The E398s-81, a USB dongle from Huawei Technologies, became the first TD-LTE device to achieve GCF Certification during September 2011. The device, which has been certified for use in Band 38 (2570-2620 MHz), is being used in the large scale trials of TD-LTE technology that are currently being conducted in China.

GCF, the Global Certification Forum, announced the extension of GCF Certification to TD-LTE for devices operating in Band 38 in July 2011. Certification for FD-LTE devices operating at 700 MHz (Band 13) and 800 MHz (Band 20) was introduced in December 2010 and extended to 2100 MHz (Band 1) and 2600 MHz (Band 7) in April of this year. Further bands will be brought within the scheme to reflect the variety of spectrum allocations that have been released for LTE in different parts of the world.

GCF Certification provides confidence that new devices are compliant with relevant standards and interoperable with other devices and network infrastructure systems irrespective of the vendors.

The availability of certified devices is an important milestone in the development of new mobile technologies such as TD-LTE. The first GCF-Certified FD-LTE devices, for the 800 MHz ŒEuropean Digital Dividend¹ band, were announced in April.

Led by China Mobile, GCF¹s work on TD-LTE has involved a broad coalition of GCF members including handset manufacturers, test equipment vendors, test labs and operators from around the world.

³The first certification for a TD-LTE device is a positive sign of the speed with which this important technology is maturing,³ said Adriana Nugter, Operations Manager of GCF.

“The certification of the E398s-81 is a testament to Huawei¹s support for TD-LTE,² said Mr. Shimin Wu, President of MBB Product Line, Huawei Device. ³The availability of a GCF-Certified device demonstrates that TD-LTE is rapidly approaching the point at which trials can give way to mass-market deployments.²

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Sunnyvale, Calif. – May 17, 2011 – A live demonstration this week at TIA 2011 in Dallas, Texas will showcase how the Alcatel-Lucent 7750 Service Router (SR) Mobile Gateway performs under the most demanding conditions in a 4G/LTE environment while maintaining the highest Quality of Service (QoS), even for bandwidth intensive video applications. Using Landslide on Spirent TestCenter, Alcatel-Lucent will show how the 7750 SR Mobile Gateway supports millions of active mobile broadband subscribers, each with multiple data connections. Landslide on Spirent TestCenter is the industry’s only test platform that combines real world subscriber behavior and mobile broadband traffic to evaluate wireless core packet network performance.

The demonstration features high scalability and performance with sustained aggregate throughput in excess of 180 Gbps, which is the equivalent of more than 250,000 simultaneous and individual iPad/iPhone quality Netflix streams. Even in this demanding network scenario, Alcatel-Lucent reaches the highest publicly-demonstrated throughput achieved to date.

“These tests show the 7750 Service Router’s ability to handle speed, high-throughput and connectivity challenges under an assortment of real-world cases.” said Kevin Macaluso, vice president and general manager of the Service Router product group within Alcatel-Lucent. “This is critical in allowing our service provider customers to understand that our solution will help to not only address their needs today, but also as video applications become even more pervasive. LTE and other 4G technologies require a powerful platform for testing and Spirent’s Landslide was the principal tool we used in the lab that helped us to validate the performance of our router in the role of a mobile gateway.”

This public demonstration will showcase the highest subscriber traffic aggregate speeds while supporting 1.5 million active mobile devices and three million default and dedicated data connections. It will use two Alcatel-Lucent 7750 SRs configured as an LTE Serving gateway (SGW) and a Packet Data Network (PDN) gateway, and will emphasize the way this solution performs under the most demanding real world conditions.

The Landslide on Spirent TestCenter solution provides a comprehensive end-to-end offering that emulates millions of mobile data subscribers, simultaneously accessing the wireless network using various access models. It tests all of the key wireless core elements, and combines control plane and data plane simulation. This provides real-world emulation of millions of mobile nodes in various stages of activation, deactivation, and hand-off between cells, all while transmitting and receiving real-world application data over an AnyG mobile network.

“This testing builds on our long relationship with Alcatel-Lucent, allowing this leading mobile infrastructure provider to deliver products that live up to the promise of next-generation networks.” said Jeff Schmitz, vice president, Networks & Applications group at Spirent. “As a leader in next-generation mobile infrastructure testing, Spirent’s ability to scale up to millions of data connections at line rate enables Alcatel-Lucent to gain a detailed awareness of subscriber scalability and data performance.”

The Alcatel-Lucent 7750 Service Router integrates the scalability, resiliency, and predictability of MPLS along with the bandwidth and economics of Ethernet and a broad selection of high-speed (100 Gbps) and legacy interfaces, to enable a converged network infrastructure for the delivery of next-generation services. The platform’s advanced and comprehensive feature set enables it to be deployed as the aggregation router in mobile backhaul applications or as a mobile gateway for wireless networks.

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By Bill Bulkeley, Cisco

When the third Harry Potter book appeared in 1999, one of the startling bits of wizardry at Hogwarts was a magical map that labeled people walking around the school and showed hidden passages and how to get into them.

Today, the wizards developing apps for smart phones are doing similar things with augmented reality.

AR, as it is known, is a technique for enhancing the real world with digital information automatically delivered to a viewing screen. A classic example: in televised football games, the digitally-created yellow line that shows how far the ball carrier needs to rush to get a first down.  The real scene is augmented by digital information.

First generation AR on smart-phones was similar to GPS map systems that could identify gas stations, pizza parlors or parking garages in the vicinity of the car. Now, creators are taking advantage of a phone’s camera systems to create more advanced capabilities.

Peter Marx vice president of Business Development and Digital Studio at cellphone technology developer Qualcomm recently wrote on his blog that using the camera image provides “a new type of interactivity which lets developers, publishers, advertisers and others create surprising and compelling experiences which had until now not been possible.”

Bewildered by a store-front sign in Buenos Aires? Fire up a $4.99 iPhone app called Word Lens , aim the camera at the sign, and you’ll get an instant translation.   It can be very handy for understanding menus.

The creators of the Lonely Planet guidebook series have embraced AR for digital guidebooks. A traveler with a Lonely Planet app and an Android phone can open the camera, frame a streetscape, and see practical information and useful tips about the sites in the viewfinder. The guides cover 25 cities from Boston to Barcelona to Hong Kong for $4.99 each.

Some people are more intrigued with augmenting reality themselves. Sander Veenhof, an Amsterdam-based artist, says he uses AR software from Netherlands-based Layar to get his work “hung” in museums “that are not very accessible,” like New York’s Museum of Modern Art.  He creates virtual reality sculptures for particular sites, and tells followers to go to the selected site and call up the art work while the smart-phone camera shows the museum walls or ceiling as background. Veenhof has also created a work called Biggar that he claims is the world’s largest virtual reality piece. The ever growing infinite series of squares expands to fill the sky.

MIT professor Patti Maes, one of the pioneers of AR, sometimes refers to it as a “sixth sense.” A company called Broadcastr.com is trying to go her one better by creating verbal AR. Broadcastr lets individuals and companies dictate stories about places, institutions and stores.  The stories are linked to particular addresses. When someone with the Broadcastr app on his or her phone sees a highlight near them on a map on the smart phone, they can click on the spot and hear the story.  Much of the content is whimsical, but travel guide Fodor’s offers spoken information on neighborhoods in New York and San Francisco.

The next phase of augmented reality is likely to make it more personal.  At the recent Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, one of the most talked about products was a cell phone app developed by Viewdle, a Palo Alto-based maker of facial recognition technology.  Using Viewdle, a cell phone owner can take pictures of any of 20 people stored in its memory, and the phone will automatically tag them for uploading to Facebook.

The just-released Version 3.0 of the location-based application Foursquare, includes an “Explore” tab that lets a user type in what he’s looking for and then returns a list of nearby recommendations based on how many “check-ins” the site has received from the user’s friends and from all Foursquare users .

Tablets may be the next big market for augmented reality.  While the first iPad didn’t have a camera and was a little awkward for using on the move, newer tablets are lighter. Some like the seven-inch business-oriented Cisco Cius also have a smaller form factor.

With a bigger screen, augmented reality on a tablet could be “more intense,” says Amsterdam artist Veenhof.

The wizards at Hogwarts would undoubtedly agree.

The contents or opinions in this feature are independent and do not necessarily represent the views of Cisco. They are offered in an effort to encourage continuing conversations on a broad range of innovative, technology subjects. We welcome your comments and engagement.

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Mobile location technology is playing a new role in the evolution of emergency roadside assistance, thanks to an innovative location-based solution developed by AT&T and Road America, a leading roadside assistance service provider.

Previously, most drivers needed to have GPS units installed in their cars to be located in the event of an accident or roadside breakdown, but a new solution offered by Road America is bringing this important safety feature to any basic cell, landline or smartphone on any network.

Using AT&T Location Information Services, Road America has developed LocateMe Service® to help capture vehicle breakdown locations for customers calling from any wireless or landline communications device. This innovative, cross-carrier offering helps drastically improve the speed, accuracy and efficiency of locating a customer’s disabled vehicle through the same telecommunications device used to call Road America’s 24-hour Response Centers. In addition, the network-based location solution prevents users from needing to download applications or use a specific platform in order to be located.

“When developing this solution our goal was simple: find a way to quickly and accurately locate disabled vehicles by using the technology drivers often already have on them – cell phones – and we needed to be able to do it regardless of which carrier they were on,” said Dennis Fantis, president of Road America. “We teamed up with AT&T to create this revolutionary offering so we are now better equipped to respond to emergency assistance calls with greater reliability and speed, ultimately enhancing our ability to keep customers safe on the road.”

AT&T Location Information Services are designed to provide AT&T’s enterprise customer base with a highly reliable, operationally managed service where network-based location information can be obtained for wireless or landline communication devices and corporate assets. This service is intended to take advantage of AT&T’s cloud capabilities in order to improve operational efficiencies, increase customer satisfaction and control costs for a variety of industries such as financial services, retail, healthcare, education, travel and hospitality and manufacturing.

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AT&T and T-Mobile USA plan to file paperwork about their planned merger with the Federal Communications Commission next week. “We plan to file our public interest statement at the FCC around April 21,” AT&T’s Michael Balmoris said in an email on Thursday.

AT&T’s $39 billion bid to buy Deutsche Telekom AG’s T-Mobile USA will also be reviewed by the Justice Department to ensure it does not violate antitrust law. The request for the Justice Department review was filed last Friday.

The FCC will review the proposed deal to ensure it is in the public interest. The review process could easily take a year.

The deal would concentrate 80 percent of U.S. wireless contract customers in just two companies — AT&T/T-Mobile and Verizon Wireless, a joint venture of Verizon Communications and Vodafone Group Plc. AT&T, currently the No. 2 U.S. mobile carrier behind Verizon, has said the merger will spur innovation and economic growth by improving quality and expanding wireless service to 95 percent of Americans.

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International telecoms companies have been surprisingly resilient in the face of the global economic crisis. Nonetheless, operators must reshape their businesses and put the customer first in order to retain customer loyalty and brand trust, according to at least one industry expert.

“The customer is king, more so than they’ve ever been before,” says Michael Lawrey, Executive Director of Network and Technology at Melbourne-headquartered telecoms and media giant Telstra, before adding that his industry could take lessons from the way in which banks and the airlines have approached the thorny issue of customer experience.

“If you have a look at customer service, the reward programs and the way they get customers to stick to their brand, I think there’s a lot the telco industry could learn from those industries,” he says. For example, in recent years airlines have improved their websites to facilitate ticket changing, cancellations, rebooking, alternative payment options, frequent flyer redemptions and online shopping; meanwhile, virtually all large air carriers have comprehensive loyalty or frequent flyer programs.

More importantly, they also have the IT systems in place to support them. Indeed, it is the use of advanced customer analytics and segmentation in both the banking and airline industries that enables in-depth analysis of trends and consumer behaviour data, which in turn can yield information leading to more sophisticated and individualised marketing contacts with customers as part of a comprehensive CRM program.

The telecoms sector could certainly benefit from such analytics in order to better identify customer opportunities. “Whether it’s analysis of customer payloads or forecasting money trends, these industries have done a great job at using analytics,” says Lawrey. “Rather than try and reinvent it for ourselves, I think we need to pick up some of the types of business analytics used successfully elsewhere and wash them through our own industry. Everything we do has to have the customer in mind; if we fail there, then I think we’re a failed cause as a provider.”

He believes that as customer expectations change, telcos need to develop different methodologies for delivering services in order to keep up. Why? “Because things today move at a much faster pace,” he explains. “If you’re truly going to move in a media, application-driven environment, you’re talking about development timescales of days and weeks rather than months and years, so the delivery methodologies have to be very agile.”

And while the 90-day delivery cycles preached by current agile delivery methodologies form a good starting point, Lawrey feels telcos need to develop an “agile-on-steroids” approach in order to move fast enough to meet new customer expectations. “We can’t have business as a slave to IT,” he says. “That’s got to stop. If we can change our mindset and our methodology around that, and extend that way of thinking to our strategic alliance partners and our suppliers so that we can speed our product development and delivery timescales even further, I think this industry is going to be very exciting.”

Developing a more customer-centric enterprise is just one of the topics up for discussion at upcoming Next Generation Telecoms Summit APAC 2011, which takes place from 20-22 September at the Amara Sanctuary on Sentosa Island, Singapore. This closed-door summit, hosted by GDS International, will feature some of the leading voices in the technology management sector, including Michael Lawrey, Executive Director of Technology and Networks at Telstra; Priyanka Undugodage, VP Technology at Dialog Telecom; and Akbar Boghani, GM for IT Strategy at Vodafone Essar.

Alongside consideration of the telco customer experience, other key topics for discussion include embracing the cloud opportunity; delivering mobile rich internet applications that your business or customer needs; how to improve response times to changing market scenarios; and disruptive technologies in the telco environment

Next Generation Telecoms Summit APAC 2011 is an exclusive C-level event reserved for 100 participants that includes expert workshops, facilitated roundtables, peer-to-peer networks and co-ordinated meetings.

For more information, visit www.ngtsummitapac.com

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Movius Interactive Corporation has been selected to provide SI Wireless with its comprehensive voice messaging solution as part of a major initiative to bring advanced communications to rural areas across the US.

SI Wireless is a start-up CDMA carrier offering the latest next-generation voice and data services to regional areas across Tennessee, Kentucky and Illinois. The company will utilize Movius’ Versera ICE® platform for voice messaging applications to deliver a comprehensive solution for customers.

“Working with new carriers like SI Wireless is something we are very keen to do and we feel that we are in a position to provide innovative solutions that will in turn support their market growth,” said Movius President and CEO Dominic Gomez. “We take great interest in operations that look to deliver the best possible wireless services across the country and are thrilled to be part of this rural communication revolution.”

The Versera ICE platform is a next-generation communications platform that delivers carrier-grade quality for carriers worldwide.  It provides the foundation for multiple applications including high-demand offers such as Visual Voicemail (MessageMe™), Voice-to-Text, Missed Call Notification and Second-Line (Side-Line™) Mobile Service.  This enables operators to utilize one value added services (VAS) platform across their entire system.

“We conducted a thorough review of voice application vendors in the market,” said Michael Beehn, COO of SI Wireless. “Movius’ comprehensive offer combined with its proven reputation with top tier carriers led us to select them for our new network.”

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Google has offered $900m for Nortel’s patent portfolio. Google claims it does so to protect it’s own patent claims and their Android strategy sure has a play in this. Nortel finds Google’s offer high enough, but there is still time for other parties to bid higher, though we find that not too likely. According to the NY Times the portfolio holds over 6000 patents.

Is Google just protecting their patents or are they trying to get a piece of the LTE market to at one day become a mobile operator? Please share your views below.

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Alcatel-Lucent (Euronext Paris and NYSE:ALU ) has been selected by China Mobile to participate to the world’s largest 4G TD-LTE trial network deployment in China. This qualification follows successful completion of various interoperability tests which started from January 2010 as required by the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information (MIIT) and China Mobile. Alcatel-Lucent Shanghai Bell, Alcatel-Lucent’s flagship company in China is one of the first suppliers to have successfully achieved this key milestone and will be deploying its end-to-end LTE solution for China Mobile’s large-scale 4G TD-LTE trial in the city of Shanghai.

Covering 6 major Chinese cities, namely Shanghai, Hangzhou, Nanjing, Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Xiamen, and recently extended to Beijing, this large scale TD-LTE trial will help China Mobile to provide a wide range of high speed mobile broadband services to its subscribers, such as high definition video, 3D gaming, FTP transmission and high speed Internet. It will also enable new industries with LTE connectivity like automotive industry and multi-industry ecosystem development thanks to initiatives pioneered by Alcatel-Lucent through the ng Connect Program launched two years ago.

Rajeev Singh-Molares, president of Alcatel-Lucent’s activities in Asia-Pacific said: “This is a major accomplishment for Alcatel-Lucent and clearly reinforces our leading position in China and our global leadership in LTE. We are committed to provide China Mobile with the most advanced LTE solution for the world’s largest TD-LTE trial and to demonstrate the maturity and cost-effectiveness of our solution for TD-LTE which is emerging as the 4G standard for TDD spectrum globally. The successful interoperability tests with terminal suppliers further demonstrate our commitment to create an open TD-LTE ecosystem that will participate in the broader global LTE value chain.”

The tests were conducted in both 2.3GHz and 2.6GHz frequency bands for indoor and outdoor deployments and relied on Alcatel-Lucent’s industry-leading LTE expertise to provide an end-to-end integrated solution including LTE base stations (eNodeBs), the Evolved Packet Core (EPC). Alcatel-Lucent’s solution successfully passed interoperability tests with two major terminal suppliers.

Alcatel-Lucent is a key partner of China Mobile on TD-LTE and next generation wireless networks initiatives and evolution programs. During the 2010 Shanghai World Expo Alcatel-Lucent supported China Mobile in the first large-scale TD-LTE trial network deployment delivering advanced mobile services including ultra high speed Internet access and High Definition TV (HDTV). Most recently, at Mobile World Congress, Alcatel-Lucent and China Mobile demonstrated with Audi, a variety of in-vehicle high-value applications that worked seamlessly on a converged Time Division Duplex (TDD) and Frequency Division Duplex (FDD) network ensuring seamless global coverageand the ability to benefit from a common LTE ecosystem across both modes. Alcatel-Lucent and China Mobile are partnering to develop next-generation radio access network based on Alcatel-Lucent’s lightRadio, a groundbreaking innovation to prepare wireless networks to handle the explosive growth in demand for wireless broadband services while making the networks more eco friendly.

Having been selected so far by twelve customers for commercial deployments — including two of the world’s largest service providers — and being involved in over 60 trials worldwide –- including thirteen LTE TDD trials in seven countries — Alcatel-Lucent has established a strong leadership position in LTE.

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From today, the GCF Certification process can be applied to LTE devices designed to operate in either the 700 MHz† band or the 800 MHz European Digital Dividend band. The 700 MHz band is currently being rolled-out in the USA while deployment of the 800 MHz has started in Germany. Work to extend the scheme to other bands is already well advanced; further bands could be brought within the GCF Certification scheme as early as January 2011.

Incorporating conformance, interoperability and field testing, GCF Certification is designed to give operators confidence that new devices are compliant with relevant standards. Using certification criteria and standardised test methodologies agreed collectively by operators and manufacturers, GCF Certification provides a rigourous assessment of a device’s network and service interoperability. The scheme has been shown to reduce acceptance testing overheads for manufacturers and operators alike. In the last 12 months, more than 400 handsets, USB modems and other 3GPP devices from 34 manufacturers have been GCF-Certified.

“By establishing a trusted benchmark for interoperability and common acceptance testing procedures, GCF Certification represents an important milestone along the road to a mass-market for LTE devices,” said Adriana Nugter, Operations Manager, GCF. “The launch of Certification for LTE devices is a tribute to the concerted efforts of GCF members from around the world.”

Bringing a new technology within GCF Certification depends on contributions from many stakeholders: stable core specifications and their associated test specifications from standards bodies; reference devices to enable tests to be validated; and new test platforms which need to be independently validated. In addition, an understanding of operators’ launch plans is required to ensure that Certification matches the real needs of the marketplace. GCF provides the forum in which experts from operators, device manufacturers, the test industry and other interested parties bring the required building blocks together.

Whereas UMTS was initially deployed in a single band, different regions have allocated a variety of frequency bands in which operators are able to deploy LTE; this has created a significant additionalchallenge for GCF. Through a carefully designed and flexible work programme, GCF has been able to move quickly to accommodate new bands as they have been made available. The adopted project structure has also ensured that delivery of Certification in one band is not hindered by delayed availability of tests, test equipment or reference devices for other bands.

GCF formally launched the development of the LTE Certification programme in early 2008 with an initial focus on three FDD bands [700 MHz (USA), 2100 MHz (Japan) and 2600 MHz (Europe)] and two TDD bands [2570-2620 MHz and 2300-2400 MHz (China/USA)]. The need for a flexible approach was confirmed during 2010 when requests were received to extend LTE Certification to the 1800 MHz band widely used by operators in Europe and Asia and, more recently, the 800 MHz European Digital Dividend band.

GCF expects Certification to be available for other FDD and TDD LTE bands in the first half of 2011. Under GCF’s rules, some of these bands could be incorporated within the scheme as early as January 2011.

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New forecasts from ABI Research indicate that in 2015 about 244 million people worldwide will carry out financial transactions using their mobile phones. This growth in the financial cell phone sector is not specific to North America or Europe, and large investment is anticipated in regions like Latin America.

Latin American infrastructure is a drawback; only about 33 percent of the population has access to formal financial services. But 80 percent have access to mobile phones, which presents a significant opportunity for extending financial services to millions of low-income customers in the region.

To support this, last month, IFC, a member of the World Bank Group, invested US$3 million for Panama’s YellowPepper plus $2 million to help mobilization for the mobile financial solutions company, in an effort to expand mobile banking and access to financial services in Latin America. YellowPepper has now received $15 million from IFC, which stands as the only equity investment for a mobile banking firm.

“Our goal is to bring the banking system to the masses via the mobile phone,” said Serge Elkiner, President and Founder of YellowPepper. “Because of the enormity of the task, we sought out an investor whose reputation and approach complement our strategy. IFC fits this profile perfectly. It is also one of the largest investors in electronic payments and mobile banking in the world, contributing invaluable insight and experience to innovations happening worldwide.”

Motorola recently conducted a survey where Fifty-one percent of more than 4,530 consumers from the United States, Canada, Spain, Mexico, Argentina and Brazil used their mobile device for shopping. Opinion is clearly divided however. Recent research suggests that there is high demand for mobile banking services among corporate clients, though security concerns may cause adoption to be slow. In spite of this, major retailers and financial institutions such as Best Buy, Amazon, HBSC , Wells Fargo & Co. and Bank of America Corp have joined the mobile revolution. Additionally, the ability to potentially charge fees for such services, something banks have shied away from on the consumer side, is attractive, according to analysts.

To discuss the Latin America’s readiness for this shift, industry leading protagonists will meet in Mexico at the Financial Services Technology Summit (hosted by GDS International) in December. The summit will focus on looking at the current technical ecosystem and debate the changes needed to support the predicated growth.
Among those on hand will be Patricio Melo, COO/CIO of Banco de Chile; Pablo Velazquez Mann, CIO, Banco Columbia; Jose C. Granados, IT Director, Banco Santander Mexico; Luis Felipe Ortiz Rodriguez, COSO Banco Santander Peru; Kelson Corte, CIO, Stuart Pallant, CIO for Americas , Banco de Brasilia and Adolfo Aldama, VP, Head Mexico IB Technology , J.P. Morgan who will use the meeting to explore the use of mobile computing as a catalyst for idea generation in the financial markets and the affinity of mobile computing in the Retail Banking sector, as well as any potential application in Institutional Investment Banking.

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Verizon Wireless and Alcatel-Lucent (Euronext Paris and NYSE: ALU) today announced a four-year agreement expected to be worth US$4 billion for Alcatel-Lucent wireless network architecture and services to support Verizon Wireless’ ongoing 3G network expansion and 4G/LTE network build out. Alcatel-Lucent continues to be a major Verizon Wireless’ network infrastructure supplier and the agreement builds on a long-standing relationship between the two companies.

“Constant network improvement is in our DNA,” said Tony Melone, chief technology officer at Verizon Wireless. “Network reliability is a top reason business and consumers choose and stay with us. With Alcatel-Lucent’s strong support, we continue to optimize our networks and will remain the most reliable in the nation for years to come.”

Under the agreement, Alcatel-Lucent will provide infrastructure solutions spanning its entire portfolio, including:

• end-to-end CDMA and LTE radio network solutions;
• IP, optical and microwave backhaul and transport; and
• complete portfolio of professional and network integration services.

“Verizon Wireless and Alcatel-Lucent have enjoyed a strong history dating back to the introduction of CDMA, which remains a viable technology today as we’re now enabling Verizon to evolve to the next generation that is 4G/LTE,” said Robert Vrij, President of Alcatel-Lucent’s Americas Region. “What’s more, this agreement underscores Verizon Wireless’ confidence in our ability to support both the existing 3G and the new 4G/LTE networks with an integrated, flexible and service-aware architecture that runs the gamut from radio access to IP backhaul and transport, core and applications.”

Alcatel-Lucent is a leading player in the wireless infrastructure market having deployed more than 350 commercial wireless networks worldwide. The company is also a world leader in the design, deployment, management and integration of networks.

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Qwest Communications (NYSE: Q) today unveiled an innovative approach for wireless service providers (WSPs) to adapt to the increasing demand for cell tower bandwidth while simultaneously decreasing their connectivity cost per megabyte. With the introduction of Qwest® Adaptive Broadband™, Qwest Wholesale customers now have a “bridge” from their legacy infrastructures, with their limited bandwidth and high unit costs, to emerging technologies, which offer more bandwidth and lower unit costs. Qwest® Adaptive Broadband™ provides a flexible and seamless migration path that lets WSPs upgrade at their own pace and as capacity needs require.

Roland Thornton, executive vice president, Qwest Wholesale added: “The explosion of smart phones, mobile devices, netbooks and other applications requires backhaul providers like Qwest to keep pace with consumer demand for next-generation services. As a wholesale network provider to many wireless companies, Qwest is ensuring there is ample bandwidth to support today’s network demands while anticipating the speed and capacity needs of tomorrow.”

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Alcatel-Lucent (Euronext Paris and NYSE: ALU) achieved an industry first by successfully

completing a data call using a Long Term Evolution (LTE) wireless broadband network operating at Band 14

, the spectrum earmarked for public safety agencies in the United States. The call demonstrates the readiness of the network to support current public safety applications used by police, fire and emergency medical services as well as new applications enabled by wireless broadband.

Wireless broadband is essential for addressing mission-critical needs requiring high data throughput for applications such as video surveillance, automated vehicle license plate recognition, biometric identification, mobile crime scene units and mobile incident command, geospatial information systems, automated vehicle location and more. LTE helps increase the speed and precision of the decision-making process for first responders, shaving off seconds and minutes in their response to life-threatening situations.

”This achievement represents an important step toward revolutionizing public safety networks as it establishes the readiness of LTE as a technology to enable broadband data applications,” said Morgan Wright, Vice President, Global Public Safety Segment at Alcatel-Lucent. “This call also demonstrates Alcatel-Lucent’s expertise in designing and deploying LTE solutions to address the unique needs of the public safety sector and marks an important milestone in support of the Public Safety solution that Alcatel-Lucent is delivering to this critical market.”

Having been selected by five customers for commercial deployments, including by two of the largest U.S. service providers, and being involved in more than 50 customer trials, Alcatel-Lucent is a global leader in LTE.

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Alcatel-Lucent (Euronext Paris and NYSE: ALU) has acquired the mobile software and applications development tools vendor OpenPlug. By acquiring OpenPlug, ALU deepens its role in the applications space by delivering, as part of its integrated suite of developer tools, a platform where application developers can write an application once, which will then be translated to run on any of the five major mobile operating systems. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Alcatel-Lucent can now extend OpenPlug’s functionality to service providers, enterprises and developers so they can create and deploy applications — in virtually record time and without sacrificing the unique customer experience — across multiple mobile devices and within service provider app stores. As a result, applications that had previously only been available on more sophisticated devices such as smartphones, can now be enjoyed by consumers on any mobile device, which opens up opportunities in emerging markets, where low cost mobile phone circulation is highest.

This is the second acquisition Alcatel-Lucent has made over the past three months to expand and enhance the application ecosystem. In June, the company acquired ProgrammableWeb, the technology industry’s go-to source of API-related content.

“While demand for mobile apps is peaking, so is the fragmentation of mobile development platforms and tools,” said Michael Cote, analyst for Redmonk. “This makes it very expensive to target all devices and can lead to putting all your eggs in one, often tightly controlled basket, like Apple’s, or doing a least-common denominator, mobile web app that can’t benefit from full native device access. A tool that can target all platforms is hugely needed in this space, and OpenPlug should work well with the total mobile app development portfolio Alcatel-Lucent is putting together.”

Thanks to OpenPlug, service providers, enterprises and developers do not have to be selective about which of the many mobile platforms they will write applications for, thus limiting their potential for service adoption and revenue potential. OpenPlug’s mobile software turns every device into a smart device. It allows developers to write applications once and convert application code into native software that runs on any leading mobile device operating system, including iPhone®, Android®, Symbian®, Windows Mobile®, and Linux®.

“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.”

The OpenPlug toolset will be incorporated into Alcatel-Lucent’s 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.

The move advances 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.

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Alcatel-Lucent remains the leader in the CDMA space according to Dell’Oro’s latest Mobility Infrastructure report. Not only does Dell’Oro place Alcatel-Lucent as the historical leader in CDMA (leading in CDMA revenues since 3Q’01), the industry analyst firm also acknowledges that Alcatel-Lucent has reinforced its number one position on a quarterly basis, growing its market share – as measured by revenue – to more than 40% in 2Q’10.

CDMA remains a dynamic market with more than 500 million subscribers worldwide, and experiencing strong subscriber and traffic growth. Alcatel-Lucent continues to see CDMA as a longer-term, viable solution in established and emerging markets. CDMA remains a critical long-term asset, even as operators are starting to introduce wireless 4G technologies, due to CDMA’s extended coverage and roaming support, as well as its ability to deliver high-speed data, combined with low-cost and high-capacity voice.

Dell’Oro Group’s Scott Siegler confirms this trend, highlighting in a recent report that, over the last couple of quarters, the availability of more capable 3G CDMA devices has resulted in CDMA operators experiencing a large surge in the data traffic on their networks. He expects this data growth to continue, leading to renewed investments in modernizing older CDMA equipment and upgrading the capacity of service providers’ footprint.

With the tremendous global uptake in 3G services, Alcatel-Lucent is in a unique position with its Converged RAN platform to refresh older CDMA technology with more eco-sustainable, higher-capacity options, enabling customers to move to all-IP today, and prepare their networks for evolution to LTE when the time is right.

“Alcatel-Lucent takes its leadership in CDMA very seriously. Building on it, we have started to partner with service providers around the world to implement our common view of the future: the evolution to a wireless all-IP network,” says Wim Sweldens, President of Alcatel-Lucent’s wireless activities.

“Our continuous innovations in the wireless space enable them to offer a whole new range of bandwidth-demanding mobile data and video applications – over their existing equipment, but at far greater speeds and less a cost,” he adds.

Alcatel-Lucent has always been a prominent player in the CDMA space, widely recognized as the industry’s market, thought and technology leader. This has been driven by Alcatel-Lucent’s leading role in CDMA’s standardization bodies, and by its drive to constantly improve customers’ ability to cope with the increasingly demanding nature of mobile communication services. Today, Alcatel-Lucent continues to help its customers maximize their CDMA investment through further research in Multi Carrier EV-DO Revision B technology, for instance, but also through Alcatel-Lucent’s Converged RAN solution which provides a smooth evolution path to LTE, while ensuring maximum re-use of equipment and dramatically reducing energy consumption.

Alcatel-Lucent is the global leader in CDMA, supplying CDMA solutions to more than 70 customers in 40 countries and supporting five of the top six global CDMA operators. Alcatel-Lucent is working with Tier One operators as they evolve their networks from CDMA/EV-DO to incorporate LTE technology, ensuring the smooth interoperability of their 3G and 4G network infrastructures. According to industry analyst firm Dell’Oro, Alcatel-Lucent has been leading in terms of worldwide CDMA revenues since 3Q’01. Moreover, Alcatel-Lucent has been selected by five customers for commercial LTE deployments, including the two largest US service providers, and is involved in more than 50 LTE customer trials.

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As of the 1^st July the new European Cap, which was introduced to cut the cost of using a mobile phone abroad, has now came into effect. Telecoms executives from across Europe were keen to discuss the implementations of the new bill and an ever growing ‘customer is king ‘attitude at the NGT EU summit which concluded last week.

The bill enforced by the EU has not come soon enough with some customers receiving bills of up to £27,000 for using mobile broadband abroad.  The cap can be increased or decreased by the consumer again backing the idea that relationship with the customer is key to success in the telecoms industry.  The new EU rules will also cut the costs of making and receiving calls around Europe, just in time for the holiday season and allow free access to voicemail.  The new EU rules were met with little resistance by the Telecoms committee who have been aware that such steps would be taken to protect the consumer sooner rather than later.

A new maximum charge will be 32p minute, down from 35p and will apply to  calls made while travelling within the European Union. Mobile phone operators are now obliged to place a €50 (£41.50) cap on all data roaming charges, unless specifically requested not to do so by the customer. The charge for receiving calls while abroad has also been cut, to a maximum of 12.5p per minute, down from 15.5p.

The executives who make the NGT EU committee met at Lake Geneva, Switzerland where Paul Excell the Chief Customer Innovation Officer, BT opened discussions. Paul is responsible for ensuring that Innovation and Technology business generates £1 billion over the next three years at BT, he offered his insight to representatives such as Bouygues Telecom – Yves Caseau, EVP Services & Innovation, Belgacom – Stijn Vander Plaetse, VP Innovation, Tiscali - Salvatore Pulvirenti, CIO and Vodafone - Paul Wybrow, Group Technical Director while speaking  out about the 7 c’s of communication.  Communication is Key and the telecoms industry knows this better than anybody.

“When your communication is important — that is, when you want it to be remembered — you need to think carefully and design it to resonate with your intended audience.” Paul Excell – BT

The 7 c’s which consist of context, i.e. is the situation fully understood, and are we asking the right questions.  Content, do you have a single definable goal.  Components, break down projects into their specifics. Cuts, remove the sections that don’t work and get to the point.  Composition, how do you want to deliver your message.  Contrast, find the differences and use it to highlight your point, change triggers the attention of others and finally consistency, make sure your message is maintained.

“The 7 c’s can improve your communication, they  lay out a simple sequence which can help you start broadly and work your way down to specifics of a particular problem or project eventually coming up with a solution for the customer .” NGT EU committee member

It is to the benefit of every business to understand and communicate with the customer but how this happens makes the difference between a success or the miscommunication of your message.  The Roaming charges for European customers are but another example where companies did not communicate to the customer.  It seems at last lessons are being learnt.

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Alcatel-Lucent (Euronext Paris and NYSE: ALU) takes a step closer to replacing the physical wallet by announcing the Mobile Wallet Service (MWS), a complete solution that places the mobile operator in the center of the emerging mobile payment equation. Unique in the industry, MWS leverages an operator’s trusted network to deliver consumer applications such as person to person payment, remote ticketing, proximity payment and m-commerce – all aggregated onto a single MWS platform with the flexibility to scale based on consumer demand. MWS also allows third parties to develop and integrate new applications through an Application Enablement API.

This “ready to offer” service empowers consumers to use their mobile phones to manage daily transactions such as payments, coupons, loyalty points and gift vouchers.

By bringing together bank/payment providers, payment applications, and a wide variety of access devices, Alcatel-Lucent has created a new customer experience which can help operators to increase revenue, reduce subscriber churn and bring new services to market. MWS builds on Alcatel-Lucent’s previously announced partnership with Clear2Pay to collaborate on a mobile payment framework. Enhanced with building blocks for end to end transaction flow, the solution includes handset applications, a stored value account, gateways to banks and payment networks, links to an operator’s billing system and a portfolio of access devices for proximity payment.

MWS is delivered as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), a turnkey solution that places mobile operators at the hub of the mobile payment value wheel with minimal up-front costs. The innovative platform, commercialized by Alcatel-Lucent Ventures, can be customized to create unique experiences that are relevant for specific markets. For example, consumers in developed countries want the convenience of paying for goods and services from their mobile phones. In growth economies, MWS can be adapted to deliver money management services via a mobile device.

“Consumer tastes and technology can change in the blink of an eye,” said Anthony Belpaire, General Manager, touchatag, Alcatel-Lucent Ventures. “Our approach allows operators to bring timely and relevant mobile wallet services to consumers, to scale with consumer demand and to dynamically add new applications.”

“Mobile wallet solutions, like Alcatel-Lucent’s, position mobile operators as primary providers of payments to their customers,” said Samee Zafar, Director at Edgar Dunn & Company. “By providing the core customer account and related user tools, operators retain customers, strengthen customer relationships and reduce the biggest problem operators face – customer attrition.”

Alcatel-Lucent will showcase the Mobile Wallet Service at the CITA Tradeshow and Conference, (March 23 – 25, 2010 Las Vegas, Nevada) Booth #2506.

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• alcatel-lucent mobile wallet

Alcatel-Lucent (Euronext Paris and NYSE: ALU) today announced the availability of a “small cell” (femtocell) wireless solution designed specifically to address the needs of enterprise customers. The enterprise small cell offering helps service providers better serve valuable customers inside of buildings that typically suffer from poor wireless voice and data coverage.

Alcatel-Lucent’s small cell offering for enterprises not only improves coverage in office environments, it also provides increased data capacity and throughput, making it possible to introduce a wide variety of high-bandwidth applications. The small cell offering builds on Alcatel-Lucent’s industry-leading femto base station router, an innovative platform that packs third-generation (3G) W-CDMA/HSPA radio access and core network elements into one compact, easy-to-deploy unit.

“Demand for mobile data services is growing dramatically, and business applications represent a particularly promising market for mobile service providers,” said Wim Sweldens, president of Alcatel-Lucent’s wireless activities. “Our small cell offering for enterprises is perfectly suited to addressing the needs of businesses for uninterrupted, high-quality mobile connectivity on their premises.”

The small cell solution for enterprises offers benefits to wireless service providers too, most notably a practical, cost-effective and proven means of expanding network coverage and capacity indoors as well as in “hotspots.” Because of poor radio frequency penetration through building structures, enterprises often suffer from signal weakness. Small cells solve this problem while offering the added benefit of offloading local traffic onto available wireline broadband infrastructures. This, in turn, reduces the demand on mobile data networks.

As importantly, the small cell solution for enterprises helps to ensure improved mobile voice coverage for workers in their offices. Today, many business subscribers cannot make a simple voice call on their company-provide mobile phones while at work, let alone access mobile data services.

To ensure service providers can offer a high-quality experience to their subscribers, Alcatel-Lucent has developed an end-to-end small cell solution designed to address the key challenges associated with the introduction of small cells. The solution features Alcatel-Lucent’s patented auto-configuration capability, which enables service providers to deploy and more easily manage large numbers of small, stand-alone base stations. This helps reduce the operational burden on operators while making it relatively simple for enterprises to get service up and running at their locations.

The solution also features device management capabilities provided by the Motive Home Device Manager; Motive is a division of Alcatel-Lucent and leading provider of device management solutions. This, coupled with self-organizing network technology (a Bell Labs innovation), makes the small cell solution more economically attractive than prior alternatives. Alcatel-Lucent also offers a comprehensive package of deployment, project management and end-to-end network integration capabilities in support of our small cell offering.

In conjunction with the launch of this new offering, Alcatel-Lucent also is introducing a new website that can answer both operator and consumer questions about small cell products and architectures. The site, www.wilson-street.com, provides insight and commentary on some of the key issues associated with the growing focus on small cell architectures, including: business cases for smallcells at home; the rise of the mobile internet – delivering a great experience; smallcells compared to Wifi; smallcells as good citizens in a macro world; the new face of mobile – shift in the way people use mobile data; sweating your assets in a busy network with smallcells.

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The first test cases required for an LTE device certification scheme have been validated and approved by GCF, the Global Certification Forum.

Designed to give operators confidence in the interoperability of LTE devices across different networks, GCF’s Certification scheme will embrace both FDD and TDD versions of LTE.

Bringing the sophisticated new technology of LTE within the scope of GCF Certification is a complex undertaking involving the selection, prioritisation and validation of more than 280 conformance tests in the first instance.

Once selected by GCF, test cases are developed and verified by a relevant standards body to ensure that they correctly contribute to the objective assessment of the operation of a device. Validation is the final stage in assuring the robustness of a GCF test case. This entails the test case implementation on a specific commercial test platform being validated by an independent test house against the core specifications. This process gives the assurance that GCF test cases running on GCF recognised test platforms will correctly test a device for GCF certification.

Ten test cases relating to the air interface between an LTE device and the network base station, and running on the R&S®CMW500 wideband radio communication tester from Rohde & Schwarz were approved at the meeting of the GCF Conformance and Interoperability Agreement Group (GCF CAG) in Sophia Antipolis on January 26-27, 2010. The validation was undertaken by 7 layers AG. Immediately following the meeting, the same ten tests have also made available from Anite on its “Conformance Toolset” test solution which was validated by CETECOM.

“The validation of the first ten LTE test cases is an important step towards our target of delivering an LTE Certification scheme in time for the wave of network launches anticipated towards the end of 2010,” said Adriana Nugter, GCF Operations Manager. ”The fact that two test systems have now validated test cases is evidence of the significant commitment and investment from the test industry towards the successful introduction of LTE.”

Established in 1999, GCF has a total membership of more than 200, including many of the world’s most influential telecommunications companies from the operator, device manufacturer and test industry communities. (Rohde & Schwarz, 7layers, Anite and CETECOM are all members of GCF.) With its “test once, use anywhere” ethos, GCF certification accelerates time to market for new devices based on 3GPP standards while reducing costs for manufacturers, operators and, ultimately, end-users. For both GSM and 3G, GCF certification has underpinned international roaming.

GCF will provide an update on the progress of LTE device certification to “Final Building Blocks for Successful Mobile Broadband Deployment” – at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona on Thursday 18 February 2010 at 15:20.

Global Certification Forum – GCF – is an active partnership between network operators, device manufacturers and the test industry. In the ten years since its inception in 1999, GCF has created an independent certification programme to help ensure global interoperability between mobile devices and networks. By providing the focal point for the world’s most experienced practitioners in conformance testing, field trials and certification, GCF establishes global best practice for the certification of mobile phones and the ever-expanding range of devices that incorporate wireless broadband connectivity. As its contribution to the smooth introduction of LTE, GCF started working on a global certification scheme for LTE devices in March 2008.

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