Java applications can now be certified once and deployed everywhere

3GSM World Congress
Key Wireless Industry leaders Motorola, Nokia, Siemens, Sony Ericsson and Sun Microsystems today announced the launch of the “Java Verified” program to provide a unified process for the testing and certification of Java applications for mobile handsets. Applications can now be tested and certified only once for deployment over a wide range of delivery channels. The program will help the wireless industry satisfy growing demand for mobile data services by reducing development cost and speeding time-to-market.

With the rapid, widespread adoption of Java technology-based handsets around the world, operators, developers and handset manufacturers have all recognised a need to develop and define a unified testing criteria to drive market growth for Java data services. The Java Verified program evolved in just seven months following the announcement in June 2003 when these industry leaders made a commitment to cooperate on a unified testing initiative.

“The rapid progress made by the group clearly demonstrates how committed the industry is to meeting the challenges of today’s fast-changing marketplace,” said Alan Brenner, vice president, consumer and mobile systems group of Sun Microsystems. As the creator and innovator of Java technology, Sun has been chosen to manage and operate the newly launched program. 

Through the Java Verified program, wireless operators can now access a large pool of wireless Java applications that will help them increase customer value and brand equity by quickly launching attractive, high-quality Java applications such as games, movie guides and video news clips.

The Java Verified program will also allow wireless Java developers and content providers to monetize their applications more quickly and cost- effectively since meeting a single unified testing criteria will reduce the need for retesting by multiple distribution channels, each with its own proprietary testing criteria. In addition, they can leverage the Java Powered logo to expand the marketing mix of their products and provide customers with a unique quality assurance along with faster and more cost-effective access to innovative new services.

“As one of the leading Java content developers in Europe, we are very pleased to be able to leverage this program to ‘write once, test once, run everywhere,” said Jan Andresen, Managing Director of elkware. “We will save a tremendous amount of time by avoiding testing our applications multiple times and consumers will benefit from faster access to more innovative applications for their handsets.” 

To join the program, wireless developers simply register at www.javaverified.com, where applications submitted for testing will be administered by selected test houses worldwide. Applications are tested for application launch, user interface, functionality, security, network and localisation capabilities.

3GSM World Congress
OpenMIND Networks, providing innovative messaging solutions to mobile operators worldwide, today announced that mobilkom austria, Austria’s leading mobile operator, has selected the OpenMIND Message-OST platform to deliver its Premium SMS service. mobilkom austria has implemented the Intelligent Message Exchange (IMX) application of the Message-OS platform to deploy a country-wide cross network Premium SMS solution, which allows any Premium SMS code to be accessed by all Austrian mobile phone subscribers regardless of their network.

IMX on Message-OS is a highly available, carrier-grade  application that enables flexible and vendor-independent routing of messages between diverse value-added services to messaging centres both within the operator’s network and to other networks. The IMX solution ensures that Austrian service providers need only set up one Premium SMS service code. IMX recognises this code and routes the message accordingly in compliance with Austrian regulation.

“We selected OpenMIND Networks for its proven experience in deploying messaging platforms with the world’s leading mobile operators” said Dr. Heinz Lorenz, Head of Messaging, mobilkom austria.
“We are truly impressed by OpenMIND Networks’ fast and responsive R&D capability to quickly meet our requirements and their product’s ability to perform at high messaging traffic loads with extreme reliability. The Message-OS platform and IMX application offers us complete flexibility to build Premium SMS and other messaging applications quickly and efficiently, ensuring that mobilkom austria continues to provide our customers the latest mobile services.”

“With Message-OS, OpenMIND Networks provides mobilkom austria with the flexibility and technology they need to quickly develop and deploy new advanced messaging services,” said Alex Duncan, CEO, OpenMIND Networks.

“In an increasingly competitive marketplace, operators need our flexibility to ensure rapid response times and fast time to market for new revenue generating services. Message-OS achieves this, as it is designed to leverage the features of existing network components and therefore offers mobile operators great messaging value.”

The new Premium SMS service on Message-OS was launched, after an extremely short deployment cycle. Message-OS will be demonstrated throughout 3GSM World Congress at the OpenMIND Networks booth – Hall 1, Stand B22.

New 3G-324M-based Quality of Service (QoS) measurement tool enables operators to assess the quality of real-time 3G wireless video services

3GSM World Congress
Dilithium Networks, a leading provider of wireless multimedia solutions, announced today that it has developed a quality of service (QoS) measurement tool for 3G operators. The new product named VT-Probe enables operators offering advanced video services such as videotelephony, videoconferencing and real-time streaming, to perform measurements on their 3G wireless networks enabling the assessment of the quality of real-time video services delivered.

VT-probe is a software platform which can be integrated with a test equipment vendor or system integrator’s QoS systems and enables 3G operators to test video QoS of their services offered. The VT-Probe uses 3G-324M/H.324M technology to make/receive calls at regular intervals to other probes in the network and performs a variety of QoS key performance indicator measurements that cover service accessibility, reliability and media quality. The H.324M protocol is an ITU-T standard which has been adopted under the name 3G-324M by both 3GPP and 3GPP2 standards bodies enabling real-time conversational and streaming video services over 3G networks.

“Conversational video services are a key differentiator for 3G operators throughout the world,” said Paul Zuber, chief executive officer, Dilithium Networks. “As more operators offer 3G-video services, it is clearly important for them to perform network measurements and gather call statistics throughout their network, comparable to that of their existing voice networks. The VT-Probe enables operators to perform a variety of measurements that they can use to assess service level quality of their networks and make improvements to their service offerings.”

The VT-Probe is available to equipment vendors and system integrators now and is based on Dilithium Networks’ industry leading 3G-324M/H.324M protocol stack which has been shipping to customers since 1999. 

3GSM World Congress
AlphaCell Wireless 2001 Ltd., an Emblaze Group company and a provider of customised mobile handsets for the entertainment market, has announced the imminent launch of its M5 Music model. This new mobile handset has a design and user-interface dedicated to mobile music services, which can be handpicked by operators. Visitors to AlphaCell’s stand at 3GSM (Hall 4, Stand 2K) will be able to try out the M5 Music first hand.

The M5 Music marries form with function. It is a pocket-sized device with an ergonomic design for a convenient and enjoyable listening experience. AlphaCell has designed the handset with four programmable soft keys around the screen that offer one touch access to music content and operator services.

AlphaCell has incorporated a tailored, customisable interface into the M5 Music, which gives easy access to stored artist lists, a playlist organiser and music-themed content. Complementing this is a host of further interactive connectivity features including email, MMS, SMS and Internet browsing.

The M5 Music contains an MP3 player and port for an MMC SD card, alongside advanced audio and visual effects, including a 10-band equalizer, preset sounds and ID3 tags. MP3 files can be copied to the M5 Music for ‘on the go’ listening and it can also sync with a computer in order to download favourite music clips. The handset stores up to nine hours of music and more when attaching an MMC card.

With revenues from music and media services is predicted to grow from $906 million in 2004 to $5.9 billion in 2007, according to Strategy Analytics, the M5 Music is aimed squarely at the youth market. It offers a ready-made revenue stream for operators via its tailored content and instantly accessible services. The customisable user interface is also an opportunity for brand continuity and extension.

Avner Mor, CEO of AlphaCell, explained: “We have created a phone dedicated to the rapidly growing interest in music over mobile devices. It means that operators can now develop a handset with content, services and design values that tap directly into this increasingly popular sector.”

“Instead, the M5 Music lets operators decide what content and services they will include and how they will generate revenue from the phone. We can help with this, by providing content from Emblaze Systems for instance, but the ultimate power is with the operator.”

Spatial Atrium enables operators to achieve a seamless evolution from GSM to UMTS networks

3GSM World Congress
Spatial Wireless, a supplier of next-generation wireless networking solutions for today’s mobile networks, unveiled the enhancement of the distributed mobile switch, Spatial Atrium, to support UMTS at 3GSM World Congress.  Spatial Atrium is ideally suited for mobile service providers looking to seamlessly transform their current GSM infrastructure to support UMTS or for Greenfield UMTS deployments. 

Spatial Atrium supports a hybrid GSM, UMTS R99/R4 solution and a UMTS R5/R6 solution on a single Distributed Mobile Switching platform. This integrated solution provides increased economic efficiency by managing elastically the demand across the evolutionary steps of UMTS. Spatial Atrium hybrid solution supports service commonality between legacy voice and emerging SIP domains thus enabling the seamless transition of subscribers.

With this solution, GSM operators can easily and cost- effectively upgrade their existing core mobile switching networks to an ATM-based UMTS or IP-based UMTS, with a simple upgrade. No other system on the market today offers a single platform that supports mobile switching over TDM, ATM and IP.

“Spatial Wireless has an established track record of delivering the benefits of distributed mobile switching to GSM mobile carriers, and we have now enhanced the product to simultaneously support GSM and UMTS,” says Dr. Seshu Madhavapeddy, co-founder and vice-president of product management at Spatial Wireless. “Carriers are looking to hedge their bets on the timing and flavour of UMTS deployments. Spatial Atrium is the only solution that ensures the mobile carriers are not making a stranded infrastructure investment.”

Sendo S600, a second generation camera phone features advanced digital camera with 5x Xoom, innovative MMS and Java

3GSM World Congress
Sendo has announced the launch of the S600, a slim, elegant phone with leading edge digital camera capability. On top of this, it offers a 65K colour display, polyphonic ringtones and enhanced gaming capabilities in a light-weight 76cc bar-type design.

The small and stylish S600 boasts an advanced VGA camera with Sendo’s Xoom technology, a 5X smooth digital zoom, and a high-speed viewfinder (a class leading 15 fps), which makes use of Sendo’s graphics processing technology, GraphiX. The camera is highly specified with features such as five selectable image sizes, two image quality settings, sharpness and white balance control, night mode, image effects and photo editing features.

Sendo’s user interface research drove development of an intuitive easy-to-use photo messaging capability. Enhanced MMS technology, Xsend, compliments advanced camera functions, with only five key presses needed to create and send a photo message, including taking the picture. Sendo’s innovative Xccelerate technology provides greatly increased multimedia transmission speed, increasing speed up to 30% in good network conditions and even more in poorer conditions. The Sendo S600 also includes enhanced gaming options, including downloadable Java MIDP 2.0 games and four-way navigation with ‘run-and-shoot’ arcade style gameplay.

“The S600 is another exciting addition to Sendo’s growing range,” said Ron Schaeffer, Product Management Director for Sendo. “The S600 brings high-end camera phone features and easy to access services to the mass market for the first time. Consumers will love its design and ease of use, while network operators will benefit from its advanced service capability.”

Highly customisable, the S600 comes with up to 4MB of free memory, enough to store 400 photos*, or downloaded wallpapers, digital audio and polyphonic ringtones, games and applications. The cover is exchangeable to cater to individual taste and style. Talk-time is two to seven hours with standby time at 200-450 hours. The handset will be released in Spring 2004.

3GSM World Congress
Schlumberger Messaging Solutions today announced the launch of its latest product, M-Touch, which can increase mobile phone operators’ average revenue per user (ARPU) by up to five per cent. The application will alert subscribers via SMS whenever a call is missed because their phone is switched off, out of coverage or busy. This will result in increased call completion rates, which will increase voice traffic and ARPU in turn.

Once triggered by a missed call, the M-Touch application formats and generates a short message including the calling party’s telephone number, date and time of the call and the number of call attempts. The short message is then forwarded to the intended subscriber, either directly using the system’s built-in M-Touch functionality or by interfacing with a Short Message Service Center (SMSC) using Short Message Peer-to-Peer Protocol (SMPP).

M-Touch can be offered to all subscribers immediately upon deployment without the need for customers to upgrade to new phones. Customers who don’t currently subscribe to their operator’s voicemail service will benefit by being advised of all missed calls, while voicemail subscribers will find that M-Touch complements their existing service. For example, M-Touch can alert subscribers for all missed calls, including callers who did not leave a voicemail message – accounting for 50-70% of callers (Source: Frost & Sullivan). Roaming voicemail subscribers can perform call-backs based on M-Touch information even when they can’t access their voicemail from a roaming area.

Industry sources predict that advanced messaging solutions such as M-Touch can increase ARPU by 3-5%, with a return on investment within 3 to 8 months for operators. (Source: Frost & Sullivan)

“Schlumberger Messaging Solutions has leveraged its wealth of experience in the messaging industry to provide operators with M-Touch” commented Terry McCabe, Chief Technical Officer, Schlumberger Messaging Solutions. “M-Touch is designed to scale with an operator’s subscriber base growth and to support the most demanding capacity requirements.”

Schlumberger Messaging Solutions plans to develop the M-Touch service as a personalized service enabler, with features such as missed video calls for 3G networks and user-configurable options via www/WAP.

Leading mobile operator joins Palm Powered Mobile World

3GSM World Congress
PalmSource, provider of Palm OS – a leading operating system powering next generation mobile devices and smartphones – and Orange, one of the world’s largest mobile communications companies, today announced that Orange has joined the Palm Powered Mobile World program to broaden the selection of Palm OS applications and extend the reach of Palm Powered smartphones.

The strong global presence of the Orange Group in the mobile market together with the leadership of the Palm OS platform will enable the development of innovative Palm OS solutions that take advantage of the advanced features of Palm Powered smartphones, such as the industry-leading palmOne Treo 600. Today’s announcement demonstrates PalmSource’s growing commitment to partner with leading operators to accelerate the deployment of Palm Powered smartphones into the growing mobile data services market.

As a charter mobile operator partner in the Palm Powered Mobile World program, Orange will collaborate with PalmSource in several areas including:

* Leveraging the extensive Palm OS developer community for the development and deployment of innovative Palm OS solutions optimized for the Orange network

* Joint-marketing efforts to identify key Palm OS applications based on Orange’s target markets and support the distribution of these solutions to Orange customers

* Aligning the Palm OS platform with Orange’s roadmap and service offerings to bring cutting-edge Palm Powered smartphones to market.

“We are pleased to welcome Orange as a charter member of the Palm Powered Mobile World program,” said David Nagel, president and CEO of PalmSource. “We look forward to our collaboration with Orange, an industry innovator, to bring user-friendly smartphones and services to our joint customers.”

“With the launch of the highly successful Orange Treo 600, we have strengthened our leadership in the innovation of smartphones,” said Richard Hanscott, Vice President of Business Development and Partnerships for the Orange Group. “We look forward to leveraging PalmSource’s strength in key market segments to enhance our smartphones with the widest offerings of Palm OS applications that meet the needs of our customers.”

Palm OS provides a flexible and efficient platform that enables hardware manufacturers and software developers to rapidly and efficiently create a wide range of powerful, innovative and easy-to-use smart mobile devices and software applications. Approximately 30 million Palm Powered handhelds and smartphones have been sold to date and Palm OS has attracted a large and loyal following with approximately 275,000 developers building applications for Palm Powered smart mobile devices.

Italian 3G mobile operator Hutchison benefits from network traffic analysis and control improving performance and service delivery

3GSM World Congress
P-Cube Inc., the originator of programmable IP Service Control platforms for fixed-line and mobile network operators, has announced 3 Italy (Hutchison), Europe’s first 3G mobile network service provider, as the world’s first mobile network operator (MNO) to select its Service Control Platform and Encharge solution for traffic analysis, control and network optimisation of wireless data services. With P-Cube’s IP service control solution deployed in its Italian operation, 3 Italy will benefit from increased network performance and service delivery to both its pre- and post-paid subscribers.

By deploying P-Cube’s Service Control solutions, MNOs can gain unprecedented network visibility, control service delivery, and intelligently segment bandwidth on a per application basis. Crucially, these combined functions enable operators to quickly roll out, support and profit from new IP-based services to both pre- and post-paid users.

“Mobile operators currently have very little insight into the types of data services being run over their networks. Consequently, they are unable to accurately charge for these services on either an application or content basis,” said Yuval Shahar, president and CEO of P-Cube.
“This results in an inability to properly control pre-paid tariffs or bill for premium services.”
Shahar added, “when an operator develops a new premium content data service, to match or surpass a competitor, it must have the ability to roll this out and bill correctly in real-time. P-Cube solves this problem ensuring the proliferation of high- margin, revenue generating data services; reducing churn and increasing average revenue per user.”
P-Cube’s IP service control engine was deployed by Proxy Srl. to provide a solution precisely tailored for 3 Italy’s needs and requirements.
“P-Cube’s Service Control Platform is a critical part of 3 Italy’s
infrastructure, optimising network performance and service delivery to the level its subscribers expect,” said Rosario Libraro, CEO at P-Cube’s channel partner Proxy Srl.. “The level of intelligence that P-Cube’s solution delivers specifically addresses 3’s need for traffic analysis, control and billing for premium value IP data services.”
“3 was particularly impressed with the flexibility and speed of the roll-out we were able to achieve with the Encharge solution,” added Libraro. “As the customer’s requirements inevitably evolved during the installation, the highly programmable nature of the solution to scale and support new services allowed us to accommodate 3 Italy’s needs within a matter of days.”

P-Cube’s Service Engine is a programmable network element that creates a service intelligence layer that overlays the existing IP transport network and dramatically enhances a carrier’s ability to analyse and optimise application traffic and incorporate new content-based billing models leading to reduced costs and enhanced profits. The Service Engine works with software modules (Engage, Encharge, and Insight) to provide Service Control for any high speed IP network – fixed or mobile.
P-Cube’s IP Service Control solutions use stateful deep packet analysis to perform application level and user specific bandwidth optimisation. As a result, the solution can separately trace each and every network transaction and extract the required billing information for each and every data service.