Moving away from unprofitable flat-rates

PADERBORN, GERMANY: The model of flat-rate pricing has operators caught up in low revenues and rising costs.

Orga Systems, #1 choice for real-time charging and billing, provides a unique integration between network and IT for a subscriber management that meets customers' needs and wishes. This is the way to overcome unprofitable pricing models and, at the same time, boost customer satisfaction.

Subscriber management is the way out of unprofitable flat-rates
To move away from unprofitable flat-rate pricing, operators have to identify their customers and their habits: which customer uses which service and at what rate? They should also use all historical data available as a basis for future planning. In addition, they must take into account a new generation of subscribers, those who grew up with internet and mobile.

This generation of subscribers interacts much more with devices than former generations. Therefore operators need to migrate all subscribers to one single platform where they can measure what these customers need. This way they can build a closer relationship to each customer with online real-time offerings based on the individual preferences of each subscriber.

Entering a partnership with content oriented services - finally
Operators understand themselves as providers of a pipe that links their customers to the network. But operators are much more: they can partner with the companies at the other end of the pipe.

Those companies, such as social networks or search engines, rely on the pipe that operators provide to bring their innovations to the customer. Those new applications and services drain the pipe and demand for high speed connections. Thus, a partnership could be mutually beneficial, just like a symbiosis between operators and content oriented services.

Availability of traditional cell sites insufficient to support increasing data demand

MONTREAL, CANADA & SEATTLE, USA: New radio access technology and additional spectrum alone will not provide sufficient additional mobile capacity according to the second issue of the 4Ggear Quarterly Report on 4G Infrastructure trends.

Per-capita mobile data-usage will grow 10,000 percent in the next five years. The growth driven by heavy SmartPhone markets requires carriers adopt new approaches to RAN deployment and management. This is driving increased interest in picocell base stations and innovative backhaul solutions.

"As conventional macrocell approaches fall short, service providers are going to be deploying more RAN equipment to deal with the demand," stated Chad Pralle, lead author of the latest 4GgearTM report. "Vendors will need to provide solutions that enable service providers to do this cost-effectively."

"Self-Organizing Networks will become a necessary component of networks as service providers are forced to increase the number of base stations in their network in the face of comparatively modest revenue growth" said Maravedis Research Director Adlane Fellah.

"The trend to consolidate 4G efforts around 3GPP LTE benefits suppliers, service providers and consumers by reducing confusion in the marketplace, and leads the industry into the growth phase of 4G," stated Robert Syputa, co-author of the report and Senior Advisor at Maravedis Research.

This quarter's select key findings
* Short term WiMAX growth will be driven by mainstream mobile networking, and medium-term growth will be driven by deployments across specific vertical markets requiring fixed/nomadic access Femtocells will decrease in importance in the face of all-IP networks in lieu of WiFi with increased SmartPhone penetration.

* Ericsson and Huawei tie for the number one spot in our ranking of LTE vendors' future potential.

Trapeze Networks unveils affordable 802.11n wireless solution

PLEASANTON, USA: Trapeze Networks, a Belden Brand and leader in enterprise wireless LAN equipment and management software, announced the availability of three new product platforms in its 802.11n solution family – the Mobility Exchange (MX) 800R, a scalable 802.11n wireless networking controller, and the Mobility Point (MP) 522 and 522E, affordable 802.11n indoor and outdoor wireless access points (APs).

According to Gartner Dataquest, 802.11n will account for almost 97 percent of the wireless products shipments by 2014, up from 35 percent in 2009.

"Many Trapeze Networks customers, especially in markets such as healthcare and education, have accelerated their adoption of 802.11n driven by new applications and a foundation of reliable architecture," said Trapeze Networks president Dhrupad Trivedi.

"Trapeze's new product platforms will further support this market transition for our customers and provide an exciting product and solution roadmap. The introduction of these new products breaks the pricing barrier, driving the cost of 802.11n solutions closer to high-end 802.11 a/b/g offerings."

Building on a scalable hardware-based WLAN packet processing architecture, the new MX-800R high-capacity wireless networking controller is an industry first and is specifically designed for mainstream 802.11n applications. The new MX-800R offers these capabilities and benefits:

Control and Provisioning of Wireless Access Points (CAPWAP) – enabled Switching Silicon – hardware-accelerated CAPWAP processing and forwarding.

Line-rate Centralized Switching – three-stream ready for up to 128 dual-radio 802.11n APs with 8Gbps of line-rate wireless switching.

Scalability – capable of handling traffic from 2-stream and 3-stream APs ensuring scalable, long-term deployments.

High Availability – dual power, hitless-failover, link aggregation, controller virtualization and clustering, and self optimizing/self healing.

The new MP-522 and MP-522E high-speed 2x2 MIMO access points advance Trapeze Networks' strategy to offer a family of 802.11n solutions optimized for either high-density deployments or maximum coverage. RingMaster, Trapeze Networks' industry-leading planning and management tool, guarantees an easy and reliable deployment.

The MP-522 has tamper-proof internal antennas for high-density indoor applications and supports granular control of transmit power to suit deployment needs. The Plenum-rated MP-522E has external antenna ports for hybrid indoor/outdoor uses, leverages existing 802.3af Power over Ethernet (PoE), and is ideal for outdoor applications with a climate controlled enclosure and flexible options including a solar panel with PoE.

The MP-522 and 522E are "Green APs" with concurrent dual-radio operation at highest rates within 802.3af PoE power budget and under 9W idle power consumption.

Trapeze Networks' spectrum analysis implementation lets IT departments experience enhanced spectrum analysis benefits due to its integration with Mobility Services in an SLA framework.

Equipped with the latest 2-stream Wi-Fi chipset, Trapeze Networks' MP-522 allows simultaneous or dedicated spectrum scanning and is used as an extension to existing ActiveScan and SentryScan technologies.

More sophisticated channel hopping and interference avoidance strategies driven by policies are capable due to the expansion of WIDS/WIPS capabilities with support for additional signatures including microwave ovens, cordless phones, Bluetooth and radar.

"As Bonita Unified School District users and applications increasingly go mobile, Trapeze Networks' MX-800R 802.11n controller and MP-522 11n access points give us the performance we need today and the ability to grow in the future as we fully transition from 802.11b/g to 802.11n wireless networking products," said Jack Hipp, director of computer information services, Bonita Unified School District, San Dimas/California.

Institut National Langues and Civilisations Orientales, INALCO, the organization for all oriental language learning in Paris, uses Trapeze Networks' new MX-800R.

"As a premier wireless networking integrator, we are as meticulous about selecting the solutions we put in our own network as we are with recommending solutions to our customers," said Thierry Poulain, president directeur general of French system integrator Interdata. "Trapeze Networks' MX-800R is the only 802.11n wireless networking controller we would entrust with our own network and we recommend it to our valued customers."

China VoIP & Digital Telecom Inc. signs first contract with banking industry

JINAN, CHINA: Beijing PowerUnique Technology Co. Ltd (BPUT), one of the wholly-owned subsidiaries of China VoIP & Digital Telecom Inc. has signed a virtualization agreement with CITIC Group (CITIC) in Beijing and will launch its integrated datacenter virtualization solution.

CITIC Group, a large state-owned investment company, was established in 1979 by Ron Yiren, former vice president of China. In 2009, the company had more than $30 billion in revenue.

BPUT will provide CITIC with industry-leading comprehensive datacenter solution technologies. This will help CITIC reduce investment and operating expenses, lowering the total cost of ownership. It will also enhance CITIC's datacenter security and reduce the required number of servers, resulting in higher energy-savings, lower emissions and more environmentally-friendly effects.

"We feel privileged to work with a company of such caliber as the CITIG Group," said Kunwu Li, president and CEO of China VoIP & Digital Telecom.

"CITIC is our first customer in the banking industry. Their trust in us demonstrates our unique position in the virtualization technology market. We designed the integrated virtualization datacenter solution based on CITIC's current needs and by assessing their future plans. The agreement allows us to showcase a successful virtualization solution and to market to other banking customers. We are certainly pleased to see that our solution is proving to be profitable and useful to CITIC."

InterDigital joins Femto Forum

KING OF PRUSSIA, USA: InterDigital Inc. has joined the Femto Forum, the independent industry and operator association that supports femtocell deployment worldwide.

As a full member, InterDigital will contribute to the technical advancement of femtocell products and services through active participation in working groups, standardization initiatives and technical presentations.

InterDigital’s value-added technologies for smart bandwidth management and new services over heterogeneous networks enable:

* Bandwidth and QoS management across any radio access within heterogeneous networks - such as femto and WLAN - including bandwidth segregation and aggregation, and mobility;
* Operator-enabled machine-to-machine (M2M) services, connecting capillary WLAN/WPAN networks to operators’ wide-area networks; and
* Seamless bandwidth-efficient multimedia delivery and mobility across a variety of devices in a connected home or enterprise.

“Femtocells have continually pushed the boundaries of modern cellular radio technology. We are delighted to welcome InterDigital to the Femto Forum and look forward to benefitting from its significant cellular experience,” said Simon Saunders, chairman of the Femto Forum.

“The Forum is chartered to encourage the growth of a partner ecosystem committed to innovation in standards-based network infrastructure and to achieve high levels of collaboration and product interoperability. We look forward to InterDigital’s contributions to the Femto Forum working groups to develop and standardize solutions.”

James J. Nolan, executive VP R&D, InterDigital, said: “The charter of the Femto Forum is well aligned with InterDigital’s vision of tomorrow’s Network of Networks, characterized by the seamless integration of advanced cellular systems with multiple other air interfaces that intelligently and constantly connect people and things across a myriad of wide, local and personal area networks.

“We applaud the Forum’s achievements to date and InterDigital is looking forward to participating in this independent, technology agnostic organization; one that is inclusive of all relevant stakeholders.”

NTT crashes the global IT party

Jens Butler and Mike Sapien (Principal Analyst), Ovum

MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA: Mergers such as NTT’s plans to acquire Dimension Data for $3.2 billion always create an interesting split in opinion, not around the proposed future value but around how the combined organizations will fare as a single entity. Is this a game-changing move that is in line with a new world order of IT and telecoms convergence, or a mismatched reactive marriage prompted by a land grab?

Is it all really about cloud and convergence, or just a land grab?
The parties claim the merger will enable them to “offer new IT services worldwide in the age of cloud computing,” combining NTT’s network and hosting capacity with DiData’s SI capabilities, but will the combined entity be able to create an integrated set of global services offerings to take advantage of this trend?

Given DiData’s substantial footprint and rates of growth, this merger does certainly provide NTT with access to some previously relatively untapped and expanding geographies ($1 billion in revenues in each of Africa, Europe, and ANZ), as well as greatly expanding its network integration, IT, and managed services capabilities. However, the combined entity will still be no more than a buzz within the North American market.

To date, NTT has been noticeably quiet in the global services space and one of the few large, global telcos not to have such a pronounced, global strategy. Then again, maybe it has just watched as its peers have more often than not stumbled in this arena and has waited to pick up the “cheaper” pieces.

What’s in it for DiData? Access to NTT’s extensive hosting capacity, a strong balance sheet to invest in its “cloud” vision, and an end-to-end stack to bring to market. Interestingly, DiData was making progress in transforming itself from a purely Cisco-centric network integrator to a more mainstream, multi-vendor systems integrator. Clarity around the future of this program will be a top priority.

Culture clash
But there are historic warning signs that must be heeded in such a cross-cultural, cross-industry marriage, with the respective HQs so widely separated by miles, time zones, and cultures. Such trysts have not had the greatest success in terms of globalizing, integrating, and delivering a common vision: Fujitsu’s acquisitions (e.g. ICL & Amdahl) and NTT’s Verio acquisition highlight the difficulties in creating such an integrated entity.

And with a history of less than successful telco acquisitions of services organizations (Telstra/Kaz, KPN/Getronics), it does raise the question of whether the cultures of “big pipes/product/incumbent sales” can combine with a “consultative/dynamic/solution approach” to create the craved-for market success.

Unless the respective management teams align at the top, the resulting merged company could well be governed by the “slowest” common denominator of decision-making and drive minimal innovation beyond competitive reactions. The resulting culture clash may also be the major hurdle that can hinder any significant synergistic benefits.

A lot of competitors and partners will be watching this one eagerly
Is NTT buying into these “closer to the client, on-premise” capabilities to create an end-to-end capability or is this to gain access to DiData’s top-tier Cisco integrator relationship and thus enhance its procurement leverage (and volumes) in CPE-related deals?

Such a deal has a wide-reaching impact across industries and geographies and ensures a large set of critical eyes will follow the progress closely, so any integration needs to be well planned and executed.

The disparate cultures conundrum will be a substantial barrier (but not insurmountable), and will need to be considered in line with the potential impact on DiData’s ecosystem of relationships with SIs, equipment manufacturers, and other telcos, globally and locally.

NTT is procuring far more than geographic footprint, enhanced capabilities, and a successful and growing business; it is gaining direct access to customers through a more mature and embedded relationship model.

Seventy percent of all mobile devices to be baseband modem enabled by 2014

SCOTTSDALE, USA: The transition to 4G communication standards has begun, but transition will be slow, reports In-Stat. One indication of the sluggish pace: Only 3.6 percent of mobile devices with baseband connectivity will be using 4G standards in 2014, according to an In-Stat forecast. This is the case even though existing 3G networks are being stressed by data traffic that is increasing at exponential levels.

"Much higher percentages of computing and mobile consumer electronics (CE) devices will feature integrated baseband modems over the next few years," says Jim McGregor, In-Stat analyst. "Unfortunately, few will have 4G capability. The transition to 4G wireless technologies is challenged by multiple wireless standards, limited spectrum availability, constricting business models, and other market and industry issues."

Recent In-Stat research found:
* About 2 billion mobile devices out of a total of 2.8 billion will ship with baseband modem technology in 2014.
* Despite the early lead of WiMAX, LTE is expected to account for 61.2 percent of 4G-enabled mobile devices in 2014.
* Smartphones and computing devices are the only devices expected to transition to 4G technologies over the next five years. Handsets and mobile CE devices will remain on 2G/3G networks because of lower performance, cost, and power requirements.