Wireless Federation

Long Term Evolution (LTE) will win over ultra mobile broadband (UMB) and Wimax as the mainstream technology in the race for 4G, suggests a ZTE executive.

Even CDMA operators will choose LTE over Qualcomm’s UMB, due to economies of scale, said Shen Donglin, VP of wireless technology at ZTE USA.

LTE is the 4G standard for GSM and W-CDMA networks.

Shen said China Telecom, which recently bought the Unicom’s CDMA business, had decided to ditch UMB in favor of LTE. Chairman Wang Xiaochu says the company will initially upgrade the CDMA network to EV-DO Rev A and eventually migrate to LTE.

Shen said China Telecom is just one of a string of CDMA carriers around the world, such as Verizon Wireless, which will begin testing LTE next year.

“This is a global trend: CDMA is shrinking and the economies of scale between CDMA and GSM cannot be compared,” he told the Show Daily. “CDMA as a 2G technology will continue for while to support voice service, but at the end of the day the majority of [EV-DO] operators will eventually go for LTE, not UMB.”

While Wimax is gaining traction, Shen suggesed the opportunity for Wimax remains small because it’s more “vendor-driven” and doesn’t yet support full mobility.

“Wimax will be a technology for niche markets, as such fixed replacement, and not likely to be widely adopted,” he said.

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Verizon Wireless is backing a free operating system that competes with programs from Microsoft, Google, and Qualcomm, a Canadian Press report said.

The report said Verizon will the first US carrier to join the LiMo Foundation, which aims to unite handset makers, software companies and carriers on a software platform that will make it easier and cheaper to create a wide variety of phones.

The carrier’s endorsement is an important boost to the stature of LiMo, or Linux Mobile, and its prospects in the US. It already has the backing of large Asian and European carriers, as well as handset makers like Motorola, Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics.

Kyle Malady, vice president of network for Verizon, said he expects the company to sell both simple and “smart'’ phones using LiMo next year.

That’s a potential blow to Qualcomm, which supplies the software for most of Verizon’s phones, excluding smart phones.

But the company is not adopting LiMo to the exclusion of other operating systems, he added, as it now sells phones with a variety of operating systems, and expects to continue doing so.

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AT&T Inc  said on Thursday it would launch mobile television services in May from MediaFlo USA, a unit of Qualcomm Inc, in an effort to bolster revenue from services other than phone calls.

AT&T, the biggest U.S. mobile service, said it would offer MediaFlo to users of the Vu phone from LG Electronics Inc and the Access from Samsung Electronics Co Ltd  and plans two exclusive channels it did not name.

AT&T, which offers everything from music to Web surfing to help bolster its revenue as phone call prices fall, had originally said it expected to offer the service by the end of 2007. It did not reveal service pricing.

Spokesman Mark Siegel said AT&T waited until May to offer the service as it was “a brand new service on a brand new network, and two brand new devices.” The company plans to reveal its pricing at the time of its service launch.

AT&T’s service arrives about a year after its biggest rival Verizon Wireless, a venture of Verizon Communications  and Vodafone Group Plc , started selling MediaFlo, which is broadcast live over a network built by chip maker Qualcomm.

Qualcomm, which sells technology licenses and chips for phones offering high-speed Web links, built the network to help kick-start the market for live television.

But some analysts said that mobile television was taking longer than some expected to take off partly because of weaker-than-expected consumer demand as the service does not blanket the entire country or work on all phones.

“There’s still a question whether consumers are ready to watch a significant amount of TV on their handsets.” said Stanford Group analyst Michael Nelson. 

Gina Lombardi, division head of MediaFlo USA, said in a telephone interview that by the time AT&T offers its service in May it will be available in about 55 markets, covering a potential 130 million customers. MediaFlo markets include Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Dallas, Orlando and Philadelphia.

Lombardi said she was happy with the number of people using the service and “the amount of time they’re watching it” but declined to give subscriber numbers.

Subscriber growth should improve as MediaFlo improves coverage in markets such as New York and as AT&T starts offering its service and both carriers sell a bigger choice of phones that support the service, she said.

Qualcomm hopes to be able to expand its service to markets covering more than 200 million potential customers in February 2009, when television companies have to vacate wireless airwaves that they own.

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Saudi Arabia-based Saudi Oger has acquired Romanian mobile operator Telemobil (Zapp), according to Romanian news site Hotnews. Saudi Oger acquired 50 percent of the Inquam Limited shares from US-based Qualcomm. Saudi Oger already owned 50 percent of Telemobil’s subisidiary Inquam through its investment fund Omnia Holdings. Both parties involved have not made public the terms of the transaction. Telemobil recently won the licence for a UMTS spectrum in the 2100 MHz band and will shortly begin expanding its network utilising this frequency. in 2001, Telemobil launched a 450 MHz CDMA network developed by Qualcomm. Saudi Oger is a group controlled by the family of the former Lebanese prime minister Rafic Hariri. Saudi Oger is the main shareholder of Oger Telecom.

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A US International Trade Commission judge has issued an initial determination in favour of Nokia in the action brought by Qualcomm against Nokia alleging patent infringement. The judge found no infringement or violation by Nokia of the three asserted Qualcomm patents. In addition, it was determined that patent ‘473 was found to be invalid. The judge’s initial determination will now be forwarded to the full commission for review. The commission is scheduled to make its final determination by 14 April 2008. Qualcomm filed the complaint in June 2006, alleging that Nokia mobile phones imported in the US infringed certain Qualcomm patents covering power control technologies. Qualcomm is seeking an import ban on the phones.

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Qualcomm won a round in its patent battles with Nokia as the US International Trade Commission tossed out a lawsuit asking for Qualcomm’s chips to be barred from the United States, reports Reuters. The ITC said that the Nokia lawsuit was dropped due to pending arbitration and that the ITC is finished with this case. Nokia had alleged infringement of patents on technology that made its telephones smaller and more efficient. Nokia had requested the ITC bar the importation of the infringing chips. The arbitration petition was filed in April by Qualcomm, while ITC documents show the trade court opened its investigation into the Nokia suit in September. Qualcomm spokesman Rogers said to Reuters that Qualcomm finds Nokia not entitled to sue Qualcomm for patent infringement. There are more than a dozen lawsuits pending between Nokia and Qualcomm on three continents.

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A court in The Hague has dismissed a case brought by Nokia against Qualcomm attempting to limit its intellectual property rights. Nokia sought a declaration from the court that Qualcomm’s European patents were exhausted for chips placed on the European market by Texas Instruments, following the patent agreement between TI and Qualcomm in 2000. The court said it would only accept jurisdiction for the The Netherlands and not for any other countries in Europe. It concluded that Nokia’s complaint was too vague in failing to adequately allege any specific instances of possible exhaustion regarding any specific Qualcomm patents used by any specific Nokia products. Nokia has three months to appeal the court’s decision. Separately, on 23 October, the Regional Court of Mannheim, Germany dismissed similar claims seeking a declaration of patent exhaustion by Nokia. The Mannheim court dismissed Nokia’s complaint for lack of admissibility, noting that Nokia lacked a “legal interest” in pursuing such claims.

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Google’s introduction of its Android device operating system and Open Handset Alliance on Monday could help create just the breed of mobile Linux platform that many enterprise IT managers have been waiting for, industry experts contend.

While IT project leaders hoping to incorporate or build Linux-based applications on handheld devices have long been frustrated by a wild variety of disparate operating systems and fragmented standards efforts, the industry clout brought to the table by Google and its array of partners could spur wider adoption of existing tools along with a new wave of development, according to industry analysts and other market watchers.
With such partners as T-Mobile, HTC, Qualcomm, and Motorola aligned behind its efforts, Google’s step into mobile Linux software could provide a more stable, viable option than existing mobile Linux efforts, said observers.

Even though much of the initial focus on the Google Android announcement thus far has been aimed at new consumer applications that may be created based on the OS and the company’s partnerships, enterprises that have been hoping to move Linux onto the wireless handset are likely thrilled to see the introduction, experts said.

“We’re heard a lot from IT managers about some enterprise-class solutions in areas like e-mail that haven’t seen the light of day because there has been no real platform on which to deploy them,” said Avi Greengart, analyst with Current Analysis. “Right now, all we have is a press release and a coalition making promises, but the fact that Google is behind this could give it a better chance top succeed than any other efforts we’ve seen in this space.”

The emergence of a more “robust” Linux-based OS at the hands of Google and its partners should trump existing efforts to push the open-source platform into more devices, the analyst said.

None of the other handheld Linux standards groups — including LiMo Foundation, backed by industry giants Motorola, NEC, NTT DoCoMo, Panasonic, Samsung, and Vodafone — had been able to foster development comparable to Microsoft’s Windows Mobile OS or RIM’s BlackBerry platform in the enterprise, said Greengart.

By launching its own OS and creating a new standards alliance that won’t compete with any of the existing groups, Google may have tilted the mobile Linux landscape for good, he said.

“If your developers are already familiar with the Linux kernel, this is something new and interesting to consider both for third-party and internally-developed applications, said Greengart.

“Eventually, you could see a capability for organizations to customize devices as they see fit to an extent that’s not possible today, which could include the creation of custom applications or the use of tools that previously haven’t had a place in the enterprise,” he said. “They may also fundamentally alter devices before giving them out to employees and change the default applications completely to match the way their companies work.”

Companies are excited about the platform but worry about security

Some companies involved directly in the mobile device applications market — and previous industry efforts backing mobile Linux that Greengart criticized — agreed that the Google announcement represents a significant opportunity for progress of the open-source platform.

John Bruggeman, chief marketing officer at WindRiver, a maker of so-called device software optimization tools and a member of the LiMo Foundation, said that the entire market should benefit from Google’s efforts.

“There are tons of applications developers who want to write applications to a Linux platform and have them live on multiple devices, and this appears to create that opportunity,” Bruggemen said.

The greatest barrier to mobile Linux adoption — and the reason why groups such as LiMo were established — was the vast number of different flavors of the OS software that have been incorporated in handheld devices thus far with WindRiver counting more than 1,000 different variants, he said.

If LiMo and other industry consortiums, such as Consumer Electronics Linux Forum (CELF), Linux Phone Standards (LiPS) Forum, and OpenMoko, can work in partnership with the Open Handset Alliance (OHA), the expert maintains that benefits for the mobile device and applications development markets could be significant.

“This creates a chance for applications developers, especially those in the enterprise, to have a stable, reliable mobile platform based in the technical foundations of Linux with which they re already comfortable,” said Bruggeman. “Fragmentation has always been the biggest barrier to adoption; it’s a great day for Linux and for all these different efforts to consolidate around a common mobile platform.”

The executive denied the claim made by Greengart and other analysts that the LiMo consortium had “fallen flat” in its efforts, pointing out that the group is less than a year old.

LiMo was important in that it was the first mobile Linux consortium that involved carriers in the standards process, which he cited as one of the most promising traits of Google’s OHA effort moving forward.

Other Linux software providers echoed Bruggemen’s comments, calling the Google announcement one of the keys to making the open-source development language a bigger player on the mobile landscape.

One of the biggest criticisms that rival mobile OS providers, such as Microsoft and Symbian, could aim at Linux was the fact that applications developers couldn’t afford to deal with the huge variety of flavors of the open-source platform that have found their way into devices.

“Phone makers looked at Linux and could see that it was easier and more profitable to go with Windows mobile or Symbian, but now, you can put Linux in the same ballpark in terms of the completeness of the solution,” said Jim Ready, CTO at MonteVista, a maker of Linux development platforms.

“It’s still hard to do this development with the level of high-quality and performance that enterprise businesses expect. This won’t make it easy for small developers to get in the game, but it will help,” Ready said. “But at least now Linux can stand toe-to-toe with these other platforms in terms of breadth of environment.”

In the face of all the optimism being espoused by other market watches, at least one analyst said that an oft-cited perception about Linux — it’s potentially weak security when compared to other platforms — may still provide a sticking point for enterprises.

“Enterprise won’t be the primary market for a lot of these efforts, and the security of a Linux-based handheld might be one of the reasons for that,” said Maribel Lopez, analyst with Forrester Research. “Microsoft is already getting grief over whether its smartphones are secure enough for the enterprise, and I have to believe that any other OS will face the same questions. Hardcore enterprises will probably be the most skeptical about the initial security considerations.”

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Google Inc  on Monday spelled out long-rumored plans to enter the mobile phone market in 2008 by building software that could help the industry make the Internet run more easily on phones.

German mobile network powerhouse T-Mobile, Deutsche Telekom’s  mobile unit, plans next year to start selling Google-software-based phones, while China Mobile Ltd,the world’s largest mobile carrier, and top carriers in Japan said they would offer Google-based handsets.

Google, which has no immediate plans to make phones of its own, said it was working with 30 companies, including phone makers Motorola Inc  Samsung Electronics Co Ltd and High Tech Computer Corp. Also taking part are major communications chip makers, including Qualcomm Inc ,Texas Instruments Inc  and Marvell Technology Group Ltd.

The leading Internet company has long been rumored to be working on a new class of free or low-cost advertising-supported mobile phone of its own, popularly known as the “Gphone.” Google’s Schmidt would not rule out the company developing its own devices but said it had no imminent plans to do so.

The Web search company is looking to expand the range of Internet services it now offers through computer browsers to the far larger mobile phone market, where a range of conflicting handset designs and software standards have hobbled Internet use.

The move will put Google in competition with major mobile device operating systems backed by Nokia and Microsoft Corp . A number of Google’s partners said they would continue to work with those rival systems.

Google said it aimed to deliver software kits to handset makers in a week and sees phones based on its platform becoming available in the second half of 2008.
“It will open the mobile phone to do things that people now do on their PCs,” said Todd Greenwald, a financial analyst with Nollenberger Capital Partners in San Francisco.

“This approach is going to be far less costly,” Greenwald said, contrasting Google’s open partnership to proprietary phone industry strategies. “It should position Google to be an early leader in the mobile advertising market.”

The Mountain View, California-based company has set up an industry consortium including 30 partners so far that it calls the Open Handset Alliance.It said the software system, known as Android, will be “the first truly open and comprehensive platform for mobile devices.”

Android was the name of a small start-up Google acquired in 2005 that was founded by Andy Rubin, a veteran Silicon Valley gadget designer. Rubin earlier this decade created the innovative “Sidekick” mobile Internet device while at start-up Danger Inc.

Sprint Nextel Corp, the No. 3 U.S. mobile service and a member of the alliance, said the system will be based on open-source Linux code and available to phone makers and carriers without license fees.

It is expected to support applications from different developers as well as Google Web search, e-mail and mapping, according to Sprint.

Sprint said it has not committed to putting the software on its phones but is in negotiations with Google about financial terms with a view to offering the system to its customers eventually. Sprint did not give a time frame.
John Garcia, Sprint senior vice president for product management, said an agreement between Google and Sprint could cover everything from delivering mobile ads to putting Google’s brand on phones designed especially to support its operating system.

“Rather than trying to restrict customers and saying you can only use my services, which we think has limited growth potential, we’d rather give customers exactly what they want and benefit that way,” said Garcia.

Google shares were up 1.9 percent, or $13.32, to $724.57 on Nasdaq after reaching a new intraday high of $730.23 earlier.

The stock traded around $500 in mid-August before speculation about the impact of Google’s push into mobile phones — as well as new forms of online advertising, such as video — propelled shares to current record levels.

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Google, T-Mobile, HTC, Qualcomm, Motorola and others have announced a new industry association, the Open Handset Alliance, for building a common development platform for mobile phones. The association of 34 mobile service and equipment companies has given its backing to Android, a software stack consisting of an operating system, middleware, user interface and applications. The first phones based on the software are expected to hit the market in the second half of 2008. The Android platform will be made available under open-source licences, and the alliance members will issue already next week an early access software development kit for developers designing applications. The announcement follows months of speculation over Google’s plans for mobile phones. Google CEO Eric Schmidt said in a statement that Android is “more ambitious than any single ‘Google Phone’”, and the company expects Android to eventually power “thousands of different phone models”.

The founding members of the Open Handset Alliance are Aplix, Ascender, Audience, Broadcom, China Mobile, eBay, Esmertec, Google, HTC, Intel, KDDI, LivingImage, LG, Marvell, Motorola, NMS Communications, Noser, NTT DoCoMo, Nuance, Nvidia, PacketVideo, Qualcomm, Samsung, SiRF, SkyPop, SoniVox, Sprint Nextel, Synaptics, TAT - The Astonishing Tribe, Telecom Italia, Telefonica, Texas Instruments, T-Mobile and Wind River.

The rival LiMo association, which is also working on a Linux mobile handset development platform, said it welcomes Google’s initiative and expects the two groups will be able to work together. LiMo has 22 members, including NTT DoCoMo, Vodafone, Motorola, Samsung and NEC.

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