Ericsson and Vantrix partner for video optimization
Vantrix, the global leader of mobile video optimization and delivery solutions, today announced that it has been selected by Ericsson, the world’s leading provider of technology and services to telecom operators, to be their partner in video optimization. Under the terms of the agreement, Ericsson will be bundling Vantrix Bandwidth Optimizer with its Multiservice Proxy mobile broadband traffic optimization solution.
We predict that the number of global mobile broadband subscriptions will double during 2011 to 1 billion, and that video traffic will represent significant portion of the overall mobile data trafficâ€
We predict that the number of global mobile broadband subscriptions will double during 2011, to 1 billion, and that video traffic will represent significant portion of the overall mobile data traffic,†said Sanjay Kaul, Vice President, Consumer and Business Applications at Ericsson. The partnership will address our customers’ need to efficiently manage, optimize video content delivery over mobile networks, where the quality of experience becomes key.â€
Vantrix Bandwidth Optimizer optimizes video and delivers it in real time while maintaining best-in-class Quality of Experience. Vantrix Bandwidth Optimizer provides up to 70 percent savings on network CAPEX and OPEX (RAN, backhaul and core) by dynamically monitoring network congestion and substantially reducing the size of videos.
Mobile video has become an integral part of daily life and it has transformed how consumers use their mobile phones. Over the last two years, as video has become more dominant in mobile networks, mobile subscribers have endured outages and reductions in speed, resulting in an unsatisfactory video experience,†said Allan Benchetrit, President & CEO of Vantrix. We are very proud to partner with Ericsson to provide the market with the most advanced and efficient mobile video technology. Our solution is the most advanced to control, optimize and manage the delivery of video in mobile networks, while actually improving the current viewing experience.â€
About Vantrix
Vantrix, the global leader of mobile video optimization and delivery solutions, improves mobile and converged video economics for its customers by ensuring that content is delivered cost effectively, and with the best possible user experience, regardless of the service, device or network. Vantrix solutions are deployed in over 70 networks, serving over 1 billion subscribers worldwide. Vantrix is proud to count among its customers: Sprint (NYSE:S), Orange, Telefonica (NYSE:TEF), T-Mobile, TeliaSonera (OMX:TLSN), MTS, Etisalat (ADX:ETISALAT), Saudi Telecom Company (TADAWUL:STC), and Tata Telecom. Vantrix is headquartered in Montreal with offices in London, Hong Kong and Dubai. To learn more about Vantrix, visit www.vantrix.com.
Airtel Africa & East African telecom operators ensure against fraud and revenue loss
Whilst the region’s telecommunications industry has seen a quantum leap in the past decade with markets like Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda being some of the most competitive & lucrative in the whole continent there remains this shadowy side of telecoms in Africa.
Operators often compete at a cut-throat level when it comes to pricing, OPEX, CAPEX, distribution models, etc. But service providers like Airtel realise that there is money to be saved by committing to fraud and risk avoidance as well.
In Nairobi on the 6th April, the Kenyatta International Conference Centre will provide a hub and platform for learning, debating and networking around this important issue of Fraud.
In particular, 2 exclusive Master Classes will take place. The first will be run by Airtel Africa’s Group Revenue Assurance & Fraud Manager, Hawas Garba Matta, the second by an international expert Patrick Gitau of Globacom Nigeria. The whole session will be opened and chaired by Ade Banjoko, Chair of the GSM Africa Fraud Forum.
Topics and discussions in these classes will include:
• effectively integrating risk, fraud & revenue assurance into your corporate strategy
• telecoms enterprise risk management
• optimizing end-to-end fraud & revenue assurance strategies
• implementing risk based fraud & revenue assurance framework with essential from the top policyâ€
• bridging the GAPs by assessing & monitoring product life-cycle processes to identify the sources of fraud & revenue loss
• focus on optimised fraud detection through real-time capabilities
• how to tackle telecom fraud typologies in East Africa – bad debt management, process flows and inefficiencies, and capacity deficiencies problems in your network
• how to get value from RAMS and FMS
• vendor valuation criteria and considerations, and working closely with suppliers to minimise revenue leakages
The market has responded very positively to this brand new feature to East Africa Com conference and exhibition,†says Emily Cottam, Senior Conference Producer, East Africa Com. Fraud is a topic that East African operators can’t afford to overlook if they are to remain profitable in this increasingly competitive market. These master classes are a one-stop-shop for operators looking to understand and implement effective fraud prevention strategies.â€
What’s more, these master classes form just one segment of the East Africa Com 2011 conference & exhibition, now in its 7th year.
Alcatel-Lucent with China Mobile to develop Cloud-based radio access network
Alcatel-Lucent and China Mobile have announced that they are planning to develop a centralized, collaborative, Cloud-based RAN (C-RAN).
The companies believe that the C-RAN will provide a common platform for multi-mode wireless standards such as GSM, 3G, and LTE, and is expected to lower OPEX by up to 50% and CAPEX by 15%.
According to Rajeev Singh-Molares, President of Alcatel-Lucent’s activities in Asia-Pacific, the partnership with China Mobile is directly addressing the challenges of high energy costs, explosion of mobile video and sustainable development. By helping them replace traditional network designs with flexible cloud-like architectures, they are preparing the future and help show the way in terms of technology and economic models.
The strategic partnership for C-RAN will leverage Alcatel-Lucent’s recently-announced lightRadio platform.
Malaysian mobile broadband market to be worth US$3 billion by 2015
A new research report has revealed that the Malaysian mobile broadband and data market was worth about US$2 billion in 2010 and is expected to reach US$3 billion by 2015.
According to researchers, the mobile subscriber market is heading towards saturation and all market players are looking at mobile broadband as a growth driver. While Malaysia’s mobile market is saturated with a subscriber penetration rate of 117% in 2010, mobile broadband and 3G services still represent significant opportunities with wireless broadband having the potential to achieve up to 5.6 million subscribers by 2015.
Wireless broadband has been fast gaining popularity over fixed broadband with almost 2 million wireless broadband subscribers compared to 1.65 million fixed broadband subscribers in 2010. In 2009, fixed broadband dominated over wireless broadband with 1.4 million subscribers to 0.9 million subscribers.
Still, fixed broadband will gain market share in 2011 and 2012 due to the introduction of high-speed broadband and wholesale deals by Maxis and Celcom. Governmental support for high-speed broadband will also help drive the fixed broadband market. The Malaysian fixed broadband market is expected to reach 2.2 million subscribers in 2015.
The increasing use of smartphones, driven by rapid price decline and application richness, has increased demand for mobile broadband. Smartphones access the internet via a 3G connection, allowing users to be connected on the go without the need for dongles.
According to researchers, with the Internet user base to reach 23-25 million by 2015, it is expected that 70% of them would have access to a personal internet connection. The smartphone strategy will be the big bet of all mobile operators going forward especially when almost 13 million broadband users are expected to access the internet via smartphones by 2015.
Other areas of interest include the enterprise services market which consists of data center services, M2M services, IT/System Integration services, and WAN services. The enterprise services market earned revenues of RM2.7 billion in 2010 and is expected to reach RM5.8 billion in 2015, making it the fastest growing ICT market in Malaysia.
The Malaysian Data Center Services market is set to grow at 16 percent CAGR with Cloud Computing to be an important driver of growth as Malaysian enterprises demonstrates increasing interest in Cloud services.
SaaS, the dominant segment of the Cloud market, is set to witness strong growth powered by CRM, Collaboration and HRM applications in the Malaysian market.
Researchers add that enterprises in Malaysia have recently begun embracing the SaaS delivery model. Their interest is primarily driven by the lower total cost of ownership in the services model, the conversion of CapEx to predictable OpEx and the ability to scale up or down depending on business needs.
Motivated by the growing interest, an increasing number of global participants are showing high level of activity in the country, which is helping improve awareness levels across enterprises.
However, enterprises continue to remain skeptical of Cloud adoption due to Security and Privacy concerns. This, along with the low reliability of broadband internet in the country, may hamper BAaaS adoption in the short-term. The government’s efforts towards building a knowledge economy and improving broadband infrastructure may alleviate these challenges in the long run.
NSN launches New Flexi Base Station Controller
Nokia Siemens Networks has introduced a new Flexi BSC (base station controller) that offers up to 80% reduction in energy consumption along with a 40% increase in capacity over existing base station controllers.
The new Flexi BSC also provides operators the ability to move to all-IP for communicating among the base station, base station controller and mobile switching center with two new transport features – Packet Abis and A over IP. Maximum cost savings can be achieved using IP over Ethernet transport, the common transport technology for GSM, 3G and LTE.
According to Prashant Agnihotri, head of GSM/EDGE product management, Nokia Siemens Networks, higher voice capacity with fewer base station controllers reduces energy consumption, a major cost for operators, along with simplifying operations and maintenance resulting in lower OPEX. The company is committed to driving scalable products that maximize operators’ investment and provide a clear roadmap to all-IP. Whether it is greener networks, capacity, functional evolution or transmission, the new Flexi BSC is a milestone product.
Flexi BSC is future-proof, providing for the first time in the industry a handling capacity of 4,200 transceivers and over 25,000 Erlangs in a single cabinet. This implies that, with the new Flexi BSC configuration, operators can replace up to 32 existing base station controllers in the field.
The new Transcoder TCSM3i configuration also offers 40% more capacity while maintaining the compact size.
Flexi BSC also provides an evolution path to Nokia Siemens Networks’ Multicontroller BSC that can be used to extend the capacity of Flexi BSC. The latest software for Flexi BSC and Transcoder TCSM3i is based on 3GPP Release 8 and the commercial deliveries are in progress.
Zain seeks to re-initiate merger talks with Palestine’s Paltel
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: Resurrection of the aborted merger of the Jordanian assets with Palestine’s Paltel has been seeked by Kuwait’s Zain on the same terms as before.
According to the terms and conditions of the agreement announced by the company in May last year, the ownership of the Jordan subsidiary to Paltel was to be transferred by Zain in exchange for taking an equity shareholding of 56.53% in the enlarged company. However, the company has to call off the talk last November as it did not receive the required government approvals that were condition precedent to concluding the deal.
Significant” synergies and efficiencies in CAPEX and OPEX spend and purchasing power has also been seeked by Zain.
