Wednesday, July 7, 2010

Extraordinary growth likely for Ruckus Wireless in enterprise and service provider Wi-Fi markets

SUNNYVALE, USA: Ruckus Wireless said that it gained top share in outdoor mesh AP unit shipment to service providers and was ranked the fastest growing wireless LAN (WLAN) company in 2009, according to the latest industry reports from Dell'Oro Group and Gartner respectively.

New WLAN research from DellOro Group, a leading industry analysis company, shows Ruckus Wireless as the worldwide leader in unit shipments of Wi-Fi mesh access points to service providers, garnering 41 percent of the market in the fourth quarter of 2009 and 57 percent in the first quarter of 2010.

In its most recent WLAN report entitled "Market Share Analysis: Enterprise Wireless LAN Equipment, Worldwide, 2009", Gartner ranked Ruckus Wireless as the top performing WLAN vendor worldwide for 2009 based on its new relative industry performance ranking benchmark.

"Having just entered the outdoor Wi-Fi service provider market in July, 2009, Ruckus Wireless has demonstrated growth that we rarely see," said Brian Modoff, managing director and senior telecommunications analyst at Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc.

"This is largely attributed to the combination of three attributes: low cost and trimmed down outdoor product packages, sophisticated radio technology that increases reliability and range and the boost of 802.11n in outdoor Wi-Fi capacity."

The DellOro Group analysis noted that the resurgence of outdoor wireless LANs within the service provider market is being driven by factors including:

* Growth in client devices with Wi-Fi capabilities,
* Continued build-out of WLAN infrastructure to provide end users access to (Internet) data, anywhere, anytime,
* Increasing offerings of free Wi-Fi access by service providers to maintain subscriber loyalty and provide opportunity to offload cellular data traffic, and
* Adoption of outdoor Wi-Fi mesh infrastructure by service providers to offer broadband access in locations where traditional wired access is not feasible or affordable.

"Operators and enterprises of all sizes are rushing to offer better wireless coverage and faster data speeds to keep up with users' insatiable demand for mobile internet access," said Selina Lo, president and CEO of Ruckus Wireless.

"The fact that we have been able to attain a dominant position over competitors with much longer tenures in this market is a testament to our Smart Wi-Fi innovations and to the market's appetite for easier, better and more affordable Wi-Fi that can be adapted to a variety of infrastructural applications."

Ruckus Wireless has developed a "smarter" approach to Wi-Fi that employs patented dynamic beamforming technology, interference rejection techniques and adaptive signal controls to deliver wireless range and performance never before available to Wi-Fi operators.

Ruckus Ranks Highest in Gartner's New Relative Industry Performance Benchmark
To more accurately measure WLAN vendor performance while taking into account relative performance in specific product segments, Gartner has introduced the relative industry performance benchmark (RIP).

Gartner's RIP benchmark provides added insight into market momentum not always found in simple market share rankings. Gartner RIP scores were calculated by factoring 2008/2009 "normal" revenue change (if revenue growth by segment would have followed the market average revenue growth) against actual revenue growth.

Analyzing the top 10 WLAN vendors, Gartner ranked Ruckus Wireless as the number one vendor in this benchmark with a year over year growth rate in excess of 105 percent.
"Enterprise wireless remains a hot segment as the mobile Internet takes off, and Ruckus has clearly benefitted by having a highly differentiated solution," said Lo.

"Enterprises are also looking to deliver users new levels of reliable connectivity and signal range as they look to make Wi-Fi the primary method of connectivity. We are pleased that Gartner has looked beyond conventional market share rankings and taken an innovative approach to better measuring vendor performance in this space."

Renewable energy to power 4.5 percent of mobile base stations by 2014

BOULDER, USA: As an ever increasing number of people around the world become connected by mobile communications networks, the challenges to providing electricity to these expanding networks are becoming greater as well.

In particular, developing countries are seeing unprecedented growth in wireless subscribers, however many of the base stations in these areas are in remote locales that have limited or no access to grid power.

Renewable energy from solar panels and small wind turbines offers a viable alternative to diesel generators in these remote off-grid sites, and a new report from Pike Research forecasts that renewable energy will power 4.5 percent of the world’s mobile base stations by 2014, up from just 0.11 percent in 2010.

In developing countries, the percentage will be even higher – the cleantech market intelligence firm forecasts that 8 percent of base stations in those regions will utilize renewable power by 2014.

“Energy is one of the top expense items for mobile network operators,” says managing director Clint Wheelock. “As solar and wind equipment become more cost-effective in the next few years, renewable energy will be an increasingly attractive option for base station power, in combination with batteries and fuel cells.”

Wheelock adds that the economics of renewable energy are already favorable in remote off-grid areas where the fully-loaded cost of delivering diesel to generators is high.

Pike Research’s analysis also shows that mobile network infrastructure equipment is rapidly becoming more energy-efficient, owing to a series of initiatives by equipment vendors and network operators.

The firm believes that lower base station power requirements will make it even easier to integrate renewable energy into mobile networks. In the process, the global wireless industry will have a significant opportunity to reduce carbon emissions associated with network operations.

Tuesday, July 6, 2010

WiFi to bring mobile TV to masses with revenues reaching $7 billion by 2015

HAMPSHIRE, UK: A new report published by Juniper Research has found that a surge in applications which can take advantage of the increasing availability of free WiFi services are set to boost a mobile TV industry with anticipated revenues of nearly $7 billion by 2015.

According to the report, mobile TV traffic over WiFi is expected to increase by 25x over the 2010-2015 period as streamed service penetration and usage levels – also fuelled by consumer smartphone adoption – rise sharply. However, the report notes that despite the capacity relief that WiFi offers to cellular networks, greater mobile TV usage will still place the 3G and 3.5G networks under stress.

Dr Windsor Holden, report author, pointed out: “Cellular networks are finding it increasingly difficult to deliver high quality mobile TV services at times of peak usage: thus, the World Cup has posed particular problems with large spikes in viewing figures. WiFi can ameliorate this in the short term, but this is only a partial remedy.”

The report suggests that while the deployment of LTE networks should reduce congestion, the use of unpaired spectrum – as in the forthcoming IMB trials by Vodafone, Orange and O2 – might be an alternative or complementary solution.

However, Juniper is less sanguine about the prospects for dedicated mobile broadcast technologies such as DVB-H, citing the availability of handsets capable of receiving analogue or digital terrestrial signals, the economic downturn and changing consumer viewing habits among the reasons why such networks are widely perceived as being financially unviable.

Operators need to grow profitably in long run

PADERBORN, GERMANY: In the past, operators could easily grow through local market penetration and mergers and acquisitions to enlarge their subscriber base. As these means of growth do no longer exist, operators need to focus on other areas in order to achieve higher revenues and bigger margins.

One way to do this is to capitalize on the huge increase in data services without increasing network costs. The second is the ability to identify their customers and to provide customized offerings. The third and most important one is to lead and drive other industries to get onto the machine-to-machine platform.

Orga Systems supports operators in strategically defining this future path, rather than letting them search for new ways themselves.

Squeeze between increasing network costs and decreasing data revenues
The challenge operators have to face is that they cannot constantly keep increasing their network costs. Since in a couple of years' time, network costs will not be able to pay any more for the revenues coming from data, operators need to rely on dynamic real-time policy management.

In the past, policy management has been seen as dissatisfactory for the customer because operators have been decreasing the bandwidth for one customer and increasing it for another. To avoid this feeling in the future, operators will have to differentiate the type of service or SLA for specific customers at a specific time.

Unique bandwidth management solution
To avoid dissatisfaction for the customer, operators cannot just reduce the speed for a specific customer and provide it to another customer. They need to offer to their affected customers the ability to increase their speed.

Orga Systems provides an integrated solution where operators are able to enforce the quality and speed of service through the network to a specific customer based on tariff. The solution also gives "slowed-down" customers the ability to do online charging in real-time. This way they can top-up online immediately on their mobiles if they wish to download a movie or YouTube clip, not at the expense of high-end customers. Then they would get immediate access to that bandwidth again.

This integration between the network and IT, provided by Orga Systems, is unique.

Broadband, video, and mobile services fuel residential services market

CAMPBELL, USA: Market research firm Infonetics Research has released excerpts from its Residential Voice, Data, and Video Services in North America market share and forecast report.

Diane Myers, Infonetics Research's directing analyst for service provider VoIP and IMS, advises: "The residential services market is in rapid transition. The decline of traditional fixed-line voice service and the rise of broadband access, video, and mobile data is speeding up. PC-based mobile broadband subscribers will surpass all other types of Internet access subscribers by 2013.

"If telecom operators aren't able to provide competitive mobile services, they will be at a significant disadvantage. Now that residential voice and Internet services are no longer tied to a physical household, operators can (and should) customize services for individual members of a household and compete on a nationwide basis versus a specific fixed territory."

Market highlights
* The residential services market in North America, which comprises voice, video, and Internet access services, held steady during the economic downturn, maintaining $240 billion in 2009

* Service provider revenue from voice services (including VoIP and mobile voice) decreased 5 percent in 2009, while broadband access and video service revenue increased 5 percent and 6 percent, respectively.

* Infonetics Research forecasts the North American residential voice, video and Internet access services market to grow to $271 billion by 2014.

* Broadband access is the true growth engine for residential services, with annual revenue for North American service providers expected to grow at a 13 percent CAGR from 2009 to 2014, driven by both fixed and mobile broadband solutions.

* In 2009, 70 percent of all North American voice subscribers were mobile; by 2014, that number will grow as an increasing number of consumers go mobile-only.

* 55 percent of all residential mobile subscribers in North America are customers of either AT&T or Verizon.

* The battle between cable operators and satellite providers for video services continues, with the dominating cable operators losing some revenue market share to satellite (DBS) and telco IPTV providers in 2009.

* Comcast leads in North American residential video service revenue share, and DirecTV and Dish Network jumped ahead of Time Warner Cable in 2009

* Video services represent significant future revenue for service providers, but it comes at a high cost of programming and lower margins than voice services.

Monday, July 5, 2010

Global IPTV service revenue to grow to $46 billion by 2014

DUBLIN, IRELAND: Research and Markets has announced the addition of the "IPTV Global Forecast 2010 to 2014 - Semiannual IPTV Global Forecast Report" report to its offering.

The report breaks down the IPTV ecosystem into nine industry segments: DSL Subscribers, IPTV Subscribers, Access Systems, Video Headend Encoders, Video-on-Demand Server Software, Set-top Boxes, Middleware, Content Protection/Digital Rights Management (CP/DRM), and System Integration and Professional Services.

In addition, this report splits the market into four regions around the world: Europe, Asia, North America and Rest of World, and also provides a global market summary. To do this, the report identifies over 800 Service Providers worldwide offering IPTV services. The number of companies has increased since the last report, since more Service Providers have launched services in the last six months or announced new trials.

This data is frequently refreshed to ensure that duplicates are removed and that the most up-to-date numbers are used. The new forecast indicates that the number of global IPTV subscribers will grow from 41.2 million at the end of 2010 to 101.7 million in 2014, a compound annual growth rate of 25.3 percent.

As for service revenue, the global IPTV market is $17.5 billion in 2010 and is forecasted to grow to $46 billion in 2014, a CAGR of 27 percent. By 2014, Europe and North America will generate a larger share of the global revenue, due to very low ARPUs in China and India, the fastest growing (and ultimately, the biggest markets) in Asia.

Executive summary
The new report from MRG reveals global annual growth of IPTV subscribers of 25 percent CAGR in 2010-2014. Despite economic hardship in some countries, robust broadband and IPTV investments drive growth as a means to meet and outperform cable and satellite competition.

IPTV operators are using fiber in high-competition markets and advanced DSL such as channel bonding and VDSL2 in other (less competitive) markets. In this way, Telcos can discreetly improve their IPTV bandwidth capacity to sub-markets that need upgrades without overspending in markets that dont require immediate upgrading.

The Eastern European IPTV market is moving quickly to early maturity, while ROW markets shows faster gains than other regions. As late as 2007, Eastern Europe had only a few IPTV trials or startups. Now, there are 16 fully operating IPTV operators and another three to six in trial, says Jose Alvear, MRG Analyst.

These operators continue to grow their service base, due mainly to the fact that they have much greater technical and creative control over their service than their cable competition does. Of the 102 million IPTV subscribers in 2014, Europe will maintain 45 percent of the global market, Asia 31 percent, North America 19 percent and ROW about 5 percent. IPTV operators are using discreet upgrades to match and surpass cable competition.

High ARPUs still favor Europe and US IPTV markets, with largest service and systems revenues also coming from these regions. Of the specific CapEx items tracked by the report, expenditures will grow from $3.1 billion in 2010 to $5.1 billion in 2014, and service revenue will grow from $17.5 billion to $46 billion. Over 50 companies are profiled from emerging markets. Despite the obstacles, by 2014, at least 23 SPs (mostly in China and Europe) will have exceeded the million-subscriber mark.

Also, while STBs make up over 70 percent of the CapEx expenditures, expect integrated hybrid, IPTV, and OTT STBs (including connected TVs or I-STBs embedded in TV Sets) to account for increasing portions of that CapEx growth. An estimated 125 percent additional CapEx growth is related to backbone, NID/gateway and VOD Encoder sales not tracked in this report.

In the North American markets, all eyes have recently turned to Verizon and AT&T, each adding about 1 million subscribers in 2009. Since Verizon stopped signing new franchise agreements outside its existing footprint, speculation is growing that Verizon will switch from its QAM/IPTV architecture to an all IPTV (fiber-based) architecture for future franchises in 2011.

Meantime AT&T, with no such technical constraints, is free to use a discreet upgrade approach to growing bandwidth using a mix of advanced DSL or FTTX as needed. Furthermore, its continued success with new Apple productsdespite network slowdownscontinues to drive new revenues its way.

Saturday, July 3, 2010

L&T Infotech joins Open Handset Alliance (OHA)

EDISON, USA & MUMBAI, INDIA: T Infotech, a wholly owned subsidiary of Larsen & Toubro, has joined the Open Handset Alliance (OHA).

The OHA is perhaps best known for its work in the development of Android(TM), the first open and free Mobile Platform. A partnership of more than 65 global mobile industry leaders, the OHA is focused on accelerating innovation in mobile technology and offering consumers a unique, simplified, less expensive and better mobile experience.

L&T Infotech is a leading provider of IT and engineering services offerings, solutions and Intellectual Property components in the telecom domain. Providing services to handset OEMs, ODMs, telecom service providers, and platform vendors, L&T Infotech's services portfolio includes platform and application development, middleware solutions, device testing, and support services.

L&T Infotech's expertise has been instrumental throughout various Android releases, most notably in assisting handset OEMs to launch their Android-based devices in a quickened time span. L&T Infotech has also demonstrated solutions on various convergent and entertainment devices, enabling the rapid proliferation of Android into multiple device segments. By developing value-adding enterprise solutions, L&T Infotech has become a strong advocate for the Android Platform to become the platform of choice for the enterprise segment.

"We are very excited to join the OHA," said Sudip Banerjee, CEO of L&T Infotech. "We have a very strong engineering team that adds value to our clients in the Telecom domain on a continuous basis. By joining OHA, we will continue to demonstrate our focus and commitment towards the Android platform."