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Nokia Siemens Networks, looking to accelerate the commercial arrival of TD-LTE while strengthening its position with China Mobile, announces the completion of a TD-LTE data call with the help of a Samsung USB modem.
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ZTE held its sixth annual Global Analyst Conference towards the end of April. While it remedied a lack of focus on solution messaging which dogged it last year, it still needs to back up product and solution claims with mature market proof points.
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It’s a GSM base station controller. No, it’s a WCDMA radio network controller. Actually, the multi-standard controllers being promised by vendors include the functionality of both. Yet, are they ready for prime time, and how do they stack up?
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Looking to jumpstart its TD-LTE momentum, Ericsson announced it will work with Datang to develop and promote the technology. While Ericsson is notably absent from the current Shanghai TD-LTE network, the market opportunity for TD-LTE remains open.
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The WiMAX Forum’s Open Retail Initiative, in theory, should help drive growth into the overall ecosystem through lower cost devices and other benefits. However this initiative is far from a simple process and its success is not a given.
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The New WiMAX 2 Collaboration Initiative brings together a set of big-name WiMAX vendors to support the commercialization of 802.16m solutions. Without a set workplan and some key names missing, lots of work remains.
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Last month’s femtocell plugfest was widely hailed as a breakthrough event for the industry. At this point, we all know the promise that plugfests hold. Without knowing the results, is there any way to know how much of that promise they deliver?
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Juniper is jumping into video with its Ankeena acquisition, bolstering its longer-term competitiveness vs. Alcatel-Lucent and Cisco, although the benefits will not fully be realized until Ankeena’s technology is integrated into Juniper’s routers.
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For a show that most people felt lacked a unifying theme, femtocells continued to make their presence felt at this spring’s CTIA. The biggest femtocell news, however, was taking place far away from Las Vegas.
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The news coming out of the Spring 2010 CTIA show was little more than a continuation of themes vendors had already established at prior events. A notable exception, however, was a new LTE networks supplier into Metro PCS.
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With the maturation of WiMAX, and the majority of mobile operators lining up behind LTE, the technology’s continued viability has become reliant upon showing market proof points and continued progress.
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Last year, Alcatel-Lucent announced a new EPC solution built on its 7750 Service Router. Now, it has expanded the solution with 2G/3G and new service support. Fighting entrenched players, it must still prove its mettle with commercial references.
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If we can agree that the mobile packet core is more important to operators than ever before, we’re still left with some key questions. What do operators need in a 2G/3G or EPC solution in the near-term? What do they need looking beyond that?
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In a market where vendors are scrambling to make the radio access network more and more efficient, the role of the packet core in making new mobile broadband services a success is often overlooked. In reality, it’s more important than ever.
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Without the mobile packet core, a shiny new set of LTE base stations will do an operator no good. Matching the hype around LTE radio access, then, were various EPC launches at MWC 2010 – but a lack of focus from some vendors was disappointing.
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The 2010 MWC lacked the 4G technology debates of past. In the aftermath of the first commercial LTE launch, vendors were more focused on rolling out a series of LTE solution firsts – new speed achievements, form factors and product launches.
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With growing momentum in the U.S., Europe, and Asia, femtocells were destined to be a theme at Mobile World Congress. They were, though expectations around outdoor applications and LTE were not fulfilled, impacting the offload proposition.
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Without a press release, but only through a confirmation of press reports, Cisco came clean on an exit from the WiMAX RAN – leaving the space just as quietly as it had existed in it.
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We are always hesitant to declare winners and losers coming out of a trade show such as Mobile World Congress; trade shows don’t have winners and losers, just good messages and bad ones. So, which messages did we find impressive or disappointing?
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LTE may have gotten most of the coverage, but MWC 2010 showed there is plenty of life left in 3G. Performance demonstrations and service quality enhancements all illustrate that vendors see both short and long-term value in the technology.
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With growing momentum in the U.S., Europe, and Asia, femtocells were destined to be a theme at Mobile World Congress. They were, though expectations around outdoor applications and LTE were not fulfilled, impacting the offload proposition.
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The 2010 MWC lacked the 4G technology debates of past. In the aftermath of the first commercial LTE launch, vendors were more focused on rolling out a series of LTE solution firsts – new speed achievements, form factors and product launches.
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Without the mobile packet core, a shiny new set of LTE base stations will do an operator no good. Matching the hype around LTE radio access, then, were various EPC launches at MWC 2010 – but a lack of focus from some vendors was disappointing.
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By splitting into two companies, Motorola is better positioned to gain long-term benefits leveraging synergies in each of its two businesses, but in the short-term, uncertainties may stifle Motorola’s prospects for Mobile World Congress momentum.
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Starent’s ST40 is now the Cisco ASR5000. Beyond the new name and new traffic analytics tools, the move makes an important point: Cisco is committed to the service provider mobility space and “ASR” has evolved into a brand extending beyond routers.
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Femtocells, WiFi and EPC may seem to be disparate technology topics. Bringing them together is their role in supporting mobile operator profits thanks to traffic offload – making the broader offload topic an important theme at this year’s MWC.
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We’ve long wanted ip.access to extend femto-type deployment supports to its nanoGSM product. Doing so has just made its market-leading picocell more competitive, and set the stage for more discussions around SON in the macro network.
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Despite the limited number of claimed product upgrades in the recent past, there is no denying the importance of the mobile packet core in CDMA networks. Furthermore, there is no denying the continued dominance of Cisco’s Starent in this market.
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As its name implies, the first major trade show of the year – CES – is focused on consumer electronics. This year, it saw a good number of infrastructure players make news, highlighting the market’s commitment to LTE and a new femtocell model.
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Huawei is spending $500 million on its R&D and manufacturing in India, in part to bulk up its local image and fight stiff import tariffs. The move is clearly necessary to build momentum abroad, but will other investments follow?
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The Bell Labs organized Green Touch Initiative launched with a goal of improving telecom network energy efficiency a thousand-fold. How it will achieve this and what the world will look like when the group’s plans are complete is anyone’s guess.
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What lies ahead for wireless in 2010? Like 2009, it should be a year filled with LTE, HSPA+, femtocells and mobile core marketing. At the same time, it should be a year for continued consolidation and attempts at LTE differentiation.
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The 3GPP packet core is more important than ever with the success of HSPA and the coming of LTE. Now available, NSN’s SGSN/GGSN solution does well, as does Huawei, with Ericsson needing a capacity boost and Starent still growing its references.
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LTE was big news this year. It will continue to be big news next year. Closing out 2009, it’s important to ask where the market stands, what has been accomplished to date and what operators will want to look for in solutions going forward.
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Where 2007 and 2008 were first positioned as the breakthrough years for femtocells, 2009 may seem like a disappointment. To be sure, there is no shortage of obstacles to convince users to buy in-home base station services – but can be overcome.
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Motorola’s new frame-based eNodeB helps to deliver the siting options operators demand. In reality, however, it’s not actually a new base station and the announcement, unfortunately, ignores Motorola’s multi-standard capabilities.
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Enterprise and high-capacity femtocells remain a hot topic for vendors and operators. Given limited momentum in the consumer space, this isn’t surprising. A bigger driver is the future of mobile broadband and small cell 4G network architectures.
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Motorola has yet to comment on rumors that it’s investigating a sale of its Home and Networks Mobility business. Yet, where a long-term split-off of its phone business has long been a goal, the rumors, if true, hurt the unit’s near-term prospects.
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Few markets can match the mobile broadband usage of South Korea. To this end, few operators have launched four carriers of WCDMA–making KT’s work on this front a feather in ALU’s cap, had the company linked it to its current WCDMA product offer.
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Faced with continuing losses, NSN’s planned “return to growth” required a change at the German-Finnish JV. Cost cuts and a new organization are a good start, but limited details make it impossible to know if they can deliver success.
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With the introduction of the One Voice initiative and a supporting technical profile for voice over IMS in LTE networks, that sound you hear is the wind going out of the argument that LTE is a data-only specification.
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After an H1N1-induced delay this spring, NSN held its Global Analyst conference last week. Where the company’s planned transformation into a software and services company was a front-and-center message, its networks messaging suffered.
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