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The need for optimised data

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There should be no more excuses for operators, it’s time for data service to step up to the plate, says an expert in optimising networks and applications for supporting data services.

Yair Shapira, cto and vp of business development for wireless data optimisation company Flash Networks, told Mobile Europe that the time for making excuses for low data service penetration is over.
“There are UMTS and EDGE networks, and devices are freely available, but the market hasn’t caught up.” he said.
“For example portal services should have reached around 35% market penetration — device penetration is at around 65% and now many of these devices can support these services. But there is only an average of 3% service penetration, with perhaps Vodafone hitting 5%.”
Shapira said the financial implications were that instead of operators working on original assumptions of a $12 increase in ARPU due to data services, they are looking at around $4.
He single out poor user experience as the main factor, citing the difficulty of site navigation to access email,  a ringtone or timetable information.For example email is barely possible over wireless.
But according to Shapira where operators have adopted optimisation technologies to improve the user experience they have seen a dramatic acceleration in the adoption of services.
“We began working with Vodafone Italia in March 2003,” Shapira said, “and from March to August they have seen a three times growth in the number of users using mobile data, and the MegaBit usage gas increased by sixteen times. So that’s a total of 45 times the mobile data usage over six months.”
Shapira claimed that the operator had attributed a large proportion of the rise to Flash’s NetGain product, although it seems a larger number of adequate devices and the introduction of flat rate pricing also had an impact.
Shapira said that the category of products marketed by Flash, but also by competitors such as CellGlide should be considered a must have in the mobile data world. Other vendors trying to address the packet shaping and optimisation needs of operators include CellGlide and NetSpira.
“When operators tried Wap 2 over 3G it was not much better than Wap 1 over 2.5G. It became apparent that it had nothing to do with the bandwidth, the problem is the function of the mobile user in the network. Operators still need a gateway to solve the puzzle between the services, the network and the user.
“Wireless data protocols don’t really work over wireless. For example the changing bandwidth, packet loss, network delays and changes make it impossible for a content server to send data at the right rate and useability to the user.
“You need sensitivity to the network to use the data effectively, and need a gateway from the wireless to the content world.”
Techniques such as Flash’s NetGain work by manipulating the TCP/IP transport layer, creating a sort of TCP+, “our own technology but working on standard TCP” according to Shapira. This translates protocols like WAP and http into proprietary protocols but without requiring a client on the handset. This manipulation of the content layer can mean creating compression for small screens, or blocking attachments for devices we know can’t support them.
“The worst nightmare for the  network people is that next generation services do take off!” Shapira claimed.
“For example, one UMTS cell can support 3-4 video transmissions and nothing else. So there will be a huge problem with capacity once they succeed. The alternative is capacity enhancements — by 2010 Hutchison is looking at network expansion of $14 billion in incremental capability.  So they can increase prices, which would have to go up to EUR1.5 per MB, or squeeze the vendors or work on ways to increase the network economics,” he outlined.
The NetGain server resides within the carrier’s core network and as such competes with the intelligent packet core solutions of the main  infrastructure vendors.
 “Since GGSN/ routing is a commodity,” Shapira said, “vendors need to add functionality, which is why we are partnering very intimately with the leading players. Others can do brute force manipulation, but are then able to do nothing with the manipulated content.”

Qpass makes for Europe

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Qpass, a provider of mobile commerce software that has six US operators as clients is making its launch in Europe with a Simpay-compliant component in its services management software.

The US-based company has six US operators as customers for its service management software, which it claims manages every stage of the m-commerce service cycle — from introducing services, to making an offer to the customer, through payment, settlement, providing reports for operators and content providers and customer care.
The Simpay-compliant payment component is one of the payment mechanisms Qpass supports within its payment module, although the company is keen to be seen as more than a payment company.
 It says its all-round approach addresses a need among content providers looking to play in the European market for greater clarity, speed and flexibility in introducing new services to the market.
According to Qpass’ own research amongst 20 content providers (all of whom are Qpass partners in the USA, incidentally), a majority of them said that they received “inadequate support” from European operators. 70% of those surveyed claimed that it took more than a month for a new service to be introduced.
“This is an issue operators have not addressed outwith their supply chain management team,” Ken Parkinson, director of sales and business development, said. “People are not using a web interface to manage the connection between service provider and content provider.  A workflow software approach means that differing branding and control issues can be handled appropriately, for on and off-portal services.”
“Traditionally the billing providers have had to fill that gap,” Parkinson said, “and that has lead to technologies building bespoke solutions, but the USA has leapfrogged Europe in this area.”
Qpass’ support for Simpay is probably essential if it is to break into a European market dominated by the operators that have jointly founded the mobile payment alliance. But Parkinson stressed that Simpay is just one of the payment mechanisms the service management platform can support.
Simpay had also “slowed down m-commerce” in Europe, he said, particularly the long discussion it created as a replacement for premium SMS. A more holisitic approach creates new revenue streams for operators, he said.

Got the gloat…

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two announcements from Nokia got many rubbing their hands…why?

Oh how the mighty are fallen. To judge by certain reactions you’d think that Nokia had recently said that it was outsourcing all handset manufacturing to an Taiwanese ODM and offering white label handsets for operators to brand up and flog as part of their pre-paid packages. In fact, for those who missed it, Nokia made a couple of nods to the market in recent days. First, it said it was joining the GSM Association as an associate member. Second, and of less headline value but perhaps more actual use to millions of device users, it said it would be introducing support for SD memory cards as well as MultiMediaCards. Both these announcements were greeted as evidence of a great climbdown by Nokia, as if the company were descending from its lofty perch to come and play with the mortals. Maybe it has been Nokia’s admirable tendency not to pander to journalists by handing out the new phones like confetti, maybe it has been the company’s refusal to bow to other design othodoxies, but the company had managed to create an image of arrogance. So joining the global GSM trade body is viewed as a comedown. But what trade body is it joining? One that represents the interests of the world’s GSM operators. Let’s not be sentimental about the other equipment vendors’ reasons for taking associate membership of the GSMA. For all the guff about leading standards development and formulating common approaches to market challenges, the real reason they were in there was to get closer to the operators. Nokia never felt the need. Big deal. Its networks business, whilst never a clear number one, stood on its own two feet, and its handset business virtually propped up certain operators’ sales figures in the late nineties. Of course, things have changed. Operators have got much more aggressive about asserting the primacy of their own brands, and Nokia was slow to react trusting instead the power of its own brand to attract sales over the heads of the operators. But now Vodafone has Nokia phones as part of its 3G portfolio — supporting Vodafone live! as well — most recently the 6630. The networks industry as a whole is getting hammered by operators fencing for interoperable technology and the lowest prices possible, fuelled by the stick of the hugely competitive Asian new entrants. Also, 3G networks have proved a much tricker beast than thought, especially in terms of interoperability and backwards compatibility. Nokia has been one vendor fighting hard to hold on to 3G contracts in the face of these pressures, and perhaps sees the need now to mix it with the other vendors to overcome these problems. Witness another September announcement that went less noticed – that Nokia was co-operating with NEC on proving IMS interoperability in advance of 3GPP R5 releases. So Nokia is being castigated for what, exactly? For doing what some commentators said they wanted it to do all along — plough less of a lone furrow and admit that it cannot stand alone all the time. This reaction to Nokia’s symbolic acceptance of the inevitable is probably one reason why it delayed so long in the first place — at least as far as GSMA membership is concerned. So, Nokia, now we’ve said a little word on your behalf, how about an advance go on one of those 9300s for Christmas, seeing as you’re now in harness with the rest of the world’s priorities?

Get your “told you so” into: keith.dyer@nexusmedia.com

SLAs mean business

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Basing a strategy on advanced services for businesses will fail unless operators can offer service that rivals their IT counterparts. Andrew Wyatt, vice president of strategic marketing, Intuwave, says mobile SLAs are an opportunity.

Businesses want to use Smartphones for more than just voice and text — and mobile operators encourage them to do so in order to increase the average revenue per user (ARPU). However, the service tools taken for granted in the PC world — and the service level agreements they enable — are not being used in the mobile world. Without them, the case for corporate use of Smartphones looks weak. With them, intriguing possibilities emerge.

Smartphones promise to revolutionise the use of mobile devices — and businesses are ready for it. Independent research commissioned by Intuwave revealed that 52% of corporate IT managers would consider deploying Smartphones as business tools. It also found that these devices are already being put to business purposes — 44% of Smartphone users, for example, are using them for email.

Business use is critical
However, business use of Smartphones implies access to business-critical applications and they must therefore be supported as such. The ‘fire and forget’ mentality that typifies operators’ current approach to service — where an SMS is despatched to the user’s malfunctioning handset and the Customer Service Representative (CSR) drops off the call before the fix is proven — is inadequate for the needs of businesses. Until this approach changes, there is very little incentive for the corporate market to deploy Smartphones because they simply can’t be relied upon as business devices.

Business customers are used to SLAs whereby problems are diagnosed and fixed within a set period of time and in a single transaction. They are a central part of the relationship with any vendor that has an influence over the performance of its business-critical applications — and mobile operators will be no different. However, the sophisticated support tools available in the PC world to provide remote diagnosis, configuration and support are simply not being used in the mobile arena. Not only are investments in this technology therefore necessary to support business users, but the escalating costs of Smartphone support makes them inevitable.

Support calls for Smartphones are much longer than those for more basic mobile phones — typically around 30 minutes. At a cost of around £2 per minute for support calls and using Ovum’s estimate of 150 million Smartphones in existence by 2007, this will rapidly become a multi-billion dollar problem. Operators must invest in support capabilities and the costs of doing so are insignificant in relation to the scale of the problem they aim to solve.

High ARPUs, high support
In addition, keeping business customers satisfied is critical in saturated markets where customer acquisition costs are high. Corporates have the highest ARPU of any class of customers, generating approximately half of an operator’s revenues while making up a much smaller percentage of their user base.

Providing business users with Smartphones capable of supporting corporate applications and backed up by meaningful SLAs allows operators to engage with their business customers in a more professional manner and is an excellent way of ensuring their loyalty. A happy customer with a strong relationship to a dedicated support team is likely to be much more willing to be shown new services and be up-sold additional services.

However, given the high costs involved, this level of support need not be provided to all customers. Operators should segment their customer base and align their support teams to these segmentations to ensure that high value data customers are treated differently to low value ‘pay as you go’ users.

SLA-based service capabilities may also completely redefine an operator’s value proposition. It is clearly in the interests of operators to encourage the development of third party applications: however, there is today no mechanism in place to support such software so, if anything goes wrong with the application, the operator picks up the support call and the expense.  With the correct service infrastructure, SLAs could be applied not only to the software shipped with the phone but to third party applications as well. Operators could then develop a list of certified applications and extend their support environment out to both the application provider and the enterprise.
Support costs might be recouped in different ways. Perhaps the most likely is that operators could provide the necessary support tools to the corporate IT department enabling them to support themselves. In this scenario, operators would provide a personal hosted system for each business customer, thus if the corporate left that particular operator they would lose the support tool and supporting infrastructure: what better way to create corporate loyalty than to provide this level of interdependence?

No entry point for IT
This is an area where traditional enterprise IT vendors are colliding with the telecommunications world: the IT world has no knowledge of — and no access to — the provisioning systems which are the only real support tools that operators have today. Consequently, it may well be that it is only mobile operators that are in a position to offer the SLAs that businesses will require for enterprise systems deployed across wireless networks, and in turn this will provide the customer loyalty that operators seek.

Operators need corporate customers to make greater use of Smartphones in order to drive the revenues necessary to recoup 3G investments. This means facilitating the introduction into the business community of Smartphone-based applications — whether on a stand alone basis or in partnership with software vendors and/or systems integrators. Being able to provide meaningful SLAs governing the support of both the devices and the applications running on them is the best place from which to start.

Onyx Optimizes its CRM Offering for BlackBerry Wireless Platform

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Symetra Sales Force Among Early Adopters Taking CRM Productivity Tools on the Road

Onyx Software today announced a new mobile CRM offering, the Onyx Employee Portal for BlackBerry, optimized for BlackBerry wireless platform from Research In Motion.

The optimized Onyx offering is designed to increase the individual productivity of mobile professionals by providing personalized access to client data and high priority tasks maintained for them in the corporate Onyx CRM application.

Onyx CRM technology via BlackBerry gives mobile professionals fast wireless access to corporate and customer data and makes them available for immediate contact with the office and customers. Wireless updates between field personnel and headquarters keep organizational processes moving and trigger support activities.

Several early adopters will roll out the new Onyx offering this fall, including Symetra Financial (formerly Safeco Life & Investments), an insurance and financial services company based in Redmond, WA. Symetra Financial plans to implement the new service for its field sales people who will be able to use the BlackBerry to access critical sales and service information while they are traveling on business.

“We’ve been a long-time customer of Onyx and we look forward to utilizing this new technology solution to help increase productivity of our sales force,” said Pat McCormick, Senior Vice President of Sales & Distribution, Symetra Financials. “With BlackBerry and Onyx CRM, our field sales staff will have enhanced access to client information.”
A broad range of Onyx CRM capabilities are accessible through BlackBerry, including contact management, pipeline management, opportunity management, task management, quick search features, and email integration with the Onyx incidents feature.

“For mobile professionals who are on the road or frequently away from their desk, accessing corporate and customer information can be a challenge,” said Mark Guibert, Vice President, Corporate Marketing at Research In Motion. “Applications like Onyx CRM are ideally suited to capitalize on the power of the BlackBerry platform to help keep sales and service representatives informed and productive while in the field.”

Onyx CRM for BlackBerry is the latest addition to the Onyx Portable CRM product family, which includes products for offline laptop access with data synchronization and wireless access for mobile devices like the BlackBerry and other leading handheld devices.

External Links

Onyx

ARM announces Next-Generation Mobile Multimedia Acceleration

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New media and signal processing technology will be implemented in next-generation ARM processors

ARM today launched its new NEON technology, a media and signal processing solution designed to accelerate abroad range of applications. The ARM(R) NEON technology is targeted for
mobile and consumer products that need the flexibility to implement multiple combinations of video encode/decode, 3-D graphics, speech processing, audio decoding, image processing, and baseband functionality. NEON technology will be implemented in future ARM processors, and will be supported by ARM and
third-party tool chains enabling broad industry adoption.

NEON technology is a 64/128-bit SIMD (single instruction multiple data) instruction set that provides standardized acceleration for next generation media and signal processing applications. NEON technology can execute an MP3 audio decoder in less than 10 CPU MHz, and can run the GSM AMR (Adaptive Multi-Rate) speech codec using only 13 CPU MHz. It features a comprehensive instruction set, separate register files, and independent execution hardware.

NEON supports 8-, 16-, 32- and 64-bit integer, and single precision floating-point SIMD operations for handling audio/video processing as well as graphics and gaming processing.

“NEON technology benefits everyone from the consumer to the chip designer,” said Mike Inglis, executive vice president, Marketing, ARM. “It will deliver to the consumer  desktop-quality audio, video, and 3-D graphics using a solution that can be reprogrammed for changing industry standards.
NEON technology offers system designers unrivalled flexibility and performance while meeting the exacting power and area constraints of next generation mobile and consumer products.”

“We have come to expect ARM to produce these kinds of advancements,” said Tony Massimini, chief of technology, micrologic, Semico Research Corporation. “The NEON technology is further evidence that ARM continues to develop
enhancements for the ARM core that satisfy the growing demands of the cell phone and digital consumer market.”

“Together, TI and ARM are enabling the growth of multimedia applications on handsets, making the cell phone an entertainment device,” said Paul Werp, director, Cellular Systems, Texas Instruments. “The NEON technology multimedia capabilities provide a significant boost that can enable more applications to run on the ARM core, both cost- and power-effectively.”

“As mobile devices become the primary targets for delivering streaming video, audio, digital photography, and 3-D gaming services to consumers, the need for powerful and  reprogrammable, yet efficient processors has grown,”
said Mike McCourt with FreeScale’s wireless group. “Products built upon industry standards accelerate product level support for new content-based features. Freescale, a key ARM Partner and a member of the Khronos group, has been active in driving the OpenMAX initiative and endorsing the NEON
technology strategy. These technologies taken together will help drive the expansion of products and services for the mobile market.

NEON technology’s diverse instruction set has been designed in
conjunction with vectorizing C compiler technology and will be released with C compiler support for the ARM developer community. The new technology is a target of the OpenMAX APIs being defined by the Khronos group to enable software portability, reuse, and reduced time to market.

NEON technology is designed to complement the ARM OptimoDE(TM) data engine, and employs a fixed instruction set designed to address a broad range of applications in software running on general purpose processors. OptimoDE data engines implement highly configurable VLIW instructions to deliver exceptional application specific performance. Many applications including next-generation mobile handsets will use both the NEON and OptimoDE technologies to implement outstanding baseband and applications performance.

NEON technology will be implemented in future families of ARM processors. In order to provide for the specific demands of its Partners’ highly vertical applications, ARM has created core technologies suited to multiple markets at multiple price and performance points: ARM TrustZone(TM) technology for data
security; Jazelle(R) technology for Java acceleration; Intelligent Energy Manager for power management; and now the NEON technology and OptimoDE data engines for media and signal processing.

External Links

ARM

Adax and IntelliNet Join Forces for Advanced Signaling Solutions

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Adax, the industry leader in high performance communications and signaling infrastructure and IntelliNet Technologies, a leading provider of network signaling products and solutions, have strengthened their partnership in EMEA with the announcement of SS7 pre-integrated signaling stacks.  These binary products provide off-the-shelf SS7 solutions for application developers, significantly reducing time to market for applications requiring SS7 such as SMS offload, Location Based Services for 2G, 2.5G and 3G networks, Ring Back Tone, Missed Call Notification and other enhanced services.

The binary SS7 products integrate the Adax HDC protocol controller and layer 2 software with the IntelliNet MTP3 and higher layers for TCAP, MAP and ISUP SS7 stacks.  IntelliNet’s AcceleroTM SIP together with Adax HDC protocol controller now provides the ability to seamlessly bridge SS7 signaling into the IP world bringing in the choice of SIGTRAN and SIP transports. Development of emerging applications such as Multi-protocol BSC will become significantly easier with this combination. 

“Network application developers are always looking to reduce their build costs and time-to-market.  This cost-effective SS7 stack does exactly that, “said Robin Kent, Director of European Operations, Adax Europe. “Adax and IntelliNet have a successful history and can now further this partnership in Europe using this new development as the first step into the region.”

“This field proven combination of infrastructure products are coming together with richer features to deliver unsurpassed value to the telecom application developer. IntelliNet’s commitment to EMEA region is further demonstrated by a dedicated facility that was set up this quarter. “said Anjan Ghosal, President and CEO IntelliNet Technologies.

“Carrier grade AcceleroTM Application Development Software can support up to 4096 signaling links and allows signaling application portability in a transport independent manner. This binary offering together with Adax HDC, provides a high return on infrastructure investment in a world where innovative services are introduced at a scorching pace.” said Arun Handa, Vice President for Product Management at IntelliNet Technologies.

The Adax HDC controller is a high density, multiple protocol, fully channelized platform that is ideal for signaling and media gateways, softswitches and SGSN/GGSN nodes for Next Generation Networks.  The card is dynamically configurable and provides up to 128 channels of MTP2, SCTP, LAPB/D/V5, Frame Relay, X.25 or HDLC software in any combination per board.  The HDC is available in PMC and PCI formats and has up to four T1/E1 interfaces.  The PCI card has an option of two Ethernet ports for IP connections.

IntelliNet’s AcceleroTM Application Development Software (ADS) is a powerful, yet easy-to-use platform for the development of 2G, 2.5G, and 3G wireless and IN applications. Designed to insulate the business logic of applications from the various underlying signaling transports, AcceleroTM ADS speeds development by delivering a signaling-transport independent architecture across IP (Sigtran and SIP) and SS7.  Accelero TM ADS provides the most comprehensive API support in the industry.

External Links

Intellinet Technologies
Adax Europe

BT and NewMediacom to stream live CNBC footage to mobiles

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BT today announced a major extension of its mobile video service trial with Newmediacom to provide live video streaming of CNBC Europe news to mobile handsets in 17 European countries.  The service will allow customers to view live broadcasts from CNBC Europe, the financial and business news network..

The service will benefit customers and business users who will be able to access industry news and information as it happens. Based on BT’s leading edge Fastnets technology and Content Management Platform, the service can be accessed from a range of mobile devices.  Users register for the service online and pay using their credit or debit cards for daily or monthly access.

Andy Lay, general manager of new business innovation for BT Wholesale said: “The trial of this new service further demonstrates BT’s commitment to working with a range of exciting companies to drive innovative services in the UK and European markets.”

Mick Buckley, President and CEO of CNBC Europe stated: “This deal re-enforces our leadership position in delivering quality business and financial news throughout Europe. This innovative mobile video capability perfectly complements our fast growing broadband service and provides a unique service for the business leaders, finance professionals, private investors, and those who need to know first, who make up our viewers across Europe.”

Peter Jones, Chairman and CEO of Newmediacom’s parent company, Phones International Group, said  “This is the first pan – European mobile video service offering live broadcast services so we are delighted that CNBC Europe chose us to provide it. The service will be available through the leading mobile networks across Europe so it will be widely available. We will be making this service available to an ever increasing range of mobile phones and PDAs.”

External Links

BT

02 Introduces 3G Data Card Package

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O2’s makes its official entry to the 3G market today with the availability of its 3G/GPRS/WLAN PC data card package. The launch makes O2 the final UK operator to offer some kind of commercially available 3G service, but the operator played down concerns it is late to the game.

Dave McGlade, CEO of O2 UK, put the data card launch in the context of O2’s overall strategy, saying that in his view mass market adoption of 3G is stil la year away. Vodafone has recently announced a range of 10 3G phones for the Christmas market this year.

“O2 understands that in mobile it’s not about being first to market but delivering on customer service promises.  3G is not just a new toy for watching videos or playing games. It is the next step in our evolving strategy to offer our customers attractive, compelling and intuitive non-SMS data applications.

“As an industry we have a track record of hyping technology before it is ready. Instead we should be launching it only when it has the right customer experience. At O2 we are committed to breaking this cycle. In relation to 3G, our strategy has always been about giving customers what they want, not what we want them to have and that means providing a suite of technologies of which 3G is one. 3G will be a central pillar for the mobile industry moving forwards – but we won’t see mass market adoption of this technology until late 2005. I believe that we have a very sensible view of the present and an optimistic vision of the future when it comes to 3G.”

At first sight the card seems a little more integrated than other offerings. O2 has not just a deal in place with hotspot operators OpenZone, The Cloud and Excilan, but live sitse up and running. It also has an updateable list of hotspots on its Communication Manager client, as well as proven VPN support.

The operator is offering no stand-alone “3G” pricing as such, instead offering 3G as one connection technology within its data service packages. Comparisons are difficult, but if you take 1GB of monthly usage O2 does seem, at £105 to be more expensive than T-Mobile (£70 flat rate for the time being) and Vodafone and Orange (£75).

O2 counters that its usage is shareable across a number of users within a business, giving IT and comms managers more flexibility across a group of users. Unlike T-Mobile, which offers a connection rate of 128kbps, but like the other operators, O2 offers up to 384kbps connectivity.

O2 will also offer customers access to the wireless hotspots of BTOpenzone and The Cloud — which together own over 6000 hotspots in the UK — for an additional £30 per month. T-Mobile includes hotspot access in its fixed monthly charge. Vodafone has only just announced a deal with BT Openzone for hotspot access, and according to O2 has no live sites yet. O2 used this as an example of its justification for waiting before launch.

“We could have rushed out a date ages ago,” a spokesperson said, “but we wanted to wait for the results of customer trials and to know we had a really good customer experience sp we had the right service.”

As for network coverage the operator says it will have just under 30% of the population one month after launch. Vodafone had 30% coverage when it launched in April, which it has since increased, and Orange launched in July with 66% population coverage. T-Mobile declines to reveal its network coverage. O2 has said it will have 50% population coverage by June 2005. By the terms of its licence it must have 80% by December 2007.

New Siemens Communications Group ready for business

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The newly founded Siemens Communications Group started operations today on October 1, 2004.

The merger of the former Siemens fixed and mobile communications units – IC Networks and IC Mobile – has created one of the world’s largest suppliers in the telecommunications sector. In terms of sales, Siemens Communications shares rank three with Motorola, behind Nokia and Cisco.

The new Group, which is currently represented in more than 160 countries, is headed by Lothar Pauly and subdivided into the three segments Carrier Networks, Enterprise Networks and Devices, with a total of eight divisions. Its Group Executive Management has five members: Lothar Pauly is the Group President and is also in charge of fixed and mobile networks in the carrier segment; Michael Kutschenreuter is responsible for finances; Anton Hendrik Schaaf holds the post of Chief Technology Officer and also oversees the Group’s carrier service business; Andy W. Mattes is responsible for enterprise business; and Thorsten Heins heads the Devices unit.

“Siemens Communications has a clear, two-pronged strategy,” explains Lothar Pauly. “First, we plan to expand our established business toward end-to-end solutions, from the core network to devices. Second, we will be consolidating our role as a trendsetter in convergence solutions for fixed and mobile networks, public and private networks, and multifunctional devices. Here, we already have a good head start in terms of innovations.” Pauly goes on to explain that Siemens Communications is currently the only supplier capable of offering its customers a complete portfolio that covers everything from devices for end-users to complex network infrastructures for enterprises and operators, along with associated lifecycle and professional services.

The Devices segment is subdivided into the three divisions Mobile Devices, Customer Premises Equipment and Wireless Modules, which offer a complete portfolio of multifunctional devices for fixed networks, mobile networks and wireless access, thus enabling a wide range of mobile solutions. The Devices portfolio includes mobile, cordless and system telephones, broadband modems and radio modules.

The Mobile Devices division is headed by Clemens Joos, with Paul Reitmeier in charge of Customer Premises Equipment and Jose Costa e Silva heading Wireless Modules.

The Carrier Networks segment consists of the three divisions Mobile Networks, Fixed Networks and Carrier Services. Carrier Networks provides the complete infrastructure, applications, turnkey solutions (including broadband) and a full portfolio of professional services for mobile network and fixed network operators. On the basis of its fixed/mobile convergence concept, Siemens offers operators of hybrid networks common platforms, applications and broadband solutions for all access types and services.

In addition to being number one in digital telephone switching systems (with more than 300 million installed ports) and in IP convergence solutions, Siemens is a technology leader in broadband access. Over 180 network carriers around the world currently use Siemens mobile communications technology. Siemens is also among the leaders in segments such as Prepaid and Microwave, as well as applications and mobile communication services.

Mobile Networks will be headed by Karl-Christoph Caselitz, Fixed Networks by Christian Unterberger, and Carrier Services by Daniel-Rui Felicio.

Enterprise Networks comprises the two divisions Enterprise Systems and Enterprise Services. Enterprise Networks provides enterprise customers with real-time communications systems and applications, solutions (including security) and a full range of professional services designed to help them improve their business processes. With presence-based applications such as HiPath OpenScape, the common HiPath 8000/ SURPASS softswitch platform bridges carrier and corporate networks and supports enterprises in boosting their productivity.

Enterprise Systems is headed by Bernd Kuhlin, while Gerhard Otterbach is responsible for Enterprise Services.

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