Sprint Selects Samsung from its Small Cell Deployments

Samsung Telecommunications America confirmed that it has been selected to help develop Small Cell Network Infrastructure for Sprint’s Network Vision Program.

"Our ongoing work with Sprint’s Network Vision demonstrates Samsung’s commitment to developing custom solutions with our leading carrier customers. This new award will allow Sprint to meet increasing demand for coverage and capacity while consolidating multiple legacy networks and spectrum bands in a single platform,” said Dale Sohn, president of Samsung Mobile. “The deployment of our small cell technology will enhance Sprint’s network and demonstrates the strength of Samsung's infrastructure offering."

"Network Vision is all about improving the network experience for our customers,” said Bob Azzi, senior vice president of network operations for Sprint. “We are excited to expand our relationship with Samsung with their inclusion in the small cell program and provide customers with the cutting edge network they need to keep up with the cutting edge phones Sprint offers." http://www.sprint.com http://www.samsung.com 
06-Aug-12

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Telstra's CAPEX to Sales Ratio at 14.2%

Telstra's revenue for full fiscal year 2012 increased by 1.1%, or AUS $275 million, to $25,368 million. EBITDA increased by 0.8% or $83 million to $10,234 million.

"We have seen two years of significant customer growth as our strategy continues to bear fruit. This has translated into strong financial results despite tough domestic and international economic conditions," Chief Executive Officer David Thodey said today.

Some highlights for the full year:

• The CAPEX to sales ratio was 14.2%, with capital expenditure of $3,591 million
• added 1.6 million domestic mobile customers, to a total of 13.8 million;
• added 203,000 retail fixed broadband customers, to a total of 2.6 million;
• added 336,000 customers on bundled plans, to a total of 1.4 million;
• added 475,000 Hong Kong mobile customers, to a total of 3.5 million.
• Telstra’s 4G network build accelerated during the year and now covers approximately 40% of Australia’s population. Customers have activated more than 375,000 4G devices since launch.
• Telstra’s domestic mobile business generated more than one third of revenue. Telstra has added more than three million new mobile customers over the past two years. Mobile revenue growth of 8.5% was achieved while margins increased by three percentage points to 36%.
• Growth in retail broadband partly offset declines in wholesale revenues, which included the impact of regulatory access determinations. Fixed line revenue decline was steady at 6.1%.

http://www.telstra.com 06-Aug-12

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Samsung Releases Verizon FiOS App

Samsung Electronics America released a FiOS TV app on compatible Samsung Smart TVs and Smart Blu-ray players.

 The app on the Samsung Smart Hub platform lets Verizon’s FiOS TV and FiOS Internet subscribers watch 26 live FiOS TV channels and more than 20,000 FlexView on-demand movies and TV shows on these TVs and blu-ray players without requiring a set-top box.
Channels carried at launch include CNN, MTV, HBO, TBS, TNT, Food Network and HGTV, based on the subscribers’ current FiOS TV package.
The app also offers access to more than 20,000 movie and TV show titles available monthly through FiOS TV’s Flex View, which offers FiOS customers the ability to buy or rent these titles and watch them on the TV, PC or mobile device and now compatible Samsung devices.


http://fios.verizon.com 
http://www.samsung.com 
06-Aug-12

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Motorola Solutions Invests in Fixmo for Security Compliance

Motorola Solutions has made a strategic investment in Fixmo, a start-up offering mobile security, compliance and risk management solutions for the public and private sectors. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Fixmo’s flagship products, Fixmo Sentinel and Fixmo SafeZone, help organizations manage their secure mobile devices, maintain system integrity, protect their corporate data and prove policy compliance.

Fixmo is based in Sterling, Virginia and Toronto, Canada. http://www.motorolasolutions.


com http://www.fixmo.com 06-Aug-12

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Sprint Prices $1.5 Billion in Senior Notes

Sprint Nextel has priced an underwritten public offering of $1.5 billion aggregate principal amount of 7.000% notes due 2020. The sale of the notes is expected to close on August 14, 2012. The company said the proceeds would be used for general corporate purposes, which may include, among other things, redemptions or service requirements of outstanding debt, network expansion and modernization and potential funding of Clearwire. http://www.sprint.com 06-Aug-12

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NTT Com Offers Low Latency Route to Europe Across Russia

NTT Communications has begun offering a dedicated connection between London and Hong Kong using the new TEA-2 cable system, which offers the low-latency route alternative to subsea cables.

NTT Communications is providing European customers with access to the TEA-2 wavelength service.

As part of a broader strategy, this European connection into Hong Kong complements NTT Communications' "Gateway to Asia" offering between Europe, Singapore, Japan and China. And with the launch of the NTT Communications Hong Kong Financial Data Center (FDC) in 2013, the TEA-2 landing site will provide Tier IV ready data center infrastructure with an ultra-low latency network.

John Hammond, VP Business Network Services at NTT Europe, says, "We are always looking at how we can expand our network to give customers greater capacity with newer, faster and more reliable routes but also better value for money. The TEA-2 cable system really does strengthen our capability in Europe." http://www.ntt.co.jp 08-Aug-12

• In May 2011, Russian national carrier Rostelecom and KDDI signed an agreement for upgrade and modification of the Russia-Japan Cable Network (RJCN) and Transit Europe-Asia (TEA) service in order to support 10Gbps wavelength resources between Japan and Europe using shortest route via Russia. The contract for the original project was signed in 2006, with NEC as the primary contractor for portions of the network.

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NTT Com Readies 40G Asia Submarine-cable Express

NTT Communications is ready to start operation on the Asia Submarine-cable Express (ASE), a 40 Gbps, ultra-low latency undersea cable connecting major cities in Asia. At launch, the cable has a carrying capacity of 15 Tbps 7,800 km and has landing points in Japan, the Philippines, Singapore, and Malaysia, and will add Hong Kong in the first quarter of 2013. It incorporates special designs to withstand earthquake and typhoon damage. The system is also upgradeable to 100G channels.
The cable follows the lowest latency route between Japan and Singapore. It will provide direct connections to the Serangoon Data Center in Singapore and later will also connect to the Hong Kong Financial Data Centre. The direct connection enables customers there to use NTT Com’s network, data centers and cloud services on an end-to-end, one-stop basis.

NTT Com is the major investor in the cable system, which has been constructed in cooperation with Malaysia-based Telekom Malaysia, Philippines-based PLDT and Singapore-based StarHub.

On August 20, 2012, NTT Com will begin offering an enhanced global leased line service, by incorporating ASE’s low-latency routes into its existing Arcstar Global Leased Line Service. The newly enhanced service leverages ASE’s Japan-Singapore connection with an industry-leading latency of less than 65 milliseconds latency, more than 3 milliseconds faster than routes via other subsea cables. Existing US-Japan routes also will be used, including the NTT Com’s own PC-1 cable which offers the lowest latency connection between Tokyo and Chicago, home of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. Superior service between Asia and the U.S. is especially attractive for financial enterprises, such as high-frequency trading firms that issue huge numbers of buy/sell orders for financial products and must transmit such information instantaneously.

Also this month, NTT Com will incorporate ASE into the backbone of its Tier-1 global IP network, which directly connects the world’s major internet service providers (ISPs) and content providers, and, in the near future, will do the same for Arcstar Universal One, its scalable, cloud-based network service.  http://www.ntt.co.jp 09-Aug-12

In 2011, NEC and Fujitsu were selected as primary contractors for the Asia Submarine-cable Express system. The manufacture and installation of all submersible plants such as Repeaters, OADM Branching Units and Cables, the Power Feeding Equipment and submersible plant monitoring system was to be implemented by NEC. The manufacture and installation of Submarine Line Terminal Equipment and the Management Controller was designated to Fujitsu.

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AT&T Southeast Reaches Tentative Labor Deal

AT&T Southeast (BellSouth Telecommunications) announced a tentative labor agreement with the Communications Workers of America covering more than 22,000 wireline employees in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee. The contract will be submitted to the CWA's membership for a ratification vote in coming days.

Key provisions include:

• General wage increases in each year of the contract for most employees – 2.25 percent the first year, 2.75 percent the second year, and 3 percent the third year.
• A 1 percent pension band increase in each year of the contract to the banded pension plan enjoyed by most current employees. New hires will continue to receive the Bargained Cash Balance 2 Pension Plan, with a one-time, 1 percent pay credit increase and an 80 percent match in the AT&T Retirement Savings 401(k) Plan.
• Expands to additional employees a guaranteed job offer provision that promises qualified surplused employees a guaranteed job opportunity with AT&T.
• Maintains one of the most robust health care plans in the nation, continuing to cover 100 percent of network preventive care, including such items as annual physicals and well-child care, with modest increases in employee contributions. For example, employees with individual coverage will pay monthly contributions of $38 in the first year of the contract, $58 the second year and $79 the third year of the contract. Employees with family coverage will pay monthly contributions of $81, $121, and $163 over the three years of the agreement. New hires will pay higher contributions. Deductibles for network care will be $500 for individual coverage and $1,000 for family coverage in each year of the contract.

http://www.att.com 08-Aug-12

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Dell'Oro Forecasts LTE Equipment Revenues to 2016

The Mobile Radio Access Network (RAN) LTE equipment market is forecast to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of more than 50 percent over the next five years, according to Dell'Oro Group.

This report also shows that the growth in mobile broadband will eventually offset declining investments in CDMA/GSM/WiMAX. The total Mobile RAN market, macro and public access small cells, is expected to grow at a CAGR of two percent between 2011 and 2016. The public access small cell market is expected to generate significant revenues in the outer years of the forecast period and account for nine percent of all RAN revenues in 2016.

"The success with early adopters in North America, Japan, and South Korea is driving operators around the world to commit to LTE and reap the benefits of improved efficiencies, latencies, throughputs, and to ensure a future-proof roadmap," said Stefan Pongratz, analyst at Dell'Oro Group. "It has been only 18 months since the first large scale commercial deployment of LTE and it is already generating more than 15 percent of total RAN revenues," continued Pongratz http://www.delloro.com 08-Aug-12

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Xilinx Boosts its Zynq-7000 All Programmable SoC to 1 GHz

Xilinx boosted the peak processing performance of its Zynq-7000 All Programmable SoC family to 1 GHz -- a 25% increase over initial specifications for the two largest Zynq-7000 devices.

The Zynq-7000 All Programmable SoCs are the first tightly integrated hardware, software and I/O 'all programmable' devices in the industry. Applications include high-end image and graphic processing applications within the medical, Aerospace and Defense (A&D) markets, as well as computationally intensive systems targeting wired and wireless equipment.

"Using Zynq for our measurement devices gives us an extremely compact physical solution as well as an extremely compact system because software and hardware are closer together than ever before," said Matthias Goetz, hardware project leader at Rohde & Schwarz. "We especially appreciate the great bandwidth performance between the FPGA and industry standard processing sub-system because it accelerates our processing and system development and it allows us to easily move functions from processor to programmable logic when and where needed." http://www.xilinx.com 08-Aug-12

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AT&T and Alere to Deliver Diabetes Monitoring

AT&T is teaming up with Alere Health to deliver "DiabetesManager", an end-to-end mobile health (mHealth) diabetes solution powered by WellDoc that will help adults with type 2 diabetes manage their health and engage with their caregivers.

Alere Health currently provides patient-centered health management for over 290,000 individuals with diabetes in the U.S.

The FDA-cleared DiabetesManager will be targeted for higher risk, higher acuity patients, in contrast to Alere's Mya solution that is designed for lower risk, lower acuity patients. With this new system, patients enter blood glucose readings and medication data into DiabetesManager on their compatible mobile device or the web and receive real-time feedback regarding their blood glucose control and immediate, recommended next step actions. The solution will be integrated with the Alere advanced clinical care management system, Apollo, to provide active, clinically based care management, with live clinicians available 24/7.

"There are hundreds of mHealth diabetes applications in the market today; however, this solution will be one of the first to be fully connected to a clinical system as part of an integrated plan of care," said Mike Cotton, CEO of Alere Health. "It goes beyond providing real-time coaching to the patient and enables the valuable patient information collected to be shared with nurses, case workers and doctors, who can communicate directly with the patient if needed." http://www.att.com http://www.alere.com 08-Aug-12

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Boingo Acquires Cloud Nine for Wi-Fi Hotspot Advertising

Boingo has acquired Cloud Nine Media, which provides Wi-Fi sponsorship and location-based advertising at more than 6,000 airports, hotels, bars and restaurants, and recreational areas in the U.S. and Canada. Financial terms were not disclosed.

The Cloud Nine technology platforms will allow Boingo to deliver 100% share-of-voice sponsored access that can be used across Boingo’s global portfolio of managed Wi-Fi hotspots, including airports, shopping malls, restaurants, stadiums, transportation hubs and metropolitan hotzones that reach more than 1.5 billion people each year. San Francisco-based Cloud Nine Media also brings a team of skilled technologists and ad sales executives to the table, as well as relationships with key venues and advertisers.

"As we’ve expanded our Wi-Fi services into new venue categories, the demand for sponsored access and location based advertising services has grown in parallel,” said David Hagan, president and chief executive officer of Boingo Wireless. "Cloud Nine Media brings a formidable portfolio of tools and talent that will help us take our execution to the next level." http://www.boingo.com 06-Aug-12

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SK Telecom Launches HD Voice over LTE

SK Telecom launched an HD VoLTE service, initially featuring the Samsung Galaxy S3 LTE handset. Customers who already have the handset will be able to download a firmware upgrade later this month. The Galaxy Note 2 will also offer an HD VoLTE capability.

• The premium HD voice service is available at no additional charge.
• The HD voice connection uses 2.2 times the bandwidth of voice over 3G.
• The HD voice call connection time ranges from less than 0.25 to 2.5 seconds. This compares with a mean call connection time of 5 seconds for 3G voice calls, and SK Telecom believes this difference will be apparent to the customer.
• HD VoLTE carries a wide voice frequency range of 50 to 7000 hertz compared to a 3G voice call that typically covers 300 to 2400 hertz. The service uses Enhanced Variable Rate Codec (EVRC).
• SK Telecom is using multi-carrier technology for the 800 MHz (20MHz) and 1.8 GHz (20MHz) frequency bands.

http://www.sktelecom.com/ 07-Aug-12

• Last month, SK Telecom announced plans to commercialize LTE-Advanced in its network during 2013.
  
  SK Telecom, in collaboration with Qualcomm and Nokia Siemens Networks, recently tested a core LTE-Advanced technology called 'Enhanced Inter-Cell Interference Coordination (eICIC) that coordinates signal interference between macro and pico base stations. eICIC is gaining importance as more and more micro base stations are being built in traffic concentrated areas to accommodate explosive data traffic growth, thereby aggravating inter-cell interference.
  
  To demonstrate the technology, SK Telecom, Nokia Siemens Networks and Qualcomm created an environment where the strength of micro base station signals being transmitted to mobile devices was weaker than that of nearby macro base signals, resulting in signal interference. Then, they applied eICIC to prove that it can actually control the interference and stabilize data communications.
  
  The companies also succeeded in showing that the technology is capable of offloading data traffic by adjusting the coverage of micro base stations based on the level of data traffic concentration in macro and micro base stations. As commercial base station equipment has been used for the demonstration, the companies are expecting to achieve early commercialization of eICIC.
  
  SK Telecom noted that it now holds the record of demonstrating the three core technologies needed to usher in the era of LTE-Advanced: eICIC, Coordinated Multi-Point (CoMP) and Carrier Aggregation (CA). The company successfully demonstrated CoMP at Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2011 and CA at MWC 2012.
  
  CoMP is a technology that prevents base station interference and abrupt call disconnections in coverage boundary areas by enhancing signal strength, the lack of which leads to a significant drop in data transmission speed, and CA is a technology that provides twice or faster data rates by utilizing multiple frequency bands at the same time.
  
  SK Telecom expects to commercialize eICIC in the second half of 2013 to control signal interference and effectively offload data in downtown areas that experience heavy data traffic so as to provide customers with a mobile data service with greater speed and stability.
  
  The company commercialized CoMP, for the first time in the world, in January 2012, after adjusting the technology to suit the current LTE system, and plans to achieve early commercialization of CA in the second half of 2013.
  
  The operator will deliver LTE using both existing 800MHz frequency band (20MHz) and the 1.8GHz band (20MHz) it newly acquired last year. With an additional 20MHz uplink/downlink spectrum, it is now using a total of 40MHz for its LTE services. SK Telecom has launched a pilot service for multi-carrier in May 2012 and began full-fledged commercialization on July 1 to ensure a more stable and faster LTE service based on twice wider frequency bandwidth than its competitors. CA realizes data rates of up to 150Mbps by combining the speeds of 800MHz (75Mbps) and 1.8GHz (75Mbps) frequency bands.
  
• In June, SK Telecom commercialized world's first LTE Femtocell to provide stable LTE call quality in underground, buildings and data traffic concentrated areas. With LTE Femtocell, customers can use high speed, premium quality LTE services anywhere, anytime.
  
• In May 2012, Ericsson announced that SK Telecom, South Korea's largest operator, had signed a contract for LG-Ericsson to provide the LTE network including LTE RAN and Evolved Packet Core as well as support services including engineering, design, deployment and support services. The LTE radio access network will make use of Ericsson's Operation Support System for Radio & Core (OSS-RC) and RBS 6000 base stations. The contract, which covers commercial launch of LTE services in some of Korea's major cities - including Busan and Daegu, makes Ericsson one of the operator's main partners. Financial terms were not disclosed.
  
• In January 2012, SK Telecom achieved the world's first commercialization of Advanced-SCAN (Smart Cloud Access Network), an upgraded version of SCAN, which has been developed to enhance LTE speed and coverage. Advanced-SCAN uses virtualization technology to ensure four times better call quality in base station boundary areas, thereby improving the overall LTE coverage and speed.

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Korea's LG U+ Launches VoLTE

Korea's LG U+ announced the launch of commercial VoLTE service.

LG U+ is using AMR-WB (Adaptive Multi Rate Wideband) voice codecs covering the 50MHz ~ 7GHz range.

Call connection times are rated from 0.25 to 2.5 seconds, or up to 20 times faster that 3G call connection times.

LG U+ is using QCI (QoS Class Identifier) ​​technology to ensure voice performance even during traffic spikes on the network.

LG U+ plans VoLTE support for seven different handsets, including the Samsung Galaxy S3 and the LG Optimus II

http://www.upluslte.co.kr/ 

07-Aug-12

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MetroPCS Launches Voice Over LTE Service

MetroPCS officially launched its commercial Voice-over-LTE service. The first sale of a VoLTE-capable handset occurred at one of the company's Dallas/Fort Worth store locations.

The new VoLTE-capable LG Connect 4G Android smartphone is now on sales at select stores across the U.S.. MetroPCS said it will continue to roll out VoLTE services and phones in the coming weeks.

MetroPCS had 9.3 million overall mobile subscribers as of the end of Q2, of which over 700,000 were LTE subscriptions.

With the new VoLTE, voice calls are carried transparently over LTE regardless of the handset or network used on the other end of the call.

"The initial move to LTE and this move to VoLTE allow us to achieve significant spectral efficiencies and will increase network capacity so that we can enhance the 4G LTE experience that our customers have today at a tremendous value. VoLTE also provides a foundational capability for future Rich Communication Services (RCS), which we plan to launch later this year," stated Roger Linquist, chairman and chief executive officer of MetroPCS.

MetroPCS noted that it was the first U.S. carrier to deploy a commercial 4G LTE network in September 2010. So far, the LTE network rollout covers roughly 90 percent of its CDMA footprint. http://www.metropcs.com 07-Aug-12

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Huawei Develops Mobile Apps Analysis Tools

Huawei has developed a series of "Apps Insider" digital tools designed to automatically analyze mobile applications behavior.

Huawei said its solution analyzes, evaluates and ranks mobile applications according to how they impact network performance and user experience, providing suggestions for overall optimization. The goal is to help operators reassign network resources for applications, and to help developers improve the efficiency of their applications to reduce their impact on network performance and user experience. http://www.huawei.com 07-Aug-12

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BroadSoft Acquires Adaption Technologies

BroadSoft has acquired the assets of Texas-based Adaption Technologies Ventures, Ltd., a provider of hosted business VoIP solutions. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Broadcom said the acquisition will enable it to enhance its BroadCloud Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) delivery platform to include BroadWorks features and functionality. Adaption Technologies offered web-based service operating platform that enables telecommunications service providers to more quickly sell, provision, activate and bill for their hosted Unified Communications services.

"Thanks to our cloud technology and infrastructure management experience, many of our customers are confident we can cost-effectively develop, deliver and support their branded Unified Communications services," said Michael Tessler, chief executive officer, BroadSoft. "Adding Adaption Technologies' solutions to our cloud platform will allow our service provider customers to speed time-to-market and accelerate time-to-revenue for their branded Unified Communications solutions." http://www.broadsoft.com 07-Aug-12

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Russian Rocket Failure Dooms Two Satellites

A Russian Breeze-M rocket launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan failed to reach its intended orbit, leading to the loss of two communications satellites: Telkom Indonesia's Telkom-3 satellite and a smaller satellite for the Russian Satellite Communications Company (RSCC).

Roscosmos cited a premature shutdown in the rocket's cruise propulsion system. An investigation is underway.

Telkom Indonesia confirmed that its satellite was fully insured. The Telkom-3 satellite was fully insured. http://www.roscosmos.ru 07-Aug-12

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Vitesse Posts Revenue of $29.7 Million

Vitesse Semiconductor reported quarterly revenue of $30.3 million for its third fiscal quarter, ended 30-June-2012, compared to $29.7 million in the second quarter of fiscal year 2012 and $36.0 million in the third quarter of fiscal year 2011. Net income (GAAP) was $4.7 million.

Product revenues were $25.7 million compared to $27.2 million in the second quarter of fiscal year 2012 and $31.9 million in the third quarter of fiscal year 2011.

"Our vision and operational management continue to deliver, resulting in both operating and net income profitability this quarter,” said Chris Gardner, CEO of Vitesse. “Vitesse’s strategy to leverage our disruptive technology to gain share in the high-growth Carrier and Enterprise networking markets is also working. Innovations such as VeriTime™, our patent-pending distributed timing technology with the industry’s highest accuracy IEEE1588v2 timing, strengthen our market leadership." http://www.vitesse.com 07-Aug-12

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Novatel Wireless Posts Revenue of $102. Million

Novatel Wireless reported Q2 revenue of $ 102.4 million, down from $118.0 for the same period last year. There was a GAAP net loss of $4.5 million. Revenue for mobile products was $92.5 million while revenue for M2M was $9.9 million.

"During the second quarter our financial results were near or above the top of our guidance range for all three key metrics – revenue, non-GAAP gross margin, and non-GAAP EPS," said Peter Leparulo, CEO of Novatel Wireless. "Revenue increased by approximately $2.2 million from the first quarter, to $102.4 million, driven by strong sales of our mobile broadband devices. http://www.novatelwireless.com 07-Aug-12

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