Infonetics: Mobile Broadband Service Revenue to More than Double by 2014

Between 2010 and 2014, mobile broadband revenue will more than double, according to a new report from Infonetics called Mobile Services and Subscribers: Voice, SMS/MMS, and Broadband. The number of mobile broadband subscribers is expected to reach 1.8 billion worldwide by 2014, or 28% of total mobile subscribers. The bi-annual report provides in-depth analysis and worldwide and regional market size and forecasts through 2014 for mobile services (voice, SMS/MMS, and mobile broadband [W-CDMA/HSPA, CDMA2000/EV-DO, TD-SCDMA, LTE]) and subscribers (voice [prepaid and postpaid] and mobile broadband [W-CDMA/HSPA, CDMA2000/EV-DO, TD-SCDMA, LTE, Phone-based and PC-based]).



Some highlights:

• The number of LTE subscribers is forecast to reach 153 million by 2014, mostly in Asia Pacific and EMEA



• Due in large part to the high concentration of mobile operators in developed markets in Western Europe with good HSPA coverage, the EMEA region leads the mobile broadband race, having outpaced early 3G adopters such as Australia, Japan, and South Korea.



• In emerging Asian economies such as China and India, data revenue, including SMS and mobile broadband, is already having a positive impact on total ARPU, more than offsetting the rapid decline of voice ARPU that's occurring despite double-digit percentage annual increases in voice traffic.



• By 2014, W-CDMA/HSPA revenue will almost be 7 times that of CDMA2000 1xEV-DO revenue, as the majority of worldwide mobile subscribers are on GSM networks.



• Revenue from mobile broadband cards (standard PC cards and embedded cards) grew 6% in 1Q09 over 4Q09 to $1.55 billion worldwide.



• Strong growth is expected in mobile broadband card revenue and unit shipments in 2010, driven in large part by increasing adoption of HSPA (High Speed Packet Access).



• LTE-based mobile broadband embedded PC card sales are forecast to top US$3.8 billion in 2014.



• Shipments of mobile routers jumped 59% in 1Q10 over 4Q09 as mobile operators see them as a means of offloading mobile data traffic onto WiFi and are actively promoting them.



• Huawei, Sony Ericsson and ZTE are the top 3 mobile broadband card revenue market share leaders in 1Q10



• The number of mobile broadband subscribers surpassed DSL subscribers for the first time in 2009, and is forecast by Infonetics Research to grow to 1.8 billion worldwide in 2014.

http://www.infonetics.com

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Vendors back POLQA -- Mobile Voice Quality Testing Standard

OPTICOM, SwissQual and TNO announced that POLQA, a new voice quality testing technique, has been selected to form the new ITU-T voice quality standard to be used with HD Voice, 3G and 4G/LTE. POLQA - which stands for "Perceptual Objective Listening Quality Analysis" - will offer a new level of benchmarking capability to determine the voice quality of mobile network services.


A new POLQA coalition has been formed by OPTICOM, SwissQual and TNO as the outcome of the competitive standardization process run by the ITU-T. The POLQA standard was selected as a technology update for PESQ/P.862, which has been an industry benchmark for the past ten years.


"Over the last ten years test and measurement vendors have widely adopted ITU-T Recommendation P.862/PESQ ("Perceptual Evaluation of Speech Quality") and there are now more than 20,000 installations worldwide," explains Michael Keyhl, Founder and CEO of OPTICOM. "However, recently developed speech codecs for 3G and 4G, and new techniques for delivering an enhanced voice quality experience have generated strong demand for an update to this industry standard. POLQA is the answer the industry has been looking for."


SwissQual will provide commercial test products with embedded POLQA solutions, like ready-to-run drive test tool (DTT) systems for network benchmarking.


OPTICOM will provide POLQA within its PEXQ software test suite for Windows.
http://www.swissqual.com
http://www.opticom.de

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Brazil's Mobile Penetration Rate Hits 95%

As of the end of June 2010, Brazil had 185,134,974 mobile subscriptions for a mobile penetration rate of 95.92% for its population. Of these, 152,394,841 (82.32%) were pre-paid users and the remaining 32,740,133 (17.68%) were post paid users.


http://www.anatel.gov.br/Portal/exibirPortalInternet.do

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Sony Ericsson Reports Sales Growth, Market Share Estimated at 4%

Sony Ericsson reported quarterly sales of Euro 1,757 million, a 25% increase sequentially and a 4% increase year-on-year. Units shipped in the quarter were 11 million, a 5% increase sequentially and a 20% decrease year-on- year due to the reduction in size of the product portfolio. Average selling price (ASP) increased 19% sequentially and 31% year-on-year to Euro 160 during the quarter due to improved product and geographical mix, as well as positive currency effects.


The transformation programme, which started in mid-2008 is now in its final stages and on target to reduce annual operating expenses by Euro 880 million by the end of the year. Since the start of the program Sony Ericsson has reduced its global workforce by approximately 4,000 people to reach a total workforce of approximately 7,800 by June 30, 2010. The total restructuring charges taken to date for the programme are Euro 374 million.


As of June 30, 2010 Sony Ericsson retained a net cash position of Euro 609 million, an increase of Euro 46 million sequentially mainly due to operating results, tight financial management of working capital, as well as positive currency effects.


Market share in unit base for the quarter remained flat and is estimated to be around 4%.


Sony Ericsson maintains a forecast of slight growth in units in the global handset market in 2010.
http://www.sonyericsson.com

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Ocean Observatories Establish Two 10 Gbps Peerings with Amazon Web Services

CENIC, which operates the high performance network for California's education and research communities, and PNWGP, which operates similar facilities in Washington, Alaska, Hawaii, Montana and Idaho, have established two 10 Gbps connections to Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) and Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2).


When a national network of ocean observatories begins streaming environmental sensor data in March 2012, researchers will be able to access storage and computing clouds operated by Amazon Web Services.


"The ability to use cost-effective cloud services to store and process large amounts of data is vital for researchers in many of the most active areas of research," says CENIC President and CEO Jim Dolgonas. "Collaborative research is dependent on the ability to share, and seamlessly access and manipulate data. With these new peering connections to Amazon Web Services, both the CENIC and PNWGP communities can obtain maximum speed and benefit from AWS cloud services."


Members of CENIC include the California K-12 system, all 114 campuses of California's Community Colleges, all 23 campuses of the California State University, all 10 campuses of the University of California, and prestigious private universities including Caltech, USC, Stanford, and others. With this type of fiber-optic path connecting California's research and educational institutions, data exchanges can take place in a fraction of a second -- enabling research and collaboration previously within the realm of science fiction.


Among the first users to benefit from access to Amazon Web Services will be researchers participating in the National Science Foundation-funded Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI) Cyberinfrastructure (CI) project. The University of California, San Diego is building the information technology and telecommunications infrastructure that will bring ocean and atmospheric sensor data from the observatories and make them available to environmental researchers around the country and throughout the world. Research teams in California will have the option to do their storage and computing on their own machines, or remotely on Amazon S3 or Amazon EC2.


Both UW and UC San Diego are involved in the $400 million Ocean Observatories Initiative, and its Cyberinfrastructure group -- led by Scripps Institution of Oceanography and based in the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2) -- determined that cloud computing and remote storage would reduce the need for capital expenditures.
http://www.cenic.orghttp://www.calit2.net

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Akamai Reports Traffic Peaks during World Cup

Akamai reported that global interest in this year's World Cup was over 2X higher than the 2006 event, as demonstrated by Akamai's Net Usage Index for News, which registered a peak of more than 20 million visitors per minute on June 24th, compared to a peak of 8 million visitors per minute during the 2006 World Cup.


For this year's World Cup, Akamai delivered live and on-demand Web content and streaming for 24 global broadcasters into 65 countries during the month-long World Cup championships. Customers included ESPN, Prisacom, Televisa, TV2 and TV4. Some highlights:

On ESPN3.com, matches were viewed by 7.4 million unique viewers

• ESPN.com's front page, which prominently featured World Cup news, video and scores, saw 304 million visits and 663 million page views


• Swiss IPTV portal wilmaa.com saw its traffic more than double during peak times and supported more than 100,000 additional viewers during the event


• sf.tv provided live and on-demand streams of all matches in Switzerland and at peak times registered up to 35,000 concurrent streams, a sf.tv streaming record.

http://www.akamai.com

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Subaru Adds Mobile Wi-Fi Access to its Crossover SUV

Subaru has begun offering an optional Wi-Fi
connectivity capability in its 2011 Outback crossover SUV model. The new Subaru Mobile Internet system connects to a 3G network and creates a Wi-Fi hotspot inside the Outback giving internet access to 10 or more users for up to 150 feet around the vehicle. The Wi-Fi capability is designed for passenger access while the Outback is in motion.


Subaru Mobile Internet technology is provided by Autonet Mobile, which is an in-car Internet service provider. The Wi-Fi service can be added as a port or dealer-installed accessory to any 2011 Subaru Outback for an MSRP of $499, plus a $35 activation fee. A one-year subscription at $29 per month is required.
http://www.subaru.com

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Panda Security Grows its Cloud/SaaS Business

Panda Security launched version 5.04.50 of its Panda Cloud Office Protection, a cloud-based security solution for business endpoints. One of the new features is a heuristics technology for preventing infections from unknown malware, allowing it to block threats even if the user is offline at the time of detection, or if the malware strain is new. Panda Cloud Office Protection is also now compatible with Office 2010, as well as its capacity to scan email messages stored in Windows Live Mail.


Panda said its new heuristic engine not only classifies files as suspicious, but also as malware or goodware, minimizing the risk of false positives. It also contains a small signature file that includes data about active malware every day, making protection more efficient with less impact on the user's PC. In addition, signature file updates are truly automatic requiring no administrative intervention to deploy and implement them across every workstation on the network.http://cloudprotection.pandasecurity.com

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