Monday, February 16, 2009

Ireland Opens Radio Frequency Spectrum for Equipment Testing

Ireland's radio spectrum regulatory agency, the Commission for Communications Regulations (ComReg) is promoting Ireland's radio spectrum as a test-bed to companies and organizations who wish to test and trial wireless projects across all spectrum ranges. The regulator is in the process of opening various bands for testing purposes, including the UHF band -- which is suitable for mobile TV -- as well as the 900 MHz and 2300 MHz bands -- which...

Alcatel-Lucent Appoints Rajeev Singh-Molares as President, Asia Pacific region

Alcatel-Lucent has appointed Rajeev Singh-Molares as President of the Asia-Pacific region, replacing Sean Dolan, effective February 1, 2010. Rajeev Singh-Molares is currently the Chief Strategy Officer for Alcatel-Lucent, responsible for identifying new development opportunities, new areas of consumer interest, and new markets for industry expansion. In this role he has been the leader in defining, communicating, and overseeing the execution of the company's new strategy - driven by its Application Enablement vision. He will continue to be...

Ericsson Achieves 42 Mbps with HSPA Evolution

Ericsson achieved a peak downlink rate of 42 Mbps in a public demonstration of HSPA Evolution technology. The demonstration, which was conducted near Stockholm, was attended by Telstra and other mobile operators.It was the first time in the world such speeds was achieved on commercially-available products. Until now, consumers have seen network speeds of 28Mbps at best.HSPA Evolution is a new dual carrier technology that can be implemented with a software upgrade and doubles the speed for users everywhere in the cell of the mobile network, even...

Sycamore Expands its Ethernet Capabilities

Sycamore Networks introduced Ethernet service enhancements for its SN 9000 Intelligent Multiservice Switch. The new 8-port Multirate Ethernet Card supports Ethernet line rates from 10/100/1000 Mbps to 10 Gigabit Ethernet. It supports carrier-class Ethernet Private Line services, as defined by the Metro Ethernet Forum (MEF), and delivers optimal levels of resource utilization and service resiliency via implementation of standards-based Generic Framing Procedure (GFP), Virtual Concatenation (VCAT), and Link Capacity Adjustment Scheme (LCAS) protocols....

BridgeWave Powers Wireless Video Surveillance at Inauguration

BridgeWave Communications' gigabit wireless products provided the network backbone to support mission-critical video surveillance traffic run by local and national security agencies during the 2009 U.S. presidential inauguration. In January 2009, more than one million people witnessed President Barack Obama's historic inauguration in Washington, D.C. Connectivity Solutions Inc. (CSI), a Value Added Reseller specializing in the design and deployment of wired and wireless solutions, was tasked with implementing the mission critical video surveillance...

Telco Systems and Sun Partner on Carrier-Grade Ethernet

Telco Systems today announced that they have successfully certified interoperability of Sun Microsystems' Netra carrier-grade rack server platforms have completed interoperability testing with Telco Systems Carrier Ethernet/IP solutions. The combination of Sun's Netra servers and Telco Systems BiNOS-powered Carrier Ethernet switches offers service providers a highly reliable configuration for delivering high-bandwidth, mission-critical applications to their subscribers. The testing performed demonstrated interoperability for streaming video, remote...

Telefónica Demos 21 Mbps HSPA+ with Sierra Wireless

At this week's Mobile World Congress, Telefónica is demonstrating HSPA+ using the new Sierra Wireless USB 306.Sierra Wireless' USB 306 offers peak downlink speeds of 21 Mbps and uplink speeds of 5.76 Mbps. It offers backward compatibility to HSPA, UMTS, EDGE, and GPRS networks where HSPA+ coverage is not available. http://www.sierrawireless....

Sri Lanka's Dialog Telekom to Deploy Solar/Wind-Powered Base Stations

Sri Lanka's Dialog Telekom will deploy ten solar and wind-powered base stations with funding from the GSMA's Green Power for Mobile programme. The trial, which will deploy five off-grid and five on-grid base stations, has seen two sites go live this month and a further eight sites will go live in March and April this year. The goal of the trial is to use a number of different scenarios with equipment from eight different vendors to demonstrate the range of options available and the commercial viability of rolling out mobile networks using renewable...

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to Fund Financial Services through Mobiles

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will support a new program aimed at expanding the availability of financial services to millions of people in the developing world through mobile phones. The Mobile Money for the Unbanked (MMU) programme, supported by a US$12.5 million grant from the foundation, will work with mobile operators, banks, microfinance institutions, government and development organizations to encourage the expansion of reliable, affordable mobile financial services to the unbanked.The MMU programme will fund regulatory and market...

Mobile Operator in Vanuatu Powers 60% of Systems with Wind/Solar

Digicel, supported by the GSMA Development Fund, has completed the second phase of its green power network implementation and is using wind and solar energy solutions to power 25 base stations on the Pacific archipelago of Vanuatu. Digicel, which is the leading mobile operator in Vanuatu, now carries more than 60% of its network traffic on base stations powered by renewable energy sources.Digicel's approach of using solar, wind and hybrid power is...

Alcatel-Lucent Base Station Software Upgrade Reduces Power Consumption up to 27%

Alcatel-Lucent announced a Dynamic Power Save (DPS) enhancement to its GSM/EDGE mobile networking portfolio that can reduce power consumption by up to 27 percent, offering significant energy and cost savings for mobile operators. The power reductions were demonstrated during January field trial this year with China Mobile in the country's Jiangsu province. On average, a 24 percent power saving has been achieved.Alcatel-Lucent said its Dynamic Power Save capability involves switching off the power amplifier in GSM transceivers. It enables the base...

Alcatel-Lucent Launches Alternative Energy Program for Wireless Base Stations

Alcatel-Lucent has launched a program to enable the high-volume deployment of wireless base stations powered by alternative energy sources to address mobile operators' increasing demand for energy-autonomous and green wireless networking equipment. The goal is to help service providers deploy wireless networks in areas not served by electrical power. The company estimates that more than one billion people live in areas that are not served by an...

Nokia Selects Broadcom as a 3G Chipset Supplier

Nokia has agreed to use Broadcom as a next generation 3G baseband, radio frequency (RF) and mixed signal chipset system supplier for worldwide markets. The two parties will cooperate on technology, including Nokia modem technology. http://www.nokia.com http://www.broadcom....

Nokia to Use Qualcomm's Chips for Mobile Devices for North America

Nokia and Qualcomm will work together to develop advanced UMTS mobile devices, initially for North America. The companies intend for the devices to be based on S60 software on Symbian OS and Qualcomm's advanced Mobile Station Modem (MSM) MSM7xxx-series and MSM8xxx -series chipsets. The first mobile devices based on this collaboration are expected to launch in mid-2010 and be compatible with the forthcoming Symbian Foundation platform."Nokia is very pleased to be in discussions with Qualcomm around designing mobile devices that can benefit from...

T-Mobile's Data Traffic Tripled in 2008, Collaborates with Nokia Ovi

During 2008, T-Mobile's data traffic tripled and its web'n'walk subscriber base grew 53 percent to 5.9 million. At Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, T-Mobile announced a collaboration with Nokia to open up an integrated marketplace for mobile content and Internet services. Through T-Mobile's web'n'walk widget platform, customers will be able to access both T-Mobile's widget gallery and Nokia's Ovi Store directly from the idle screen of their mobile phone. The integrated marketplace will be launching on mass market Nokia Series 40 platform based...

Cisco to Offer Trend Micro's Home Network Defender Service

Cisco has integrated Trend Micro's Internet security software into Linksys by Cisco wireless routers. This multi-layered security offering helps provide network protection for family PCs and other home-network devices, such as online game consoles, Wi-Fi enabled phones, and personal media players. The Home Network Defender, an Internet security service from Trend Micro that features Safe Web Surfing capabilities, parental controls, and user-activity reporting embedded on select Linksys by Cisco wireless-N home routers. Home Network Defender helps...

ZTE Supplies Software Defined Radio-based HSPA+ in Hong Kong

Hong Kong's CSL New World Mobility (CSLNWM), a subsidiary of Australia's Telstra, is working with ZTE to build a SDR (Software Defined Radio) based HSPA+ network. The companies said it is the first large-scale all-IP network with such SDR technology. Specifically, ZTE will upgrade CSLNWM's existing infrastructure with a fully integrated 2G/3G all-IP SDR-based network. Furthermore, ZTE and CSLNWM have successfully completed testing of the HSPA+ network capability in Hong Kong on 15 February 2009, delivering HSPA+ (64QAM) services which can provide...

Mobile World Congress: Industry Supports Universal Charging Solution for Mobile Phones

A mobile industry initiative led by the GSMA and 17 leading mobile operators and manufacturers voiced a commitment to a cross-industry standard for a universal charger for new mobile phones. The aim is to ensure that the mobile industry adopts a common format for mobile phone charger connections and energy-efficient chargers. This could result in an estimated 50 percent reduction in standby energy consumption, the potential elimination of up to...

Ericsson Debuts Adaptive Multi Rate Wideband for GSM

Ericsson introduced an Adaptive Multi Rate (AMR) Wideband technology to boost the audio quality of voice calls in mobile networks. The technology can be implemented in both GSM and WCDMA/HSPA networks, and provides hi-fi quality, crystal-clear sounds on mobile handsets that support the feature. AMR (Adaptive Multi Rate) Wideband is a GSM/WCDMA standardized speech technology that enhances voice quality and clarity in mobile networks to noticeably...

Veraz Exceeds Fourth Quarter Guidance

Veraz Networks reported Q4 2008 revenues of $26.3 million, exceeding the previous management guidance range of $22 million to $24 million. * Total gross margin percentage for the fourth quarter of 2008 strengthened to 60%, the highest gross margin percentage in six quarters. In addition, the IP product gross margin percentage was 65%, which is the highest quarterly performance in the history of Veraz.There was a net loss was ($0.9 million) or ($0.02) loss per share, which was lower than the previous management guidance range of ($3 million to...

Mobile World Congress: Award Winners

The GSMA announced the following 2009 GLOBAL MOBILE AWARDS winners:Best Mobile GameWinner: Gameloft - Real Football 2009Highly Commended: Digital Chocolate - AvaPeeps: FlirtNationBest Mobile Music or Video ServiceWinner: BBC iPlayer on MobileBest Mobile Advertising ServiceWinner: Turkcell - Tonla KazanBest Mobile TV ServiceWinner: MobiTV - MobiTVBest Mobile Enterprise Product or ServiceWinner: Vodafone - Vodafone Global Enterprise LimitedBest Mobile Internet ServiceWinner: Nokia - Nokia Sports TrackerBest Mobile Money ServiceWinner: Safaricom and...