Telstra selects NSN, Huawei, Ericsson for LTE tests (Australia)

On 03.22.10, In Mobile, By Editor

www.WirelessFederation.com/news: Nokia Siemens Networks, Huawei and Ericsson have been chosen by Australian operator Telstra to conduct trials of LTE in May.

According to Michael Rocca, Telstra’s acting chief operations officer, trials will help Telstra understand how the new technology will work with the operator’s Next G network and the company will spend the next three to six months testing the feasibility and technical capability of LTE for future commercialization.

The aim of the tests conducted by Telstra is to understand a number of LTE’s attributes including radio access characteristics, coverage, performance, signal propagation and various enhanced packet core features.

Urban and rural evaluations of LTE will be included in the tests along with extensive laboratory trials. LTE with ZTE equipment is already been tested by Telstra’s subsidiary CSL in Hong Kong.

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Telstra warns investors of NBN “risk” (Australia)

On 03.17.10, In Mobile, By Editor

www.WirelessFederation.com/news: Telstra shareholders have been requested by Telstra’s second-largest shareholder, fund manager Australian Foundation Investment (state-backed NBN would be permitted to offer retail services) not to sell the firm’s fixed-line assets to the government at a bargain basement price. It has been felt that Telstra is entitled to get appropriate value for its assets, including its customer traffic and the company can expect a   “fair outcome” by the government.

Telstra’s copper network is eyed by the Federal Government as part of its controversial next-generation fiber network project, costing A$43 billion ($39.26b). According to the government, it will force Telstra to sell its 50% stake in pay TV operator Foxtel and forbid it from bidding for LTE spectrum if it fails to ink a fixed-line sale deal with NBN Co.

AFI managing director Ross Barker, on the other hand warned that there was a risk that the state-owned NBN could become a government-legislated monopoly. State-backed NBN would be permitted to offer retail services under the draft bill.

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Telstra completes trial of Group Radio Solution in Australia

On 03.15.10, In Mobile, By Editor

www.WirelessFederation.com/news: Trials for a new service known as Group Radio Solution have been completed by Australian telco Telstra. The service would see Australian emergency service organizations use its HSPA (Next G) network to operate their emergency radio communications.

Group Radio Solution capability designed by Ericsson would be made available if private mobile radio network operators’ show their interest. The service would then be made available across the Next G network footprint and complement existing essential and emergency radio networks.

According to Telstra Wireless executive director Mike Wright, the trial found a very real potential to combine Telstra’s Next G coverage footprint and range of services with the specific needs of private radio network operators and the extreme weather conditions over the past week illustrate the extraordinary challenges emergency services organizations face and it’s at these times when communications are paramount.

Telstra along with mobile device manufacturers is already working to design a prototype that would allow mobile voice and data services as well as two-way radio functionality on a single device if Telstra decide to deploy the Group Radio Solution.

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Vodafone apologies for network faults (New Zealand)

On 03.08.10, In Mobile, By Editor

www.WirelessFederation.com/news: The Bay of Plenty customers in New Zealand got apologies from telecom operator Vodafone for the network failure triggered during an upgrade to cables between Taupiri and Horotiu in the Waikato on Saturday morning, about 8.30am. Besides the company ensured that the issue did not happen again.

16 cell sites in the Bay of Plenty suffered the fault with some having 2G and 3G capability disrupted intermittently. Degraded performances were caused and some calls and text messages were not connected immediately.

A series of outages plaguing competitor Telecom’s XT network this year is followed by the fault caused in the area.
According to the company, 10 million in compensation to customers will be paid following the faults, which had caused clients and the Government to question the new network’s reliability.

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Australian operators asked to bar unwanted premium SMS charges

On 03.08.10, In Mobile, By Editor

www.WirelessFederation.com/news: Australian operators have been asked to enable premium rate SMS blocking as per which Australian users will get the choice to prevent unwanted premium SMS charges. The new rule will come into effect on July 1, 2010. New rules to stop mobile phone companies engaging with rogue operators are also being developed.

Through this move, ACMA has expressed its willingness to take a toll on those operators who repeatedly breach rules governing these premium SMS services. The industry will be closely monitored over the next 12 months to ensure that consumer concerns are being adequately addressed.

According to ACMA Chairman, Chris Chapman, the new rule will be a great option for parents who want to make sure their kids don’t sign up for something without understanding the charges and people trying to manage their phone budget can stop premium charges by barring these services from their phone.

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Windows Mobile 6.5 not eligible for Windows Phone 7 Series OS

On 03.08.10, In Mobile, By Editor

www.WirelessFederation.com/news: The recent announcement by Microsoft that Windows Mobile 6.5 devices cannot be upgraded to Windows Phone 7 Series has made all the recent buyers of Windows Mobile 6.5 devices like HTC’s HD2, regret their purchase. It has been made cleared by the company employees that the minimum hardware requirements for the new Windows Phone 7 Series operating system is not met by Windows Mobile 6.5 devices.

According to Natasha Kwan, General Manager for Microsoft’s Mobile Communications Business in the Asia-Pacific region, the phone doesn’t have the required three face buttons (it has five) and according to Tony Wilkinson, Business Operations Director for Microsoft Australia, it lacks certain other hardware components.

The lack of HD2’s hardware components reflects a bigger gap between WinMo 6.5 and Windows Phone 7 devices. Windows Phone 7 Series will require heavy-duty 3D graphics hardware that doesn’t exist in any WinMo 6.5 device yet.
Microsoft has set the bar high for 7 Series devices because of the fact that the HD2 runs a powerful 1Ghz processor and still didn’t make the cut.

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Telstra against NBN draft legislation (Australia)

On 03.03.10, In Mobile, By Editor

www.WirelessFederation.com/news: The recent change to the Australia’s National Broadband Network (NBN) proposal has been severely opposed by telecom operator Telstra which has expressed its deep concern by the change effecting negotiations over the sale of assets.

A new state-owned broadband network company will be allowed by the draft legislation to provide retail services, instead of just wholesale services. According to the company, such an outcome would run counter to the core purpose of the NBN and the government’s primary policy objective of restructuring the industry to have separate providers for retail and wholesale fixed network services.

Negotiations over the sale of assets to the government is currently on the cards of Telstra which has promised to spend up to AUD43 billion (USD38.6 billion) on rolling out high speed internet access throughout the country.

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Windows Phone 7 devices to have three main designs: Microsoft Australia

On 02.26.10, In Mobile, By Editor

www.WirelessFederation.com/news It has been revealed by the officials from Microsoft Australia that Windows Phone 7 using devices would have only three main form factors.

The details of the chassis program much rumored last year has also been confirmed by them.

Full-touch screen devices using a 1GHz processor or even faster is the characteristic of Chassis 1 and it is the first to reach the shipping target late in 2010. Chassis 2 devices will be similar to common Windows Mobile phones and will sport a touch screen and a sliding QWERTY keyboard.

Not very much detail has been given for Chassis 3 but it is said to involve handsets with fixed-in-place keyboards.

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Alca-Lu reflects damage control mode after NZ network failures

On 02.25.10, In Mobile, By Editor

www.WirelessFederation.com/news: The repeated outages at the HSPA network supplied by Alcatel-Lucent to Telecom NZ have made the former go into a damage control mode. CEO of Alca- Lu, Ben Verwaayen went onto the airwaves to defend the company, but failed to explain the failures.

Verwaayen attributed the initial network problem to a serious hardware failure caused by traffic surges resulting from users trying to get back on the network which subsequently overloaded the system.

According to Paul Budde from Australian-based research firm Paul Budde Communications, the situation was getting very serious for Telecom New Zealand, damaging its credibility which in turn could weaken its chance of winning the next stage of the country’s fiber roll out project.

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Telecom NZ faces another network crash, CTO resigns

On 02.23.10, In Mobile, By Editor

www.WirelessFederation.com/news: After the fourth outage of the XT Mobile network, the chief technical officer of Telecom New Zealand submitted his resignation. The supplier of the faulty 3G network, Alcatel-Lucent, has also announced the replacement of its NZ manager Steve Lowe.

Jyoti Mahurkar-Thombre, former general manager of Alcatel Lucent’s Next Generation Networks’ product unit, has been named as new NZ manager by the company.

The XT Mobile network was crippled for up to 12 hours on Monday, its fourth outage in two months.

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