CTIA-The Wireless Association welcomes Jaime Hjort as Director of Government Affairs
CTIA-The Wireless Association announced today that Jaime Hjort has joined as its director of government affairs. Hjort’s responsibilities include educating Congressional Members and their staff about the industry’s continuously innovative and competitive nature that drives the sector’s need for more spectrum.
“With her tremendous experience on the Hill and campaigns, Jaime will be instrumental to the association’s efforts on a variety of issues, from cell tax fairness to broadcast incentive auctions,” said Jot Carpenter, vice president, government affairs of CTIA-The Wireless Association.
Hjort served on Capitol Hill as a legislative assistant with Senator George Allen (R-VA) and as a professional staff member with Chairman Tom Davis (R-VA-11) on the U.S. House Committee on Government Reform. Prior to joining CTIA, Hjort was an attorney in South Carolina. Hjort has a Juris Doctor from George Mason University School of Law and a bachelor of arts in political science from The George Washington University.
CTIA-The Wireless Association® (www.ctia.org) is an international organization representing the wireless communications industry. Membership in the association includes wireless carriers and their suppliers, as well as providers and manufacturers of wireless data services and products. CTIA advocates on behalf of its members at all levels of government. The association also coordinates the industry’s voluntary best practices and initiatives, and sponsors the industry’s leading wireless tradeshows. CTIA was founded in 1984 and is based in Washington, DC.
Nokia Siemens Networks Uses Azimuth Systems’ Field-to-Lab Solution for LTE Testing
Azimuth Systems, Inc., a leading provider of wireless channel emulators and targeted test solutions, today announced that Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN), the world’s number one mobile infrastructure provider, has selected the Azimuth Field-to-Labâ„¢ solution to perform benchmark testing for upcoming User Equipment (UE) and LTE eNodeB releases using drive test data collected from real-world locations of interest. The Azimuth Field-to-Lab solution provides the ability to accurately reproduce the same channel conditions observed during drive testing, in the lab, with the addition of fading and noise, offering a highly repeatable and reliable test methodology that will enable NSN to ensure that LTE equipment will perform with the high quality expected when deployed.
Every day, a quarter of the world’s population connects using Nokia Siemens Networks infrastructure and solutions. As the world’s number one provider of mobile infrastructure, with the most LTE commercial deals of any vendor, NSN is focused on delivering the best quality experience to its customers and consumers worldwide.
“We constantly innovate to provide the smartest solutions to our customers and expect our suppliers to meet the same standards of excellence. We performed a detailed evaluation of potential testing solutions and the Azimuth Field-to-Lab solution was the only one available that met all of our testing goals in terms of capabilities,” said Frank Weyerich, head of LTE E2E development at Nokia Siemens Networks. “NSN has come to rely on Azimuth’s easy-to-setup and use, bi-directional ACE MX wireless channel emulator for MIMO testing and the addition of the Field-to-Lab capabilities provide NSN with a market-leading, highly reliable solution for accurate verification of equipment performance.”
By allowing real-world RF conditions collected by drive test tools/scanners to be replayed in the laboratory through the Azimuth ACEâ„¢ MX MIMO channel emulator, the Azimuth Field-to-Lab solution bridges the gap between laboratory and field-measured test results. By utilizing actual channel conditions, test engineers can validate or benchmark mobile equipment performance and/or recreate network trouble spots/conditions for analysis and resolution. It is also the firstin the industry that allows users to automate the entire testbed, with an automation architecture that facilitates sharing of automation modules not only within individual companies, but also across ecosystems to drive consistency in the way things are tested while providing more reliable and repeatable results. These capabilities enable the entire mobile ecosystem, including operators, handset manufacturers and infrastructure vendors to troubleshoot, improve and optimize performance prior to and post deployment. In addition, the Field-to-Lab solution features a host of other features for unprecedented ease-of-use.
“The Azimuth Field-to-Lab solution will enable NSN products to be tested using industry standard models and real-world conditions from actual field data collected from locations of interest,” said Pete Paglia, senior vice president of field operations at Azimuth Systems. “This provides a comprehensive, repeatable and reliable test environment that is closer to the ‘real world’ than ever before, further enhancing NSN’s ability to deliver the high quality products that the company has built a reputation on providing, while saving NSN a substantial amount of time and money.”
Azimuth Systems will be showcasing the Field-to-Lab solution in booth #263 at this week’s CTIA Wireless conference, taking place at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, FL from March 22-24. Contact Azimuth to schedule an in-person meeting or product demonstration.
About Azimuth Systems
Azimuth Systems is a leading provider of wireless channel emulators and targeted test solutions for LTE/LTE-Advanced, WiMAX, 2G/3G cellular and Wi-Fi technologies. Azimuth’s products are used by the world’s foremost wireless semiconductor designers, infrastructure and mobile equipment vendors, and service providers to improve wireless product quality and speed time-to-market. Azimuth’s wireless test and channel emulation products and solutions enable research, development, quality assurance and systems engineers to test the performance, conformance, certification and interoperability of broadband wireless devices and networks while greatly reducing the cost and time of manual testing.
The company is based near Boston, Massachusetts, USA and may be contacted at +1 (978) 263-6610 or at www.azimuthsystems.com. Follow Azimuth Systems on Twitter at:http://twitter.com/azimuthsystems.
US politicians demands ban on raising taxes on mobile services
Four US politicians have proposed a new bill that would impose a 5-year ban on any increases in the taxes imposed on cell phone services by federal and state governments. According to the proposal, on average, wireless customers now pay 16.3% in taxes and fees, more than twice the average rate of 7.4% on other goods and services.
In many localities, this cumulative tax burden is even worse: 26.8% in Baltimore, 19.9% in Omaha, 18.2% in Tallahassee, and 20.4% in New York City.
The Wireless Tax Fairness Act would halt this trend by imposing a temporary, five-year freeze on new Taxes that are imposed only on wireless services. They note that the bill does not take away any existing revenue from state or local governments; it simply caps the current taxes and fees. It is also the second attempt to pass such a bill after an attempt last year failed.
The bill follows a campaign that started in 2009 by pressure group, MyWireless.org calling for an identical 5-year moratorium on cell phone taxes. It was said that taxes on cell phone services raise US$21 billion from consumers.
MyWireless is described as a non-profit consumer advocacy organization, although it was founded by member companies of the CTIA, which represents mobile network operators. It also shares the same registered address as the CTIA in Washington D.C.
AT&T, Verizon May caution Mobile-Phone Users exceeding monthly Limits
Verizon Wireless, AT&T Inc. may have to start alerting mobile-phone subscribers who are on the brink of exceeding their monthly limits and generate higher service charges.
According to Chairman, Julius Genachowski, the Federal Communications Commission will propose rules tomorrow and may take a final vote in coming months.
According to reports citing FCC’s e-mail, subscribers may get voice or text alerts when they use too many minutes in a month or place calls using more expensive networks outside the U.S.
Genachowski further stated that it’s clear that the magnitude of this problem is significant, and that it’s time to take action. A survey by the FCC showed 30 million Americans, or one in every six mobile-phone users, had experienced bill shock.
Carriers led by Verizon Wireless, under FCC investigation for overcharging 15 million customers for data, have stated that mandatory messages aren’t necessary because carriers give customers ways to track use of data, voice and text features.
According to Christopher Guttman-McCabe, a vice president for CTIA- the Wireless Association, a Washington-based trade group, providers are concerned about prescriptive and costly rules. The industry continues to develop tools to keep customers informed about their level of usage.
According to the summary, the FCC’s proposal would require clear disclosure of the tools to track minutes of use, in part because too many consumers don’t know about them.
According to FCC, a Verizon Wireless customer, Robert St. Germain of Dover, Massachusetts, faced an $18,000 bill after free data downloads expired without warning. The company agreed to forego the charges after the bill was featured in a newspaper article and the FCC intervened.
According to Jeffrey Nelson, a spokesman for Basking Ridge, New Jersey-based Verizon Wireless, the company was able to resolve that issue. There are occasions when company messes up, and sometimes it takes awhile to get it right.
