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Alcatel-Lucent Acquires OpenPlug, Extending its Application Enablement Strategy
Alcatel-Lucent has acquired OpenPlug,

a software developer specializing in tools for mobile applications, for an undisclosed sum. The deal extends Alcatel-Lucent's Application Enablement strategy, which is focused on combining the trusted and secure network capabilities of service providers with the speed and innovation of the Web to provide a richer end-user experience. By building a robust application-enablement system, Alcatel-Lucent said it is aiming to transform service provider infrastructure by unlocking network resources and functionality and thereby creating new revenue share models. OpenPlug, which is based in Sophia Antipolis, France, provides tools for converting application code into software that runs natively on any leading mobile device operating system, including Apple's iOS, Android, Symbian, Windows Mobile, and Linux. The company's ELIPS Studio is essentially an open software environment that lets developers create an application once and then deploy to multiple mobile phone OSes.

Alcatel-Lucent plans to integrate the OpenPlug toolset into its own Developer Platform and Open API Service, thus broadening the functionality available to service providers, enterprises and developers for the exposure of network assets and the rapid introduction of new services across mobile and Web domains.

"Being able to provide more applications across multiple devices helps service providers significantly broaden their app store content to create more value for consumers," said Laura Merling, vice president of Alcatel-Lucent's global developer strategy. "As service providers typically offer multiple mobile devices to their subscriber base, the OpenPlug software can help them get to market five times faster by allowing them to easily port an application to all of their devices. And this isn't purely a mobile play -- the software can be extended to support application development for IPTV set top boxes, game consoles, even the ng Connect LTE Connected Car."

"Deploying valuable web and mobile services requires assembling many different pieces from many horizons," said Eric Baissus, CEO of OpenPlug. "By combining OpenPlug's ELIPS Suite and ELIPS Studio technologies with Alcatel-Lucent's platforms and API services, we enable developers and service providers to gather all these pieces in a very efficient and consistent way. This will dramatically facilitate the deployment and the monetization of the new generation of applications that the market is expecting."

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NSN Partners with Telef�nica on Smartphone Experience Lab
The future lies in "smart networks for smart devices" said Rajeev Suri, CEO of Nokia Siemens Networks, speaking at the 24th annual Spanish telecoms summit in Santander, Spain. To help chard this future, NSN will create a "Smartphone Experience Lab" based in Telef�nica premises in Madrid. The lab is investigating ideal configurations between mobile handsets, applications and networks to minimize any negative network impact from smart devices, improve resource consumption as well as better handset and application performance, and to ultimately provide people with the best possible user experience. The outcomes from the Lab's activities will include guidelines on the optimum network and handset configurations and application development.

"Networks need to transform - now - to cope with the huge amounts of signalling and data traffic smart devices generate. Our approach is the only one that can cope with this explosion, while preparing operators for the fast-approaching roll-out of Long Term Evolution (LTE) networks," said Rajeev Suri.

Suri also confirmed that private equity firms have expressed interest investing in the company. Suri said reflects a turnaround underway at the company.

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	ZTE Selected by Telenor Hungary for 2G/3G/LTE Telenor ASA has awarded a EUR200 million contract to ZTE to build a network in Hungary. The rollout of a 2G/3G/LTE network is contingent upon the economic and regulatory environment in Hungary. ZTE plans to deploy 6,000 base stations throughout Hungary and the contract will run for five years.... > More

Clearwire Sells WiMAX Operations in Ireland to Imagine
Imagine Communications Group

has acquired Clearwire's Irish operations. As part of the transaction, Clearwire will become a minority shareholder and will nominate a representative to Imagine's board of directors. Other specific financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

Imagine gained 50mHz of spectrum when purchasing Irish Broadband in 2008, added more spectrum in a Comreg process

in 2009, and with Clearwire Ireland Limited's spectrum now has over 120mHz of crucial 3.4/3.6mHz spectrum. Following the Clearwire transaction, Imagine will have nearly 400 high sites nationwide to facilitate the rapid roll out of the WiMax network.

Imagine expects that the WiMax network will cover 90 percent of Ireland within two years, with prices undercutting Eircom by 50 percent.

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Vodafone to Make its Location based Services Software Open Source
Vodafone Group announced plans to make its location based services software open source.

The company said its aim is to offer other organisations the opportunity to use a code base which has been developed over the past decade so that they can build new and innovative navigation products which widen choice for consumers.
b "Given our decision to stop developing turn by turn location based services as part of our core business, it seemed an obvious choice to make the code we own open source" said Pieter Knook, Director of Internet Services at Vodafone Group. "We look forward to seeing its continued use in all sorts of different applications in the future."

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Roke Develops 3G Wide Area Coverage Femtocell
Roke Manor Research announced a small form factor 3G Wide Area Coverage Femtocell with a 40km range. The product supports up to twelve simultaneous users, with Release 5 HSDPA, and a software upgrade to Release 6 HSUPA. It is based on picoChip's silicon.

Roke said its solution could be used to cost-effectively serve sparsely-populated rural areas that are conventionally thought of as uneconomic, or to quickly deploy cellular coverage, for example as 'instant infrastructure' to help emergency services after a natural disaster.

Prasid Shah, Business Sector Manager at Roke, said: "Previously the best range femtocell technology could deliver was two kilometres, useful for wireless services on a campus, but uneconomic for network operators that would have to deploy large numbers in order to fill signal black holes in the countryside."

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Sagem Wireless and ST-Ericsson Partner on LTE
ST-Ericsson

and Sagem Wireless are collaborating on the development of multimode LTE/HSPA+ reference designs, devices and modules. Specifically, the companies are working on a multimode platform, which can connect to LTE, HSPA+, 3G and GSM networks, to develop a mobile broadband modem to be launched before the end of 2010.

Supporting downlink speeds of up to 100 Mbps via LTE and 21 Mbps via HSPA+, Sagem Wireless' dongle modems will enable Internet Gateways to offer ultra high speed wireless access. Sagem Wireless also plans to use the multimode platform to produce versatile modules that can bring high-speed mobile connectivity to laptops, netbooks, tablet computers, machine-to-machine (M2M) applications and other devices.

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Nokia Sells Wireless Modem Business to Renesas
Renesas Electronics will acquire Nokia's wireless modem business for approximately USD 200 million. The companies are also forming an alliance for long-term joint research cooperation on HSPA+, LTE and future radio technologies.

The wireless modem business to be transferred to Renesas Electronics includes Nokia's wireless modem technologies for LTE, HSPA and GSM standards, which have been used for billions of handsets in the global market over the years. Further, Nokia transfers Renesas Electronics certain patents related to the transferred technology asset. The planned transfer would also include approximately 1,100 Nokia R&D professionals, the vast majority of whom are located in Finland, India, the UK and Denmark.

Renesas said the acquisition of Nokia's wireless modem business complements its own line-up of application processors, RF transceiver ICs, high power amplifiers, and power management devices, making it one of the leading chipset vendors in the 3G and LTE market that is capable of providing one-stop mobile platform solution.

"The agreement with Nokia demonstrates our long-standing commitment to shape the future of advanced mobile platforms and will serve as an important step for us to become a leading mobile platform vendor in the global market. Our collaboration with Nokia will enable consumers to enjoy true mobile cloud computing experiences through our advanced high-speed mobile devices," said Yasushi Akao, President of Renesas Electronics Corporation. "In line with our ongoing efforts to strengthen our business structure, the transferring wireless modem technology and the innovation power and expertise of Nokia's employees will perfectly complement our core competences and serve as the key driving forces in growing our mobile business in the global market."

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Nokia Mobile Solutions -- The fightback starts now
One day after beginning his new job as head of Nokia Mobile Solutions,

Anssi Vanjoki acknowledged that the company is a challenger now and that it has a real fight on its hands. In a blog entry, Vanjoki writes that the first battle will be to deliver products and services that the consumer wants to own and use. Symbian and MeeGo will form the backbone of Nokia Mobile Solutions.

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NSN and Nokia Test LTE in 800 MHz Digital Dividend Spectrum
Nokia Siemens Networks and Nokia conducted the first end-to-end LTE data call with Nokia Siemens Networks' commercial equipment on the 800 MHz frequency band. The tests, conducted at NSN's LTE Center of Competence in Espoo, Finland, follow the company's commencement of production of LTE-ready Flexi Multiradio Base Stations for the 800 MHz band in April this year, and complement earlier tests with Nokia on the 2100 MHz and 2600 MHz bands.

During the test, the two companies demonstrated the end-to-end interoperability of Nokia Siemens Networks' LTE network infrastructure with Nokia's LTE-capable multi-mode multi-band Internet Modem RD-3. Infrastructure from Nokia Siemens Networks includes its Single RAN, featuring the Flexi Multiradio Base Station, the Evolved Packet Core comprising Flexi NS (Network Server) and Flexi NG (Network Gateway), and standard-compliant software.

Nokia Siemens Networks expects that LTE in the 800MHz will be attractive due to its propagation capabilities, which makes its suitable for deployment even in rural areas.

The 800 MHz spectrum, which is popularly known as the Digital Dividend, is becoming available as terrestrial TV moves from analog to digital broadcasting.

"These tests are part of a larger campaign which includes various customer trials and demonstrations to make LTE on 800 MHz commercially viable by this summer," added Reino Tammela, head of LTE business line, Nokia Siemens Networks. "Right after the first Digital Dividend spectrum was assigned to operators in the spectrum auction in Germany in May, it was important that standard compliant LTE network products and LTE user devices for this band become commercially available. This will enable successful rapid LTE network rollouts allowing end users to experience high speed and high quality mobile broadband services in rural areas with a large variety of terminals."

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Nokia Siemens Networks Develops Self-Organizing Tool for LTE Networks
Nokia Siemens Networks has developed its SON (Self Organizing Networks) capability for LTE networks. SON bypasses time-consuming manual processes in network set-up and operations. This includes automatic network configuration for handover processes, balancing mobile traffic load and minimizing the need for drive tests.

Nokia Siemens Networks' LTE SON offering is based on a hybrid concept of both centralized and localized SON mechanisms. The company said operators will benefit from faster time-to-market with operations relieved from error-prone and time-consuming manual processes. First LTE features of the Nokia Siemens Networks SON suite, which also supports GSM and WCDMA networks, are already available in the market for commercial use.

"LTE is the future of mobile network technology. We understand the strong potential it holds in redefining connectivity and revolutionizing information exchange between users across the world while on the go," said Thorsten Robrecht, head of LTE product management, Nokia Siemens Networks. "In keeping with our commitment to fuel the growth of LTE, our LTE functionality as part of the SON suite complements an already strong portfolio, enabling operators to cost-efficiently improve network quality for delivering seamless and fast connections."

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Finland's Elisa Tests LTE with NSN with 100 Mbps Downlink
Elisa, a leading Finnish communications service provider, is testing an LTE network in partnership with Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN). Elisa's pre-commercial network operates in a small area in Helsinki. The companies report mobile connections of up to 100 Mbps.

NSN notes that Elisa continues to invest in the coverage and speed of its 3G network to match the growth in the use of mobile broadband. According to a recent survey Elisa's 3G network has the widest coverage in Finland and it offers the highest data rates. The current development will enable the use of high-speed video services with mobile devices in the future. In addition, easy real-time use of the Internet with the phone will substantially improve the user experience of the customers.

"Elisa's 4G network and cooperation with Nokia Siemens Networks enable the development of new services utilizing higher data rates. Services will be available to the public when the availability of LTE terminal devices increases. Our investment in both the current 3G network and preparation for the new technology benefit our customers most. At the moment, the mobile broadband services in our 3G network cover a very large geographic area, even at speeds of 15 Mbps," says Timo Katajisto, Executive Vice President, Production, at Elisa.

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Nokia Siemens Networks Integrates TD-LTE into Mobile Portfolio
Nokia Siemens Networks is now including TD-LTE within its mobile portfolio of base stations and core networks. The company also showcased the industry's first concurrent TD-SCDMA and TD-LTE demo.

The co-existence of the two technologies is a significant step towards facilitating operators' transition to TD-LTE and was conducted on Nokia Siemens Networks' Flexi Multiradio Base Station. Specifically, Nokia Siemens Networks' Single RAN solution supports LTE in the paired and unpaired spectrum on the same Flexi Multiradio Base Station. The TD-LTE variant is fully compliant with 3GPP Release 8 LTE specifications. In addition, the common platform ensures easy maintenance and rapid evolution to future standards such as LTE-Advanced.

NSN said the abundance of available unpaired spectrum in many countries across the world will enable operators to make a quick transition to TD-LTE mobile broadband.

"TD-LTE is an evolutionary path for 3G TD-SCDMA and WiMAX networks, as well as an option for operators around the world who have available unpaired spectrum. The shift from TD-SCDMA and WiMAX to TD-LTE, will be a gradual process, thereby making it important that the two technologies co-exist with each other," said Thorsten Robrecht, head of LTE product management, Nokia Siemens Networks. "This achievement marks a solid step towards seamless evolution to TD-LTE and will enable operators to quickly move to the technology."

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Juniper Research: Mobile VoIP users to exceed 100 million by 2012
Mobile VoIP services will develop significantly faster in developed markets due to the direct correlation between 3G roll outs and the take up of mobile VoIP, according to a new report from Juniper Research. The consultancy predicts that revenues from the circuit switched voice market will continue to diminish over the next five years, although this will not accelerate. Juniper Research advises that alliances between mobile VoIP players and traditional operators may provide the best option for today's incumbent operators to address the advent of mobile VoIP.

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Nokia Siemens Networks Publishes Wireless Access Energy Efficiency Rating
The measured power consumption of Nokia Siemens Networks' Flexi EDGE Base Station

in a typical configuration, with three sectors and four carriers per sector, averages 978 watts in a basic mode of operation. With software energy saving features, high performance can be maintained but power consumption can be reduced to 833 watts. In some instances this can be further reduced to 562 watts with a reduced configuration of two, instead of four, carriers per sector. Energy efficiency is critical as around 90 percent of the energy consumption of a cellular network comes from base stations.

These ratings conform to new technical specifications published by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI). A key aim of this technical specification was to define reference base station configurations and load levels so that everyone in the industry can measure base station power consumption in a similar way. The specification takes into account different measurement conditions such as temperature, pressure and humidity.

Nokia Siemens Network said it is the first vendor to report wireless access network energy efficiency according to the ETSI specification

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Nokia and Yahoo! Form Global Strategic Alliance
Yahoo! and Nokia announced a worldwide strategic alliance aimed at integrating their e-mail, instant messaging and maps and navigation services on both PC and mobile devices. Select, co-branded service offerings are expected to become available from the second half of 2010, with global availability expected in 2011.

Under the deal, Nokia will be the exclusive, global provider of Yahoo!'s maps and navigation services, integrating Ovi Maps across Yahoo! properties, branded as "powered by Ovi." Yahoo! will become the exclusive, global provider of Nokia's Ovi Mail and Ovi Chat services branded as "Ovi Mail / Ovi Chat powered by Yahoo!". In addition, the companies will establish ID federation between their services, beginning by making it easy for people to use their Ovi user IDs across select Yahoo! properties to more easily access online content and services.

Some notable statistics:

Nokia shipped 432M mobile devices during 2009,that's 14 devices every second and 68M were smartphones
Every day, 1.2B people use a Nokia device
Yahoo! has 586M+ unique visitors globally, reaching 48% of the online population
In the US, Yahoo! is the second most visited site online with 4.4 billion visits and an average of 28.4 visits per user per month
OviMail has more than 9M users and is available in more than 20 languages, while Yahoo! Mail has 283.6 million unique users worldwide.

"Delivering great user experiences -- both online and on your mobile - is what this alliance is all about," said Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, CEO, Nokia. "We're enabling millions of Yahoo! customers in key markets including North America to discover the unique capabilities that Ovi Maps brings. Similarly, Yahoo!'s online expertise will bring exciting mail and messaging enhancements to millions of Ovi Mail customers across almost every country around the world, many of whom will have their first Internet experience on their mobile."

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Russia's Sky Link Upgrades with Alcatel-Lucent's 3G/CDMA2000 1x-EVDO Rev B
Sky Link, the largest CDMA operator in Russia

and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), has selected Alcatel-Lucent to introduce 3G/CDMA2000 1x-EVDO Revision B radio access functionality in its network. As part of the agreement Sky Link is also planning to upgrade currently operating EV-DO network in Moscow, St. Petersburg and Krasnodar. Due to be deployed in 2010, Alcatel-Lucent will equip the mobile operator's existing CDMA base stations with the newest EV-DO Revision B technology. Financial terms were not disclosed.

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NSN: HSPA/LTE Costs Can Be Below EUR3 per GB per Month
Even without voice services, mobile broadband operators can keep their monthly capital and operating expenditure to EUR 3 per subscriber and profitably provide up to 5 GB of data per month for every subscriber, according to a new techno-economic study published by Nokia Siemens Networks. The study examines the costs and opportunities of using HSPA and LTE radio technology in existing sites and by using spectrum on multiple frequency bands.

Nokia Siemens Networks also found that the higher the mobile broadband penetration, the lower the cost of delivering a gigabyte of data per subscriber.

"While the data boom is finally upon us, the viability of the business has eluded most -- operators have become increasingly preoccupied with the associated high costs of data delivery versus the lag in expected revenues," said Marc Rouanne, head of Network Systems, Nokia Siemens Networks. "Our study proves that success in mobile broadband can deliver efficiencies -- radio access networks can enable sustainable, cost-efficient broadband offerings to subscribers by leveraging existing base station sites to their fullest capacity."

The NSN study makes a number of assumptions. First, traffic is never equally distributed between sites -- typically during a busy hour 50% of the traffic is carried by 15% of the cells -- the majority of cells remain underutilized. Adding more users can in effect lead to a more equal traffic distribution between sites and a more profitable use of available capacity.

Further, since traffic distribution is not equal between subscribers -- 20% of the subscribers take more than 80% of the bandwidth -- network efficiency can be greatly improved by balancing the traffic. For example, radio capacity can be boosted by deploying additional macro sites in hot spots, using 6-sector configurations, applying QoS differentiation, and by offloading traffic in highly populated areas.

The study observes that CAPEX + OPEX per subscriber are relatively high when the subscriber density is low. Similarly, the cost of delivering a GB of data is highly dependent on the network utilization. If total data use is high, either due to a high number of subscribers or to high use per subscriber, the cost per GB can be below EUR1.

The study finds that operating expenditure (OPEX) as the main component in an operator's cost base and that the largest contributors to OPEX are backhaul transport, site rental, network maintenance and electricity. Costs not considered in the calculations include customer acquisition and marketing.

"The key to maximizing profit from the network will depend upon the accuracy of upgrading capacity of the existing HSPA network vis-�-vis deploying a LTE network," added Tommi Uitto, head of Network Systems product management, Nokia Siemens Networks. "Our Flexi Multiradio Base Station with software-based evolution will allow operators to efficiently and simultaneously build high capacity on multiple bands with GSM, HSPA and LTE radio access technology, proving to be a huge differentiator and success factor."

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Aepona Raises US$10 Million for Mobile NaaS
Aepona, a software company based in Belfast, announced US$10 million in new funding to support its "Network as a Service" (NaaS) engine for mobile operators. The technology enables collaboration between mobile operators and application providers.

Aepona's solution enables the mobile operator to monetize important assets and functionality within its network - such as billing, location, messaging and voice communications. It can expose and share these assets as Web Service APIs, for third-party application developers, enterprises and media companies to incorporate into new and existing mobile-enabled applications.

Aepona said its customers include more than 20 Tier One mobile operators around the world. The company has also worked on the GSM Association's OneAPI initiative and on the launch of the Canadian OneAPI commercial service, which is at the forefront of the Mobile Cloud Computing market.

BlackBerry Partners Fund, a Toronto-based global fund focused on applications, services and supporting infrastructure for mobile platforms, led the investment round and was joined by existing Aepona investors Amadeus Capital Partners, Polaris Ventures, Innovacom, Nordic Venture Partners and Sutter Hill Ventures.

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Telenor to Deploy Telcordia Next Generation OSS
Telenor has selected Telcordia's Next Generation Operations Support Systems (NGOSS) to support the replacement and operation of its entire mobile broadband services infrastructure, spanning 2G, 3G/UMTS and 4G/LTE technologies in Norway. The program is Telenor's largest-ever upgrade of its mobile network.

In November 2009, Telenor announced a six-year program to replace its entire mobile services infrastructure in Norway with equipment provided by Huawei and Starent Networks.

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euNetworks Extends Low-Latency Net from London to Frankfurt

02-Sep-10

BT Launches SIP Trunking Option

02-Sep-10

Alcatel-Lucent Acquires OpenPlug, Extending its Application Enablement Strategy

01-Sep-10

euNetworks Builds Low-Latency Trading Net in London

01-Sep-10

Occam Networks Signs Greek Reseller

31-Aug-10

NSN Partners with Telefónica on Smartphone Experience Lab