Starent Adds Policy and Charging Control for 3G and 4G

Starent Networks announced an end-to-end 3GPP Policy and Charging Control (PCC) solution to address mobile operators' need to manage network traffic and introduce new revenue generating services.


The Starent PCC solution consists of Policy and Charging Rules Function (PCRF), Subscriber Profile Repository (SPR), Policy and Charging Enforcement Function (PCEF) and On-Line and Off-Line Charging (OCS/OFCS). Starent integrates these elements in the mobile gateway function. Key services of the PCC solution include automated use notifications to prevent bill shock and reduce subscriber churn, tiered services to improve customer satisfaction, parental control, roaming management, traffic optimization, location-based differential charging and on-net preferential charging.


The complete solution consists of Starent and ecosystem partner technologies, enabling operators to improve subscriber experiences through effective resource management. It can be deployed in 3G networks and can be used in LTE/EPC networks through a software upgrade.


"Mobile operators are increasingly challenged by the explosion of data traffic, to keep costs down and monetize their networks," said Ashraf Dahod, president and chief executive officer of Starent Networks. "By offering a tightly-coupled and cost-effective PCC solution, Starent is providing operators with the real-time management of their network resources to contain costs and provide the personalized services they need now."


Starent noted that its PCC solution has been deployed in multiple tier-one operator networks.
http://www.starentnetworks.com

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Brocade Launches Compact NetIron MPLS Router

Brocade introduced its NetIron CER 2000 Series compact MPLS router, featuring double the routing capacity and triple the forwarding capacity of previous solutions while fitting into a compact 1U form factor.


Brocade said it developed the new NetIron CER 2000 for service providers that are facing increased edge and aggregation routing demands. The platform is optimal for use as a Carrier Ethernet/Metro edge router, an MPLS Provider Edge (PE) router, or as a high-capacity border router for small data centers and enterprise branch offices with Ethernet connectivity. Additionally, the NetIron CER 2000 features a highly scalable BGP implementation for compact route-reflector applications.


The new platform delivers wire-speed Carrier Ethernet services -- such as E-LINE, E-LAN, and E-TREE services (MEF 9, 14, and 21 certification)-- with its multicast and Quality of Service (QoS) capabilities to support triple-play applications. It features scalable MPLS with VLL, VPLS, VPLS-PBB, and advanced resiliency at multiple layers using MPLS Fast Reroute, hot-standby LSPs, and fault detection and recovery with Brocade Metro Ring Protocol (MRP)/MRP2. It supports either 24 or 48 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) ports with two 10 GbE uplinks. It also uses the same Brocade Multi-Service IronWare OS that powers the high-end NetIron MLX and NetIron XMR chassis-based routers.


In addition, the compact form factor, front-to-back airflow and new silicon improve operational efficiency with 66 percent power consumption.


The NetIron CER 2000 will be available first quarter CY 2010 in six models, including fiber and copper configurations. The base price is US$12,495.
http://www.brocade.com

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Liberty University Deploys Procera's PacketLogic DPI

Liberty University installed Procera Networks' PacketLogic PL7720 Evolved Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) to gain visibility into network traffic and to balance the bandwidth consumption between academic and non-academic network traffic. Multiple PacketLogic systems are being used to balance academic and recreational Internet bandwidth consumption by the university's 800 faculty members, 11,800 residential and 36,000 distance-learning students.
http://www.proceranetworks.com

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Bill Gates Funds GSMA's Mobile Money Initiative

The GSMA awarded six additional grants under its the Mobile Money for the Unbanked Fund (MMU) initiative, which aims to use mobile phones to improve the lives of people without bank accounts. New grantees include AKTEL in Bangladesh, Dialog Telekom PLC in Sri Lanka, Grameenphone Ltd in Bangladesh, MTN Cameroon, MTN Uganda and Vodacom Tanzania. Grants are available for projects promoting the uptake of mobile money services for the unbanked and underbanked, with funding for projects up to a value of US$1million. The MMU programme is supported by a US$12.5 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.


According to research cited by GSMA, only 13 per cent of the population of Bangladesh has a bank account, which means that upwards of 130 million people have no access to formal financial services. MMU funds have been awarded to two participants in Bangladesh, AKTEL (a joint venture company between Axiata Group Berhad of Malaysia and NTT DoCoMo, Japan) and Grameenphone Ltd. In November, AKTEL will launch a bill payment service (through mobile) for electricity subscribers, which has been awarded by the Bangladesh Power Development Board (BPDB) to AKTEL. Under the mCommerce initiative, AKTEL is introducing SMS and IVR based services with the aim of assisting financially constrained rural communities
By reaching the underbanked, the unbanked and those financially handicapped by high interest rates from existing services, Grameenphone and AKTEL are enabling individuals to create financial identities which will benefit the whole community. With regulatory approval, the implementation of mobile money services will enable Bangladeshis to take advantage of more efficient, less time consuming and more secure new services and in the long run help alleviate poverty in Bangladesh.


Sri Lankan-based Dialog plans to introduce mCommerce services to the North and North--Central provinces of Sri Lanka. Dialog will focus on regions deficient in financial services infrastructure, and on initiatives to enhance people's lives by providing a range of mCommerce services at affordable prices including utility bill payment, person-to-person money transfers, over-the-counter payments and cash withdrawal/deposits.
http://www.gsmworld.com

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Nortel's Loss Deepens in Q3, Metro Ethernet Down 26%

Nortel reported Q3 2009of $1,045 million, with declines year over year in all segments, except Carrier VoIP and Application Solutions (CVAS), and in all regions. These revenues exclude third quarter revenues related to Equity Investees' revenues of $348 million and $353 million related to discontinued operations. This compares with total revenues of $2,319 million in the third quarter of 2008. There was a net loss of $508 million compared to net loss of $3,413 million in the third quarter of 2008. Gross margin was 45.0 percent of revenues in the third quarter of 2009.


Nortel said its performance reflected the continuing economic downturn and the uncertainty created by its bankruptcy proceedings.
http://www.nortel.com

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GSMA's Mobile Green Manifesto Seeks 4.5X Lower Emissions

A this week's Mobile Asia Congress in Hong Kong, the GSMA unveiled its "Mobile's Green Manifesto" -- a position paper that sets out how the mobile industry plans to lower its greenhouse gas emissions per connection, and demonstrates the key role that mobile communications can play in lowering emissions in other sectors and industries. It makes specific policy recommendations for governments and delegates attending the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen (COP15), December 7-18, to realize the full potential of the role that mobile communications can take in reducing global greenhouse gas emissions.


The Green Manifesto was developed in collaboration with The Climate Group. Specific goals include:

• To reduce its total global greenhouse gas emissions per connection by 40% by 2020 compared to 2009. This forecast covers all emissions from energy sources under the control of the mobile operators, including energy consumption from the radio network, buildings, and energy consumption and emissions from transport.



• The mobile industry is aiming for carbon neutral growth. The number of mobile connections is set to rise by 70% to 8 billion by 2020 as the industry builds out a new generation of mobile broadband networks, bringing billions of people into the information economy. Despite this growth, the mobile industry forecasts that, through its activities, its total emissions will remain constant at 245 mega-tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (Mt CO2e) - equivalent to 0.5% of total global emissions in 2020, or the greenhouse gas emissions of the Netherlands.



• To work with handset vendors to ensure that the energy consumed by a typical handset, in standby and while being used, is reduced by 40% by 2020.



• To work with equipment vendors to ensure that the life cycle emissions of network equipment components are reduced by 40% by 2020.

"With the right public policies in place, the mobile industry can make a major contribution in the fight against global warming, lowering emissions in other sectors by more than 4.5 times mobile's own footprint, which is the equivalent of taking one in every three cars off the road," said Rob Conway, CEO and Member of the Board, GSMA. "The mobile industry could enable greenhouse gas emission reductions of 1,150 Mt CO2e in 2020 - twice the present emissions of the United Kingdom. We will be calling upon governments at COP15 to ensure that mobile solutions are at the forefront of the global fight to prevent climate change and mitigate its consequences."http://www.gsmworld.com
http://www.mobileworldlive.com/

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Verizon: 80% of Security Products Do Not Perform as Intended

Nearly 80 percent of security products fail to perform as intended when first tested, according to ICSA Labs, an independent division of Verizon Business. Across seven product categories, core product functionality accounted for 78 percent of initial test failures -- for example, an anti-virus product failing to prevent infection or an IPS (intrusion prevention system) product failing to filter malicious traffic. ICSA Labs, which offers vendor-neutral testing and certification of security products, said failure of a product to completely and accurately log data was the second most common reason security products do not perform as intended. Incomplete or inaccurate logging of who did what and when accounted for 58 percent of initial failures.


The report findings suggest that some vendors and enterprise users consider logging a nuisance and merely a "box to check." According to the report, logging is a particular challenge for firewalls. Almost every network firewall (97 percent) or Web application firewall (80 percent) tested experienced at least one logging problem.


The third most significant reason for product failure is the finding that 44 percent of security products had inherent security problems, including vulnerabilities that compromise the confidentiality or integrity of the system and random behavior that affects product availability. http://http://www.icsalabs.com.
http://www.icsalabs.com/whitepaper/report

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Vietnam's VMS Selects Alcatel-Lucent's Convergent Payment Solution

Vietnam Mobile Services Company (VMS) selected Alcatel-Lucent's Converged Payment solution for its 54 million pre- and post-paid mobile subscribers. To support the rapid subscriber growth of VMS, Alcatel-Lucent will deploy its 8610 Instant Convergent Charging Suite (ICC) over 100% of the entire network. The ICC, which enables real-time rating and charging for voice and data services, will allow VMS to quickly bring to market new convergent mobile prepaid and post-paid services. Alcatel Lucent will also undertake the design, project management, integration, installation and commissioning of the solution.


"With this win, Alcatel-Lucent strengthens its foothold as a leading vendor in the Vietnam telecoms market. As the trusted solution vendor of VMS, we are committed to helping them develop and evolve their networks to provide new features and services to an ever-expanding subscriber base," said Sean Dolan, president of Alcatel-Lucent's activities in Asia-Pacific.
http://www.alcatel-lucent.com

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Sweden's TV4 Group Outsources to Ericsson

Sweden's TV4 Group awarded a ten-year contract to Ericsson to operate its nationwide playout services. In addition, Ericsson and TV4 Group will establish a joint technology and business development forum. As part of the deal, 40 employees from TV4 Group will be transferred to Ericsson.


In the technology and business development forum, the two companies will evaluate new business opportunities as TV4 Group develops its offering from standard linear TV to on-demand TV, giving viewers a more personalized viewing experience.


Since 2007, Ericsson has managed the playout services in the Nordic region for Canal+, which was acquired by TV4 group in 2008. With today's announcement, Ericsson will now be responsible for all playout services for the TV4 Group.
http://www.ericsson.com

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Telenor Denmark Selects NSN for HSPA+ and LTE

Telenor Denmark has selected Nokia Siemens Networks for a full upgrade of its 2G and 3G radio network to provide nationwide EDGE, HSPA and HSPA+ services based on its award winning Flexi Multiradio base station. The network will also be ready for LTE services. The agreement is for 6 years. Financial terms were not disclosed.


"This is the largest network upgrade we have ever made. We are improving capacity, stability and speed and will be able to offer consumers better mobile broadband services. The agreement will both deliver immediate network improvements and build a network that is ready to meet future consumer demands," said Henrik Clausen, CEO for Telenor in Denmark.


"As our first LTE agreement in a Nordic country, this is an important reference showcasing our capabilities in network technologies today and far into the future," said Joe Doering, head of North and East European region, Nokia Siemens Networks. "Having worked with Telenor over many years, we know we are best placed to support its efforts to offer superior mobile broadband to the Danish market."http://www.nsn.com

As of 30 September 2009, Telenor Denmark had 2.0 million mobile subscriptions, 262,000 broadband subscriptions and 284,000 fixed telephony subscriptions (including VoIP). As at 30 September 2009, the mobile penetration and number of inhabitants in Denmark were 131% and 5.5 million, respectively.

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F5 Enhances IP Geolocation with Quova

F5 Networks will integrate Quova's IP geolocation technology in order to provide more intelligent context-aware application delivery solutions. The Quova technology maps IP addresses and related data to geographic locations at various levels of granularity. The contextual location information solves many security problems, such as enforcing download and access restrictions based on locality.


F5 said the addition of Quova's IP geo data will allow F5 customers to solve a whole new range of business networking issues at the perimeter of the network rather than down at the web application level. Localization functions, such as setting the default language page and customizing content for a specific region, will also rely on the Quova data. For example, using Quova's continent, country, and worldwide state level geolocation data will enable the BIG-IP Global Traffic Manager (GTM) system to provide more accurate and more granular geographic traffic management. Customers will be able to accurately manage traffic inside large countries that have multiple data centers. Also, F5 solutions will now provide data that can aid in identifying the carrier or Internet service provider of an IP address.
http://www.quova.com
http://www.f5.com

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Zhone Selected by Hardy in West Virginia

Hardy Telecommunications has selected Zhone platforms and SLMS Access Operating System to expand tiered broadband offerings to business and residential customers throughout its rural West Virginia serving area. Hardy will offer VoIP and high-speed data services using a combination of Zhone's ADSL2+ and DSL Reach technologies integrated via the SLMS Access Operating System. In addition to tiered broadband over copper and wireless services, Hardy plans to offer tiered bandwidth over fiber, VoIP over copper, VoIP over wireless and VoIP over fiber, further leveraging Zhone's any service/any media technology portfolio. Financial terms were not disclosed.
http://www.zhone.com
http://www.hardynet.com

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