InnoPath Software, a specialist in Mobile Device Management (MDM), has announced support for the newly ratified OMA-DM Software Component Management Object (SCOMO) Candidate Enabler. A standards-based method of managing the lifecycle of applications on mobile phones sets the stage for a new generation of over-the-air capabilities for both consumers and enterprises, while avoiding the single vendor lock-in that characterized previous approaches.

InnoPath first demonstrated draft SCOMO support at the Mobile World Congress in 2007, and as the convener of SCOMO within OMA-DM, the company has been actively working with its key operator and device manufacturer partners to bring to market a solution that is both deployable and scalable. Additionally, InnoPath was the first company to demonstrate interoperability with 3 rd party SCOMO clients. MDM vendors may now build solutions based on a stable baseline, while operators may plan their deployments with assurances of interoperability and broad industry support. The other newly ratified standards supported by InnoPath include the Device Capabilities Management Object, or DCMO.

"Mobile Device Management is evolving from point products based on customized platforms to a general solution providing care for both consumers and enterprises," said David Ginsburg, Vice President of Marketing at InnoPath. "That the industry has converged on SCOMO for lifecycle application management is a sign of a maturing market."

MACH today announced that it has acquired the Roaming Service Bureau (RSB) business from WorldCell, a North American provider of global wireless solutions to Mobile Operators and Enterprise customers. This acquisition enables MACH to offer seamless voice and data roaming services to clients ranging from CDMA and emergent GSM/UMTS operators to providers of WiMAX.

RSB is said to be a perfect addition to MACH's visionary portfolio of solutions that are said to support inter-standard and interoperability needs, as well as future IP-based NGN networks. While inter-standard roaming has been around for some time, it has never been a seamless experience for the subscriber or the operator. 

RSB's patent pending software brokers Mobile IP to Simple IP technology.  Achieving an industry first, it remains the only turnkey solution that enables a virtual home environment for subscribers that roam between divergent technologies.  This feature allows an operator's branded data services to be extended to any network with one connection to RSB.  For operators and their subscribers, the technology is claimed to allow features and applications to work intuitively – thus the subscriber's virtual home extends outside the home coverage area, legacy technology and to new geographies. Subscribers can now globally access data services such as; location based services or navigation.

RSB's revolutionary end-to-end turnkey solution enables voice and packet data roaming between various standards without any additional connectivity to include CDMA, GSM, UMTS, WLAN and Next Generation Networks such as WiMAX and LTE.

In addition to the IP technology, RSB brings subscribers, driven by the growth and popularity of smartphones such as RIM's Blackberry devices.  These subscribers represent some of the highest ARPU customers in the industry, as they value the ability to roam around the world with reliable access to voice and data services anywhere, anytime – there is no need to change from GSM to CDMA, WiMAX, coverage is automatic.

Martin Lippert, CEO of MACH explained, "MACH is dedicated to meeting the evolving needs of wireless operators, and the challenges associated with crossing networks.  From facilitation of service agreements to revenue assurance, MACH is relied upon to extend the borders for services every day. The acquisition of RSB is further confirmation that the industry can depend upon MACH to enable voice and data services in ways that drive value to an operator's most valuable customers." 

Revenues from Mobile TV services will generate USD1.5 billion in 2008, rising to over USD100 billion in 2012, according to research by Informa Telecoms & Media. At present the revenues are said to be predominantly from subscription fees but this is expected to change over time as the advertising business model starts to gain prominence. Informa believes that by 2013 nearly half of the revenues will come from advertising.

According to Informa, in the next two years, growth is anticipated to be strongest in the pioneering markets of South Korea and Japan before the rest of the world starts to catch up around 2010/2011. Despite isolated success stories in places like Italy and Austria, Europe is not expected to see rapid growth in Mobile TV until 2009. The USA is expected to take even longer as confusion over standards prevents growth. Eventually, concerted momentum behind ATSC-MH is expected to boost the market for mobile TV in North America.

"As the owner of the marketing and billing relationship with subscribers, operators are in the best position to offer mobile TV services", comments Shailendra Pandey, Senior Analyst at Informa Telecoms & Media. "It seems that a good approach for mobile operators will be to start with a free-to-air business model which also involves minimum capital investment. Once user uptake of services starts to grow, operators can then think of developing new revenue models that can be established on top of the free-to-air content platform", adds Pandey.

Most in the industry believed that Mobile TV was going to reach the mass market a lot earlier than has been the case. A number of market and technology barriers have conspired to delay the widespread adoption of mobile TV by consumers and growth in many regions is still fragile.

Research from Informa Telecoms & Media shows that the future of Mobile TV will not be just broadcast or 3G but will be a mix of technologies matched to a mix of audience experiences.

Nokia and IBM have announced IBM Lotus Notes support for a number of Nokia's S60-based mobile phones, meaning that millions of Lotus Notes users are now able to access email with their Nokia devices.  The deal is also said to represent a significant market opportunity for IBM Lotus Notes — which has 140 million licensed users — with many Nokia customers now able to purchase Lotus Notes and access its collaboration capabilities on the go.
 
With this announcement, more than 80 million people – the number of Nokia S60 3rd Edition devices shipped globally – can connect to corporate email accounts via Lotus Domino Server software, Lotus Notes Traveler, which provides real time access to email, calendar, address book, journal and to-do list data and will be available for Nokia devices in December 2008.
           
According to IBM's Institute for Business Value, this year, for the first time, more people in the world will have a mobile device than a land-line telephone. IBM predicts one billion mobile Web users by 2011 and a significant shift in the way the majority of people will interact with the Web over the next decade.
 
"This is another strong affirmation of our business mobility vision, which is to establish partnerships with the world's leading enterprise vendors. This collaboration means nearly 90 percent of business email can be mobilized with Nokia devices, without needing to purchase additional servers, middleware or licenses. With the presence, position and technology that IBM have in the corporate email market, they are an essential partner for us in enterprise," says Soren Petersen, senior vice president, Nokia. "People need to be connected to their email, information and network when they are out of the office and that has to be done conveniently and on their terms. Lotus Notes Traveler for Nokia devices is a great example of that."
 
"We are excited about IBM's growing relationship with Nokia and what this does for the build-out of the mobile Web," said Kevin Cavanaugh, vice president of IBM Lotus Software.  We are literally freeing millions of people using Nokia's Symbian platform from having to rely on a desktop or laptop to access their important business communications.   Working with the market leader like Nokia is a natural fit for attaining IBM's goals of maintaining the flow of business, regardless of time, distance or location — all for no additional charge for both of our companies' current customers and a new opportunity for new customers."
 
Other IBM Lotus technologies that can be mobilized for anytime anywhere work include Lotus Sametime for instant messaging and unified communications, Lotus Connections for enterprise social networking and Lotus Quickr for social content sharing. 

Momail has launched its mobile email in three more countries – Spain, Switzerland and Ireland. Momail has also incorporated Spanish language support, continuing its strategy of local language support in countries where launched.

After completing the simple set-up process, users in these new countries can get all of their emails, including Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo! Mail and other ISP mail, to their mobiles. The Momail user only has to select which email accounts that automatically will be transferred to the mobile. Before the email reaches the mobile, an immediate and automatic optimization plus a spam and virus control is performed.     

With Momail's "Dynamic Sender" feature all replies on received emails are automatically sent from the email address to which the original email was sent. All the emails collected from the different accounts will arrive into one Momail "Superinbox" on the mobile. With Momail there is no limit of the number of email accounts that can be aggregated into the mobile.

"The Momail service continues to grow and we are happy to welcome three new country family members. Consumers in these countries can now enjoy mobile email the way it should be. We are also proud to announce that the Momail service now is available on more than 1200 different mobiles, making it possible for almost anyone to get access to their emails, where ever they are", says Kenneth Lundin, CEO of Momail.

Mobile software specialist Digital Airways has announced the availability of Kaleido for Android, a turnkey solution that claims to bring an instant cutting-edge user experience to Google's Android platform, allowing handset manufacturers to differentiate in an efficient and cost-effective way.

The availability of Android represents a fundamental change in the mobile industry as the first feature-rich open source application framework, and is said to mark a shift of the competition from hardware to software: "Vendors who have prepared themselves for this radical change will find themselves in a better position than those who continue to differentiate their products on the basis of hardware." Says Malik Saadi, principal analyst at Informa.

For those embracing the Android platform, says the company, the ability to individualize through innovative and distinctive user experiences remains challenging: Tools provided by Android still require laborious and costly efforts to create a user experience that is up to the industry's highest standards, such as the iPhone or Samsung's TouchWiz.

With Kaleido for Android, such user experience is available now, it's claimed. Based on its widely deployed Kaleido technology, it takes full advantage of the Android framework to offer a sophisticated user experience based on rich content, multi-touch, widgets, 3D, sophisticated animations and visual effects. Says Digital Airways' CEO and co-founder Philippe Silberzahn: "Kaleido provides handset manufacturers instant access to a full user experience platform that meets the highest industry standards."

Kaleido also provides handsets makers with a single, unified development environment to ease customization and extension of such cutting-edge user experiences without heavy-handed coding, ensuring shorter time to market and cost effectiveness.

Silberzahn adds: "Kaleido for Android is the user experience solution that manufacturers need on the Android platform to differentiate and build on their respective branding."

Axis Network Technology has announced the launch of a family of Remote Radio Heads (RRH) for OEM deployment of LTE networks worldwide. The LTE platform, with 20W output power, is based on the same design principles as AxisNT's established WiMAX RRH, which is already being manufactured and shipped in volume worldwide.

The LTE RRHs provide 2 x 10W at 64QAM of diversity multi-carrier RF power using AxisIPR advance amplifier technology, operating over the 2.3 – 2.7GHz E-UTRA frequency bands. The units can be customised to meet the specific interface and packaging requirements of the OEM. Designing LTE basestations using a distributed RRH approach with highly efficient digital-to-RF conversion and amplification considerably reduces both CAPEX and OPEX of the overall system as well as maintenance costs, and accelerates time-to-deployment, says the company.

The use of an RRH allows the radio to be located alongside the antennas and physically separate from the basestation (BTS), removing the losses associated with long cable runs – typically around 3dB per cable – by replacing them with an optical fibre data interface. Consequently a single MIMO RRH, with 10W output power will provide greater coverage than a 40W SISO ground based BTS, with power and energy consumption reduced to a fraction of the cost. The AxisNT RRH offers flexible multi-gigabit BTS connections, communicating via OBSAI, CPRI or custom OEM fibre interfaces.

"We are already hearing from our WiMAX customers how effective our RRHs are in reducing their deployment costs and speeding rollout of their networks," commented Michel Vieuxmaire, Sales Director of AxisNT. "Now OEMs developing networks for LTE will be able to enjoy the same benefits, with RRHs customised to their own mechanical and interface requirements."

AxisNT RRHs feature: automatic calibration for transmit, receive and PA bias control loops; OBSAI RP3-01 and CPRI V2 digital baseband interfaces with one or two optical connectors; very high reliability including an advanced failure mode prediction capability, as well as inherent fibre and RF redundancy.

Support for Adaptive Antenna Systems (AAS) and AISG v2.0 antenna control is provided, and the unit features a compact, lightweight modular design in a die-cast enclosure, with solar shield for outdoor use.

Sagem Orga, a specialist in smart card technology, today announced a strategic partnership with BlueSky Positioning that, it's claimed, will help the mobile industry overcome the key stumbling block to the success of location-based services – affordable, accurate positioning technology. Sagem Orga will partner with the mobile positioning specialist to integrate A-GPS positioning technology on SIM cards for the 'first time worldwide'.

Despite capturing the imagination of the global wireless industry, location-based services (LBS) have performed significantly below industry expectations for nearly 10 years. Even now the revenues from LBS are tiny compared to other next generation mobile services, and today's growth rates are not promising.

Sagem Orga and BlueSky Positioning believe that the key stumbling block to the success of LBS is that the positioning technologies have not been fit for purpose – technically or economically. The two broad technical approaches that can deliver the required accuracy demand either significant investment in networks by the mobile operator or the purchase of new handsets by the end user. Now a solution is being offered for the first time through the Sagem Orga and BlueSky Positioning partnership: the A-GPS SIM, enabling mobile operators to significantly increase the cost effectiveness of their services and size of their marketing target when launching new LBS.

François Blanchard, Global Account Marketing Manager at Sagem Orga, said: "The SIM is entering a new era where it can now be considered as a real service platform and a valuable device; the A-GPS enabled SIM card will reshape the way SIM card are perceived by MNOs and end-users."

"We're delighted to be working with Sagem Orga to bring our exciting technology to market," said Risto Savolainen, BlueSky Positioning's CEO. "Since unveiling our technology concept to the world last year, mobile operators serving more than 1.8 billion subscribers have approached us to learn more. This announcement takes our patented technology out of the lab and puts it into the hands of millions of consumers around the world."

Sagem Orga and BlueSky Positioning's new approach incorporates a highly accurate GPS receiver and a proprietary antenna into the SIM card, enabling mobile operators to deploy both legally-mandated and commercial applications quickly and cost-effectively for all mobile handsets, with no need for software or hardware changes. To make localization even more accurate and user friendly, the A-GPS SIM uses assisted GPS data.

The primary purpose of A-GPS SIM is to provide accurate positioning information of the phone to emergency services in case of an emergency call as required by E112 and E911 legislation in the EU and the U.S. respectively. In addition to this, it can support generic location-based services such as navigation, 'find a place or person' services, location-aware games, and more.

RAD Data Communications, a specialist in developing solutions for the transport of data, voice and signaling traffic in cellular and mobile applications, announced today that TeliaSonera, the international mobile operator based in Scandinavia, has selected its advanced cell site gateway to backhaul 2G and 3G mobile traffic over all-IP fibre infrastructure in Finland.

RAD's ACE-3220 cell-site gateways will connect over the fibre network to Cisco's 7600 edge routers.

"One of the keys in winning this project against a competitor with a strong local presence was our ability to quickly integrate with TeliaSonera's existing Cisco backbone network," noted Mati Epstein, Carrier Strategic Accounts Director at RAD, who led the company's sales team in the commercial negotiations with TeliaSonera.

Currently, most mobile operators upgrading their backhaul networks to meet the demands of HSPA, and eventually LTE, are deploying one network for data and a separate one for time-sensitive legacy traffic such as voice. TeliaSonera will become one of the first operators of a unified all-IP mobile backhaul network. This breakthrough was made possible because RAD overcame the technological obstacles that until now have prevented the transport of legacy voice on a packet-switched cellular backhaul network without compromising Quality of Service (QoS). RAD's gateways employ pseudowires to allow legacy traffic to be carried over IP and, by providing accurate clock synchronisation, ensure that voice traffic is not victim to QoS issues generated by network delays.

"This is a significant win for RAD in the mobile arena because it proves the business case for deploying an end-to-end pseudowire solution to simultaneously backhaul 2G and 3G traffic over fibre," stated Michael Howard, Principal Analyst and co-founder of Infonetics Research, "This represents a departure from the existing 'hybrid' or 'dual backhaul' model of HSDPA offload," Howard added, "and is a harbinger for the industry for tomorrow's backhaul architecture over a single packet network."