watts, Chief Technology Officer, Aircom International.  "Our close working relationship with Huawei will ensure Aircom can develop and verify all technology interfaces, regardless of version." 

"The partnership presents clear advantages for both parties, enhancing our mutual customer's satisfaction," said Zheng Yelai, vice president of Huawei's Wireless Product Line.  "Huawei is proven to be committed to supporting customers worldwide with high-quality products and services that will evolve seamlessly to the technology of the future and help customers enhance its competitiveness.  Through this partnership both companies will mutually benefit from respective customer footprints and global scale."

The market for protecting business laptops, desktops and mobile devices with antivirus, encryption and firewall software will reach $16.4bn by 2014 according to a new security report by Juniper Research.  By that date network-based security provision to the business "endpoint" will account for close to 20% of the market, says Juniper.

Despite the ongoing move towards so-called "endpoint solutions", where IT security staff can manage the security on a company's desktops and other devices remotely through the network, demand for business IT security products will be driven by the need for encryption products, as devices become both more mobile and more likely to carry sensitive company information.

"From desktop to the mobile device, the encryption function will play an increasingly important role as both governments and businesses realise the vulnerability of data on corporate machines and the importance of data protection," says Juniper analyst Anthony Cox.

Data protection legislation covering personal information on company phones and other office hardware will lend further support to the encryption market, particularly in the US, Europe and Japan.  Indeed, though Endpoint and Unified Threat Management (UTM) options have been successfully sold to the market it is still difficult to provide all the elements of a business security solution in one package, particularly if mobile devices are to be protected as well. 

Other findings from the report:

• Overall business security market (excluding mobile) will be worth $15.7bn by 2014
• Encryption is set to increase at a rate of 26% to $4.3bn in 2014, largely on the back of legislation governing data protection.

The report looks at how the mobile and desktop business IT security market will develop and in which directions. The report forecasts both the number of corporate users protected as well as revenues for six areas of security: Basic antivirus and firewall security; Encryption and advanced authorisation functions; Advanced firewalls, Intrusion detection and prevention, Virtual private networks (VPN); Security policy management, endpoint security updates and provision; Security of corporate mobile devices.

ShoZu, the social media hub, has announced the official launch of the ShoZu App Store, where smartphone owners can purchase the ShoZu app for most major operating systems. The direct-sales initiative is said to complement ShoZu's recent expansion of its sales channels, which currently include Apple's App Store, Nokia's OVI store and Research in Motion's BlackBerry App World.  

The ShoZu App Store currently offers the ShoZu app for BlackBerry, Windows Mobile and Nokia smartphones, as well as iPhones, with support for additional models and Oss to be announced. The ShoZu App Store sells the app for the same price as the third-party app stores.

The ShoZu App Store recently finished a soft launch, where paid downloads exceeded sales through third-party app stores. As a direct sales channel, the ShoZu App Store also provides the company with a safeguard against any problems that arise at third-party stores.

The ShoZu App Store is said to further the company's strategy of focusing on app sales rather than providing free apps and then selling ad space. Announced in June 2009, the strategy is designed to provide ShoZu with a steady revenue stream, ensuring stability for the company and helping fund next-generation features for the ShoZu service.

"The ShoZu App Store is a one-stop shop that provides smartphone owners with a fast, convenient way to purchase the award-winning ShoZu app," said Chris Wade, chairman and CEO of ShoZu. "Users can visit the ShoZu App Store and immediately find the version designed for their specific smartphone model. The ShoZu App Store is a win-win for our customers and our company."

The company also offers several additional free ways to access the ShoZu service, including through picture messaging/Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS), mobile e-mail, desktop e-mail and with free software that works on both Macs and Windows PCs.

The Femto Forum, the independent industry association that supports femtocell deployment worldwide, today announced that it has received widespread vendor support for a comprehensive interoperability testing program to validate the new 3GPP femtocell standard. The program will begin with the '1st Femto Forum UMTS Femtocell Plugfest' which is set to take place in March 2010 in co-operation with the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI).

The program will demonstrate how effectively the new standard facilitates the interoperability of products from different vendors. In turn this will provide operators and consumers with greater interoperable equipment choice from multiple vendors while also widening the market for vendors themselves.

The program will be coordinated by ETSI Plugtests and will involve interoperability tests between femtocell network gateways, security gateways, femtocell access points and chipsets from all the key vendors to verify the 3GPP's Iuh interface as defined in release 8. The program will also test the IPsec/IKEv2 security protocols that allow femtocells to communicate over the public Internet to system operators' core networks in a highly secure manner. Release 8 Iuh interface standardization was completed in April 2009 and provides the interface between femtocell access points and femtocell network gateways in the core network. Equipment upgrades to meet this standard are expected to enter the market over the next six months.

"Vendor interoperability is the key ingredient that will give operators the confidence to start mass deployments. Not only will this allow operators to start mixing and matching their technology providers as they do with mobile handsets today, it will also drive economies of scale to bring down the cost of the technology," said Simon Saunders, Chairman of the Femto Forum. "We've had an overwhelming response from vendors keen to take part in this program. There are currently over twenty femtocell access point models and over a dozen network gateways on the market and this program will start to ensure they all work together harmoniously."

"Nobody will argue with the promise of the Iuh standard in terms of ecosystem development and best-of-breed solutions for operators," noted Peter Jarich, Research Director at Current Analysis.  "On its own, however, a standard is meaningless until vendors and operators alike know that products are actually conforming to it – making interoperability testing a critical component of the femtocell market's success."
 
The Femto Forum has received strong commitment to participation in the tests from its vendor membership and will report on the results following the event in March 2010.

Nokia has announced the creation of the official Qt port to Maemo 5 and published an initial Technology Preview release. The port to Maemo 5 means that developers can now use Qt to target the upcoming Nokia N900 device and also ensures that applications can be ported to all Qt's supported platforms including the next Maemo 6 release as well as Symbian and Windows Mobile.
 
The Qt port to Maemo 5 is designed specifically to work within the Maemo 5 environment, which will enable the upcoming Nokia N900 device. The port itself will be based on Qt's upcoming version 4.6 and is scheduled for final release in Q1 of 2010.
 
"With this announcement and our upcoming port of Qt to the Symbian platform, we will quickly see Qt established as a leading framework for mobile application development. Developers will be able to use Qt as a framework to create powerful native applications and with Qt's Webkit integration, it also provides them with a platform for creating web applications and services," said Sebastian Nyström, Vice President of Application Services and Frameworks at Nokia. "Qt's support for Maemo 5, Maemo 6, Symbian, as well as Windows Mobile makes Qt the most sensible choice for developers looking to target multiple devices and achieve the broadest reach with their innovations."
 
According to Nokia, the port of Qt will incorporate the community-driven 'Qt for Maemo' project that was created as result of 'substantial' contributions and enhancements. The community project provided a strong foundation for building the official port, says Nokia, and because of the open nature of the project, Nokia was able to base the official port on this code. The change from a community port to an official port was necessary to ensure that applications developed with Qt will be compatible with both future versions of Qt, future versions of Maemo, as well as Symbian and the other platforms Qt supports.

Comprion has combined the simulation capabilities of its SWP/HCI tester Prove 2 with its NFC tester CLT One, which means that synchronous simulating and testing of both the contact and contactless sides of NFC communication is now available, says the company.

In 2007, Comprion says it was the first test equipment provider combining the tracing capabilities of an ISO/SWP/HCI/IC-USB spy tool (Move 2) and an ISO/IEC 14443 tracer (CLT Move).  With its new solution, contact based and contactless communication can not only be traced but simulated synchronously.

Prove 2 is a digital SWP and HCI card simulator for CLF testing featuring the latest tests according to ETSI TS 102 694-1 (SWP) and ETSI TS 102 695-1 (HCI). CLT One is a card/tag simulator for contactless testing supporting ISO/IEC 14443 Type A and B. Recordings of both tools can be processed and displayed in just one comprehensive software application. This allows for accurate and easily accessible timing measurements on the same single time scale and protocol analysis across interfaces and technologies.

As some of the ETSI SWP and HCI test cases demand an NFC simulator to be involved, the new Comprion solution will assure SWP/HCI and NFC compliance. Comprion says it is still actively involved in creating ETSI test specifications for SWP and HCI protocols, which means that new conformance tests can be implemented into the Prove2 in parallel with the progress of the test specifications.

The synchronised solution is already used by leading CLF manufacturers and research labs across Europe, says Comprion.

TravellingWave, a developer of mobile input technology, today announced the launch of the 'first' voice-powered text prediction application for mobile phones.  The company's VoicePredict software will enable mobile users to input text using their voices and by simply typing one or two letter key presses per word speak. 

Additionally, VoicePredict will enable quick insertion of emoticons, SMS-shortcuts, and contact names, and can act as an interface to social networks, including Facebook and Twitter. VoicePredict, currently in a beta release, is available as a downloadable application for WindowsMobile smartphones. Travellingwave expects to deliver versions for iPhone and Android in early 2010.
 
TravellingWave will market its patent-pending VoicePredict software, which is currently in a limited trial, to a range of customers, including handset manufacturers, mobile operators, developers of mobile operating systems, speech recognition applications and text prediction software.

TravellingWave says it is also engaged in a multiyear public-private program (funded by the National Science Foundation) through Carnegie Mellon University for the control of assistive devices, such as wheelchairs.
 
"VoicePredict's beta launch marks an industry breakthrough," said Todd Achilles, principal of Balius Ventures and formerly with T-Mobile and HTC.  "No one has thought to combine the two domains – speech recognition and text prediction – in the way that TravellingWave has done.  VoicePredict's multi-domain approach means that speech recognition is more accurate and text prediction is faster, than if either solution functions alone.  This is T9 squared.  TravellingWave has successfully flipped the speech-to-text problem on its head and the result marks a new chapter in how people interact with devices."
 
Speech-to-Text has been greatly anticipated as a solution to the mobile text input problem for several years. TravellingWave's VoicePredict is based on a radical new approach to speech input, wherein voice inputs and keypad inputs are tightly coupled to result in voice-powered text prediction.  VoicePredict is calimed to enable reliable voice and text communication that can be easily personalized based on the user's choice. Preliminary trials indicate that, on an average, VoicePredict results in a 75% reduction in the number of key-presses on a phone with a Qwerty keypad and it enables 80% faster insertion of symbols and contact names.
 
"The value proposition of VoicePredict is that it resides on a device in the form of an orthogonal input that is always listening and significantly enhancing all other hand/finger based input modes, using a speech recognition solution that is near 100% reliable," said Dr. Ashwin Rao, founder and CEO of TravellingWave (pictured above).  "Our underlying algorithms process background noise, extract human pitch and other acoustic features, perform acoustic-phonetic classifications, and finally dynamically integrate all of these with key based inputs, for real-time voice prediction. The redundancy in acoustic and language information is what separates VoicePredict from all other speech-to-text and text prediction solutions."
 
VoicePredict is claimed to offer word choices that are 95% accurate, with just one or two letter inputs; if the user desires not to speak but type, or if the background noise is unsuitable for speech recognition, then VoicePredict cleverly and automatically falls back to keypad-based text prediction, according to TravellingWave co-founders Greg Aronov and Marat Garafutdinov.

SPB Software, a specialist in mobile applications, has announced the release of SPB TV for BlackBerry smartphones. SPB TV is a subscription-free mobile IPTV viewer, designed for tuning in to publicly available digital TV channels from all over the world. SPB TV is said to feature 'exclusive and patent-pending usability innovations' offering mobile subscribers access to international TV channels.

The application supports TV features such as TV browser with quick channels preview, instantly accessible TV guide for all offered channels, quick channels switching, and more, says SPB.

SPB says it is constantly increasing the number of platforms provided with its applications. With the release SPB TV is now available for Windows Mobile, Symbian, Android and BlackBerry platforms.