Two new members for LiMo Foundation

LONDON, UK & TOKYO, JAPAN: LiMo Foundation, a global consortium of mobile industry leaders, announced the addition of two new members to its ranks: Immersion Corp. and KDDI Corp.

Representing true innovation within their respective markets, these newest members are indicative of the broad cross-industry endorsement that LiMo’s collaborative device platform has earned.

“The intersection of next-generation technologies and advanced mobile communications continues to deepen,” said Morgan Gillis, executive director of LiMo Foundation.

“Frontier technologies once limited only to personal computers are increasingly finding their way onto today’s handsets. Garnering the support of two market leaders with long-standing legacies of disruptive innovation is a testament to LiMo’s pre-eminent position in the mobile ecosystem. We welcome their participation, knowledge, and experience.”

Both of LiMo’s new members bring with them considerable market-proven expertise. With approximately 30 million subscribers, KDDI is Japan’s second-largest wireless operator.

KDDI joins LiMo members NTT DOCOMO and Softbank –- the country’s number one and number three operators -– for a combined addressable market of more than 100 million Japanese subscribers.

New LiMo member Immersion is a recognized leader in the development of advanced haptic technologies for mobile communications, consumer electronics, gaming, and manufacturing. An integral component in mobile touch screen applications, haptic technologies are emerging as a key driver in the mobile marketplace, with touch screen revenues expected to jump to $9B USD by 2015 according to NPD Group.

Immersion's technology improves efficiency and intuitiveness by providing confirmation of touch screen presses and adds depth and fun to content such as ringtones, videos, games, and music.

LiMo Foundation was launched in January 2007 by mobile industry leaders to provide the mobile industry with an open, consistent Mobile Linux-based handset OS, enabling the development of immersive, next-generation mobile consumer experiences.

LiMo’s membership includes mobile industry leaders from around the world, including leading OEMs that have brought 42 LiMo-compliant handsets to market and 12 global network operators representing nearly one billion mobile subscribers.

$3.3bn to be spent on LTE base stations in 2011

NEW YORK, USA: Wireless operators will spend about $3.3 billion building LTE (Long Term Evolution) base stations in 2011, according to the most recent study of LTE from ABI Research.

That expenditure will have purchased some 142,000 base stations worldwide. LTE base station equipment spending is expected to rise sharply between 2011and the end of 2012.

“Vendors will be shipping base station equipment in significant quantities in 2010 ahead of limited trials that typically last about a year, followed by full commercial launches,” says senior analyst Nadine Manjaro.

“Many operators have been talking about re-use of existing equipment, but ABI Research understands that while there may be sharing of masts and cabinets most of those 142,000 base stations will have completely new baseband and RF components, because operators will generally try to keep the new LTE networks separate from their legacy networks.”

ABI Research vice president Jake Saunders also points out that, “Due to LTE’s propagation characteristics and higher frequencies, operators will eventually have to deploy extra sites to iron out gaps in coverage.”

That is good news for base station equipment vendors. Some contracts have already been announced: as noted previously, Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson, and Starent are the winners of a major set of contracts from Verizon Wireless.

In Japan, NTT-DOCOMO, in addition to tapping the world’s largest network infrastructure supplier, Ericsson, is also supporting local vendors NEC and Fujitsu.

TeliaSonera has chosen Ericsson and Huawei, while its fellow Scandinavian operators Tele2 and Telenor are also thought likely to settle on Huawei, which is proving a formidable competitor.

“There may be a new opportunity here for Nokia Siemens Networks,” notes Manjaro. “Nortel was early to market with LTE base station equipment, but its bankruptcy preempted that market push. With NSN’s acquisition of Nortel’s LTE assets, it is well placed to benefit from that early market presence.”

NextWave announces strategic alliance between PacketVideo, NTT DOCOMO

SAN DIEGO, USA: NextWave Wireless Inc. announced that DOCOMO has acquired a 35 percent equity stake in its subsidiary PacketVideo, a pioneer in wireless and digital home multimedia software and service applications, for $45.5 million.

Net proceeds from the transaction will be applied to redeem a portion of NextWave’s Senior Secured Notes, due July 2010.

As part of the transaction, DOCOMO was granted certain rights in the event of future transfers of PacketVideo stock or assets, preemptive rights in the event of certain issuances of PacketVideo stock, and a call option exercisable under certain conditions to purchase the remaining shares of PacketVideo at an appraised value.

In addition, DOCOMO will have certain governance and consent rights applicable to the operations of PacketVideo. In order to facilitate the DOCOMO investment, NextWave’s noteholders provided certain waivers, including a release of PacketVideo’s guaranty of NextWave indebtedness.

Mobile broadband evolution maintains 24 percent rise in data revenues in 2008

UK: Over 15 percent of revenues generated by mobile operators globally came from non-voice services in 2008. According to the latest data made available by Informa Telecoms & Media’s World Cellular Data Metrics report, actual revenues comprising data services, reached $188.7bn in 2008, representing a 24 percent year-on-year increase.

“This is an important finding” commented Informa Telecoms & Media principal analyst, Nick Jotischky, “as non-voice services are becoming a central plank to mobile operator strategies at a time of increasingly high penetration rates, low voice tariffs and intense competition. Not only can data services help to keep the offerings of mobile operators more relevant and distinct from their competitors, but they can also help to raise ARPU levels and generate new customers.”

Looked at regionally, there is a considerable disparity in the significance of non-voice revenues –- at the top end, just over a fifth of the total $192.8bn revenues generated by mobile operators in North America in 2008 comes now from non-voice services as opposed to 5% of the $71.1bn revenues from mobile operators in Africa.

The majority of the $188.7bn of non-voice revenues are still SMS-based, but at the end of 2008, $75.1bn (40 percent) of this revenue was from non-SMS services. The deployment of advanced technologies (such as HSPA) and the growing demand for data-optimised devices such as Apple’s iPhone have helped to accelerate the level of non-SMS spend.

The advance of mobile broadband has been a key feature of the telecom industry in the past year with Informa putting the total number of subscriptions at 178.2m at the end of 2008. This represents extraordinary growth given that Verizon, the largest operator in terms of mobile broadband subscriber numbers (24.245m), only registered its first such subscribers at the end of 2004.

Given that it took the best part of 15 years to register the first 178m mobile subscribers globally, this represents a rapid evolution path for mobile broadband.

There are some warning signs, however, for the global mobile industry. There appears to have been a slowdown in data revenues reported by operators during the fourth quarter of 2008. Whilst, some of this can be explained away by currency fluctuations, there is a question over whether the global economic downturn has left its mark.

“Globally, data revenues remained flat in the fourth quarter at just below $49bn”, Jotischky comments, “and the fear is that global macroeconomic conditions have had an impact on discretionary consumer spend, and especially in North America and parts of Europe. If this trend continues into 2009, there is a real danger that any slowdown in non-voice usage will have an impact on mobile operator business strategies.”

Informa also publishes for the first time information on broadcast mobile TV networks. By the end of 2008, there were 26 live networks in deployment with the total number of subscribers reaching 27.718m at the end of 2008, of which over 21m subscribed to Japan’s 1Seg network, available on NTT DoCoMo, KDDI and Softbank networks.

India announces 3G spectrum, MNP guidelines

Finally, the wait's over! The Indian government today announced the guidelines for 3G (third-generation mobile communications) spectrum as well as mobile number portability (MNP).

First, all players -- Indian and global -- have been invited to bid for 3G spectrum, making it a truly level-playing field. The condition for a foreign player or telecom operator is that it should have some experience in running 3G telecom services.

Those interested to know more about the guidelines for auction and allottment of spectrum for 3G telecom services, can download the documents from DoT's site.

Apparently, the 3G guidelines allow 10 players in the Indian 3G space, including both Indian and foreign players.

Spectrum in the 2.1GHz band would be available for the 3G telecom services through bidding/auction. Spectrum shall be auctioned in blocks of 2x5MHz in the 2.1GHz band. As per the DoT guidelines, the number of blocks to be auctioned may vary from five to 10, subject to the availability in different telecom service areas. Should there be non-availability, the number of blocks may be less than five in a telecom service area.

The MNP allows mobile phone users/subscribers to change their operators, while retaining their mobile phone numbers.

As per the DoT guidelines, a customer can approach a 'recipient operator' to port his or her number. The 'donor operator' cannot re-use that customer's ported number till such time the ported number is in use. The donor operator can only have the ported number once it has been surrendered by the ported customer.

Well, both of these announcements are going to add to India's brilliant telecom success story.

As for the foreign players coming into the country, quite a few are already present. It would be great to see the likes of NTT DoCoMo, SK Telecom, China Telecom, China Mobile, Telefonica, etc., enter the 3G space in India. As for 3G technology itself, TD-SCDMA, HSPA, etc., should be considered as well.

Oh yes, there's some good news for those itching to use the Apple iPhone 3G. Once, the 3G networks are in place, there's nothing that can stop this from happening.

On the MNP front, a good majority of Indian subscribers are on prepaid. So, there may be quite a few changeovers happening! It could well prove to be a nightmare for the operators, but then, that's the fun of having a level-playing field and the challenge of playing in the booming Indian telecom market.

Postscrpt: A reader, Abhshek, left a very interesting and relevant comment regarding 3G services that users could be charged heftily. I quite agree with him! The 3G operators would need to price their services right. It should be win-win for both operators and users.

To start off, service charges could possibly be on the higher side, as the 3G licenses won't come cheap, and operators would also look at the revenue angle. However, over time, service charges are quite likely to come down, if the pattern of the Indian telecom history is repeated. Many thanks for your comment, Abhishek.

The Internet is going mobile!

This title of this blog has actually been borrowed from a statement made by Gadi Singer, vice president of Intel's Mobility Group and general manager of the company's SOC Enabling Group, which I came across on SEMI's site.

Is this a recent phenomena, or has the Apple iPhone led to a strong belief in this statement that the Internet is truly going mobile? And what was that craze for 'WAP bashing' some nine to ten years ago all about? Perhaps, it is a bit of both!

I was fortunate enough to use a WAP-enabled mobile phone back in Hong Kong, in 1999-2000, a Siemens model. I tried checking my Yahoo Mail on the phone with some success. Also, I found it very convenient to search for Indian restaurants in Tsim Sha Tsui. All of this, when the 'WAP bashing' was at its peak!

In 2001, at an event organized by Frost & Sullivan in Singapore, I was probably among the three people in a large audience found to be using the mobile phone for Internet access. This is so long back, that even I can't recall for sure how many folks were really found to be using mobile Internet! Anyhow! Those were also the days when mobile Internet, as a theme, was quite popular at global telecom events, largely driven by the craze for NTT DoCoMo's i-mode phones.

Well, no one really wanted to accept back then that the Internet was going mobile! Also, the flak that some of the European carriers had to take due to their obtaining various 'quite expensive' 3G licenses dimmed the concept of the mobile Internet.

We have come a long way since! While GPRS and 3G did bring some or quite large extent of the Internet to the mobile, possibly, the push really happened when this phenomena called social networking gathered steam.

The Apple iPhone, and now, the iPhone 3G, with its cool wireless social networking applications have truly ported the Internet to the mobile. The iPhone 3G is all the rage right now. Sales crossed the 1-million mark within three days, as per various reports on the Internet. That's some speed! That's also an outstanding indication of how people are making a dash for the phenomena called wireless social networking.

In the midst of all of this, 3G, and specifically, HSDPA (and W-CDMA), has come really come to stay. The telecom-media convergence has also happened very seamlessly in the background.

While the world's leading semiconductor firms continue to churn out one excellent chip after another, especially for mobile phones/telecom, it is time to acknowledge the fact that the Internet has truly gone mobile!

One last word. Do find time to stand up and applaud the hard work put in by the semiconductor and software industry, who make all of this happen.

Memories of ITU Telecom Asia

My love affair with telecom began way back in the late 1980s, when C-DoT was just getting in prominence, and there were some talks about introducing mobile phones in the country. Telecom has come a long way since.

Not many large telecom shows were held at that time, and I certainly did not get a chance to attend a real 'telecom' show till I managed to participate at the ITU's Telecom Asia in Hong Kong, only in 2000. Since then, it's been fun attending the ITU Telecom shows, be it Hong Kong or Geneva. Of course, there was CommunicAsia in neighboring Singapore, but it was always my desire to be part of an ITU show.

This year's ITU Telecom Asia will be held in Bangkok, Thailand, a really great place to visit. Here's a picture with my colleagues from Global Sources -- Alfred Cheng, John Ng and Maggie Luo -- during ITU Telecom 2006, (on my birthday, actually) at Hong Kong's sprawling AsiaWorld Expo -- the last ITU Asia show that I had the privilege of attending that chilly December.

I will always remember my first ITU show simply for the WAP (wireless access protocol) phenomena. WAP was just coming into its own during those days, and had to take a lot of flak. There used to be headlines those days, reading, "WAP IS CRAP!" Well, how wrong this turned out to be!

It was also the first show, if I remember correctly, which highlighted mobile Internet for the first time. Satellite communications was still in vogue back in those days. Well, optical networking was also quite strong, with DWDM making the rounds. I remember interviewing Corning during the show!

The Hong Kong ITU show in 2000 was the first time I had a glimpse of Huawei and ZTE close-up, although I did visit the Huawei factory in the middle of 2000, and for the first time saw what 3G base stations looked like. In fact, W-CDMA was just starting to come up. NTT DoCoMo was the hotshot back in late 2000. Its FOMA (freedom of mobile 'multimedia' access) service was just starting to roll in. Of course, those were also the days of the i-mode phones!

The Japanese have been the pioneers in mobile phones and mobile Internet, followed closely by Korea. I believe, the same year, DoCoMo had started trials with SK Telecom in Korea for W-CDMA, for the upcoming World Cup Soccer in Korea and Japan in 2002. Another delight at ITU Telecom Asia 2000 were the range of 3G phones on display, mostly by Japanese companies. Oh yes, broadband was the 'rage'.

The last ITU Telecom Asia in 2006 was vastly different. Alcatel-Lucent had a huge booth! CBoss was gaining ground as a leading billing solutions provider. Not to speak of the exquisite range of mobile phones from Japanese, Korean and Chinese vendors.

Huawei and ZTE had become really huge by the end of 2006, and had started to play a significantly major role in global telecom.

It was my pleasure to discuss the latest DECT standard with Infineon during ITU Telecom Asia 2006, I believe, it was CAT-iq (Cordless Advanced Technology - Internet and Quality). There were several GPS devices as well as booths with mobile payment solutions.

Yes, telecom has come along a very long way! This year's theme -- "New Generation, New Values," aptly sets the theme for ITU Telecom Asia. Let's see what this edition has in store!