Azure Solutions, the revenue assurance company has acquired Anite Calculus, the UK-based company that specialises in interconnect, wholesale and partner event billing, rating and settlement. The companies will trade under the Azure Solutions name.

Azure Solutions was spun out of British Telecommunications in April 2003 and is backed by New Venture Partners, the technology venturing partnership. Anite Calculus was formerly part of Anite Group, a UK listed IT software and services company.
This latest deal follows Azure’s recent acquisition of US-based Connexn Technologies. Under the terms of the acquisition all existing customer and partneragreements will be fully supported.
John Cronin, president and CEO of Azure, said, “The Anite Calculus deal is yet another part of our commitment to remain the number one company in revenue assurance. Anite Calculus’ employee expertise and technology made the acquisition very attractive and provides Azure with greater resources to meet the growth in the revenue assurance market.”
Saul Nurtman, managing director of Anite Calculus said, “I am excited at the prospect of merging the Calculus business into Azure. I am confident that our current customers and staff will benefit from the global brand and distribution capabilities, technical expertise and financial strength of Azure.”

Huawei Technologies has been selected by Dutch mobile operator Telfort to deliver and install a nationwide UMTS network in the Netherlands including an R4 based core network and UTRAN solution.

The UMTS contract was signed on 8 December 2004 in The Hague in the presence of the Prime Minister of the Netherlands and the Premier of China and is the first success for Huawei with its UMTS offering in Western Europe.
Huawei has also agreed to support Telfort’s efforts to develop mobile data in the Netherlands market by setting up an R&D centre in Amsterdam which will focus on end user services.
“We are glad to have Huawei as a strategic partner for our developments in mobile data and UMTS,” said Ton aan de Stegge, CEO of Telfort, during the signing ceremony. “Telfort’s strategy is to challenge the established norms of the mobile industry and this contract, which is the first of its kind in Europe, is exactly in line with that. We are confident that Huawei will help us to develop innovative and cost effective data solutions for our customers and look forward to a prosperous relationship with them.”
Deng Tao, President from Huawei branch in Europe, said Huawei would be making an effort to sign more 3G contracts in Europe.Â
“Europe is the most significant market in the internationalisation strategy of Huawei. We are planning to spend more on the construction of Europe services and supporting systems. We always adhere to the principle of localisation in Europe, making the most of our partners, experience, and talents to serve our Europe customers,’ he said.
“We strongly believe in the potential of Telfort to show that our UMTS product can be very successful in the competitive Dutch market and are committed to building a successful future with Telfort as a partner.”
The Telfort UMTS project in the Netherlands is the first UMTS 3G contract Huawei has won in Europe.

BT Wholesale is using in-building GSM specialist ip.access’ nanoGSM equipment to offer GSM in-building coverage to mobile operators. 

The service combines the nanoBTS basestations with BT’s DSL infrastructure for backhaul. The idea is to market the coverage to operators looking to offer increased coverage and extended capacity to corporate offices and campus locations.
“ip.access’ ground-breaking technology complements our UK-wide DSL network, adding a new IP-based managed solution which complements our growing wireless services and solution portfolio,” said Ian Welham, General Manager, Wireless Services and Solutions, BT Wholesale Markets.
Stephen Mallinson, managing director, ip.access, added, “This contract is an important milestone in the widespread adoption of nanoGSM technology and is further recognition of our strong belief in using existing networks to deploy GSM in-building.”
The ip.access nanoBTS is a GSM picocell basestation that  is part of the ip.access nanoGSM solution, which allows network operators to boost mobile phone coverage in previously hard-to-reach areas.

Ericsson Enterprise has introduced the latest generation of its Ericsson Mobile Organizer, EMO 5.0, whose chief addition is a ‘push’ email solution  with no requirement for proprietary hardware or special devices.

EMO 5.0 provides push e-mail and calendar data to most Symbian smartphones and Windows Mobile smartphones. E-mails, calendar updates and meeting requests are automatically delivered to the user via the mobile network. Changes in the mobile device’s inbox are instantly mirrored in the user’s desktop mailbox, and vice versa. EMO 5.0 also offers secure access, with built-in end-to-end data encryption.
Customers do not need to purchase special mobile devices, and effective use of mobile bandwidth is made through compression and control of downloaded data. Attachments can be and edited by the user. Installation and maintenance are also designed to be as straightforward as possible.
The solution is a competitor to the many dedicated client solutions aimed at helping operators crack the push email market.

The communications regulator, ComReg, has announced plans that could change the Irish mobile phone market in a similar fashion to other European mobile markets.

The regulator is planning to open the networks of Vodafone and 02 to outside competition, according to its conclusions of a review on the wholesale mobile access and call origination market. ComReg found that Irish mobile prices are high particularly in the post-paid segment of the market and that there is clear evidence that other telecom operators want access to existing mobile networks.
In other European countries where mobile virtual network operators have entered the market, the prices paid by consumers have fallen in some cases by up to 25%.
ComReg said existing national roaming agreements between network operators should stay in place — with Vodafone and O2 required to maintain the roaming agreements they currently have in place with other operators.
ComReg was required by the European Commission to analyse the level of competition in the market by EU legislation.
The telecoms regulator is now notifying the EU Commission of its findings and, subject to the Commission’s approval, will implement the proposed measures from January.

Mobile operators often face the challenge of needing to quickly add capacity to their OTA (over the air) infrastructures. The traditional approach to doing this —  adding  high capacity servers — represents a challenge to operators who are closely managing their operating and capital expenditures.

Mobile solutions company SmartTrust has developed and launched SmartCore Multinode. Based on the company’s existing SmartCore environment, Multinode is designed to deliver an ‘on-demand’ approach to building highly scalable, high capacity environments for the OTA management of mobile subscribers, their devices and their access to services.
The use of OTA platforms to manage subscribers has become a core component in operator infrastructures; remotely managing the complete lifecycle of the subscriber from initial service and device configuration to regular updates on both the SIM and terminal.
An increase in mobile device ownership, combined with ever more sophisticated mobile services, has led many operators to begin scaling their OTA platforms and support the increase in OTA traffic.
Even a simple batch update of all SIM cards in a network, perhaps to reflect changes to roaming lists, may take several weeks for an operator with several million customers.
This update may also need to be run concurrently with automatic device detection and configuration to support new customers joining the network.
 Opening-up the possibility for horizontal scalability by distributing the traffic over several hardware nodes running concurrently, SmartCore Multinode overcomes the need to invest in single high-capacity, high-cost hardware.
Instead, multiple nodes of SmartTrust Delivery Platform can be run concurrently using a cluster configuration of smaller, more cost efficient servers.
The resulting architecture means capacity can be increased cost efficiently and within weeks rather than months, Lars Irenius, head of product management at SmartTrust claimed

Norwegian operator Telenor has joined the growing list of European operators with a 3G network open for consumer use. At the time of launch, the network covers 70 cities and densely populated areas in Norway.

“At the time of launch, the new network covers approximately half of Norway’s population, and we are committed to continue our network rollout as planned,” Telenor ceo Jon Fredrik said.
By March 2005, 132 cities and densely populated areas will be covered, and all areas with more than 200 people will have full coverage by 2007, the operator claimed.
During an introductory phase, Telenor Mobil customers will be able to make video calls free of charge. and customers in the consumer market will not be charged more than NOK5 per day for Mobile TV and other packet switched services.
Regular phone calls will be charged at current rates, depending on subscription plan. From next year, regular consumer prices will be NOK20 per downloaded MB, with a maximum limit of NOK 30 per day. Video calls will be charged NOK2.24 (Post-paid) and NOK 3.74 (Prepaid) per minute, in addition to a NOK0.99 start up fee. Regular business prices will be NOK10 per MB for the first 50MB per month, and NO 8 per MB exceeding 50MB.
Handsets include the Nokia 6630 smartphone, which can also work on Telenor’s EDGE network.

Telecom Italia Mobile (TIM) is trialling IP based services such as Push to Talk and voice over IP over an IP Multimediasubsystem (IMS) in a joint project with Nokia.

Converged services run from a single platform are thought of by telcos with both fixed and mobile operations as providing a good opportunity to operate more efficiently. 
The trial phase of the service convergence project has been initiated, with the first deliveries and implementation of key enablers such as multi-radio terminals. The Nokia 9500 Communicator, which uses both GSM/EDGE and WLAN access technologies, is being used in the cooperation project. The trial phase of will be completed during the first quarter of  2005, and will be followed in later in the year by commercial deployment by Telecom Italia of selected solutions and services for the Italian market.
“At Nokia, we believe that convergence allows the creation of an exciting new phase for our industry, allowing people to experience a new level of communications and benefit from seamless services — on the move, in the office and at home,” said Pertti Korhonen, Chief Technology Officer, Nokia.Â
“We therefore welcome the co-operation with innovative industry players, like Telecom Italia, that are taking decisive steps in shaping the future of converging multimedia communications.”

After much will-they won’t-they O2 has announced it will launch i-mode services in its UK, German and Irish territories.

There have long been rumours, but  mmO2 has confirmed what many have been saying, that it is to become the latest European operator to launch data services based on NTT DoCoMo’s i-mode technology.
Under the terms of the agreement, O2 is licensed by DoCoMo to offer the i-mode capability to the 22 million customers of its 2/2.5G and 3G mobile communications networks.
O2 UK and O2 Ireland will have exclusive use of i-mode branding and technology in their respective markets. In Germany, the company will launch the service based on i-mode technology under its own brand.
O2 plans to introduce i-mode in the UK and Ireland during the second half of 2005. In Germany, the service will be offered from Spring 2006, allowing sufficient time to develop handsets based on i-mode technology that will incorporate O2 Germany’s Genion HomeZone product.
NTT DoCoMo president and chief executive officer, Masao Nakamura, commented: “I am very pleased to initiate a partnership with mmO2, a leading provider of mobile services. This new collaboration will certainly drive further expansion of i-mode in the global arena.”
Speaking to Mobile Europe, Mike Short, vp O2 group technology, said the decision to choose i-mode was geared towards “a long term view of the activity and growth of mobile data.” He said that O2 had found that customers wanted more content and wanted it to be easier to access.
He said that operator had taken a while to make the decision because it “wanted to make sure the phones in the market are wide enough in range and stable enough to compete in the UK.”
He also said the operator had to give notice to its content, handset and distribution partners, and get them up to speed so they could play a part.
But i-mode service will work alongside O2 Active themed WAP services, Short said, rather than replacing them.
“There will be i-mode dedicated handsets and customers will choose. It will operate in parallel.”
“O2 Active continues to grow but there is a wide range of content that is undiscovered. The removal of those walls will open up a huge content experience.”
Short said that “the key aspect is that it [i-mode] opens up new forms of application such as video clips, 3D gaming, email,  ticketing and banking — allowing a new market model to be introduced.”

l O2 has released news of a trial of HSDPA technology on the Isle of Man. The  trial, which won’t start until summer 2005, will trial IMS-based services based over HSDPA technology.
Lucent Technologies will provide the network equipment for the Isle of Man trial, although O2 has also been trialling HSDPA equipment from Nortel with a view to incorporating the technology networks  its 3G networks in the UK, Ireland and Germany.
O2 has yet to go live with any 3G network so the HSDPA announcement may indicate either that the operator intends to offer high speed mobile broadband services relatively quickly after launch.

The most eye-catching managerial shake-up as the New Year loomed was at Nokia, where Dr JT Bergqvist, who has been in charge of the company’s global networks business, and a member of the executive board since 2002 walked out for “personal reasons”, a terse company statement confirmed.

Bergqvist had only recently extolled the virtues Nokia’s networks business at the annual Nokia Conference in Monaco, but commentators have suggested that he was piqued by missing out on the top job following the departure of executive vp Sari Baldauf.
Baldauf is a Nokia stalwart who has been with the networks division since the early days of GSM and had “long planned” to retire around this time, a statement said. 
Baldauf’s replacement will be the Australian Simon Beresford-Wylie.  Beresford-Wylie, who has worked for Nokia since 1998 will start in the role in February 2005. He is currently in charge of Nokia’s infrastructure business in Asia and is a member of Networks’ management team. In his new position, he will be based in Finland.Â
“I have been aware of Sari Baldauf’s plans for quite a long time, and the changes in Networks’ management are a well-planned part of Nokia’s transformation process,” said Jorma Ollila, Chairman and CEO of Nokia.