Cricket inks a 4G roaming agreement with LightSquared (USA)
LightSquared has signed a national roaming agreement with Leap Wireless. This arrangement will allow Cricket, Leap’s operating subsidiary, to supplement the LTE coverage that Cricket plans to deploy across its own networks over the next few years with LTE roaming services from LightSquared.
According to Doug Hutcheson, Leap’s President and CEO, the company intends to deploy their LTE networks beginning this year to complement the existing nationwide 3G services they currently offer to customers. This new roaming arrangement will allow them to offer customers an even-greater 4G service area as LightSquared expands its own network.
The Financial and other terms of the roaming agreement were not disclosed by the company.
NetComm exhibits the liberty series LTE router at the Orlando international CTIA wireless 2011
NetComm Limited has announced the US unveiling of the new Libertyâ„¢ Series LTE Router at the International CTIA WIRELESS® show, Orlando, from the 22nd 24th March, 2011. NetComm’s Libertyâ„¢ Series LTE Router with WiFi was developed in swift response to the growing momentum of Long Term Evolution (LTE) network developments worldwide. The integration of an LTE module from Sierra Wireless, a leader in wireless solutions for mobile broadband applications, ensures compatibility with existing 2G and 3G services, and a solid end-user experience that supports worldwide roaming.
NetComm President and CEO, David Stewart said while NetComm is prepared for the rollout of global LTE networks which are expected to exceed current ADSL speeds with broadband delivery rates of up to 100Mbps download and 50Mbps upload, current focus remains on delivering HSPA+ products in line with the staggered global deployment of high-speed HSPA+ networks.
“Mobile broadband developments are advancing at a phenomenal rate with over 99% of the world’s WCDMA operators achieving the successful deployment of HSPA on their networks in the space of just 5 years. A large-scale migration to HSPA+ was achieved over the past year with HSPA+ now in service on over a quarter of the world’s HSPA networks,” Mr Stewart said.
Mr Stewart says, “While we look forward to exhibiting our LTE Router at the International CTIA Wireless® show, NetComm remains focused on delivering uniquely customized 42Mbps and 21Mbps with voice HSPA technologies to meet today’s demands.”
“NetComm’s long-term commitment to the prompt supply of specifically designed technologies which are engineered to meet the individual requirements of our carrier partners forms the basis of our proven track-record of staying at the forefront of these rapid network advances,” said Mr Stewart.
NetComm CTO, Mr Brett Stevens, says, “Consumers and businesses hungry for speed and versatility are pushing carriers to develop faster networks. With this comes a need for the delivery of products that are capable of making the most of progressing network speeds. Leading telecommunications carriers, both in North America and the rest of the world, are in the process of launching 42Mbps and 21Mbps networks in response to this growing consumer demand. I am pleased to say that NetComm has long been prepared for these network upgrades and has the corresponding technology ready to go.”
“The development of sizeable HSPA+ and LTE networks will be of particular benefit to those living or working in areas not serviced by ADSL, cable or fibre. NetComm’s Libertyâ„¢ Series Routers will give users the capability to establish a super high-speed Wi-Fi hotspot from virtually anywhere within their Internet service provider’s coverage area,” said Mr Stevens.
MTN Ghana subscription increases by 9%
The annual report of MTN Ghana revealed that the company saw a 9% increase in subscribers as of December 2010, bringing the number to 8.7 million.
According to MTN, the increase was largely driven by the introduction of new price plans and a revision allowing subscribers to view discounts in monetary terms rather than percentages.
The report also revealed that MTN Ghana’s performance was encouraging, considering aggressive competition through headline tariff reductions. SIM card registration has also had an impact.
Revenue increased by 14% ahead of subscriber growth, mostly due to increases in airtime and subscription revenue. SMS revenue also increased significantly, contributing 5% to revenue.
According to Phuthuma Nhleko, MTN Group President and CEO, the Group’s strong operational performance was underpinned by a 22% increase in subscribers to 141.6 million from 116.0 million in the prior year, as well as improved efficiencies due to various cost initiatives and despite higher levels of mobile penetration, aggressive competition and increased regulatory requirements. MTN continued to maintain network quality and capacity and to offer attractive segmented value propositions to customers.
Tata Communications selects Tranzeo for BWA (India)
Tranzeo Wireless Technologies, Inc. has been selected by Tata Communications to supply Broadband Wireless Access (BWA) equipment for network services to enterprise customers.
Tata will be deploying Tranzeo’s WiMAX and WiFi solutions in over 200 cities in India. Tranzeo will begin to ship immediately.
According to James Tocher, President and CEO of Tranzeo, they are excited and fortunate to be working with Tata to deploy broadband services across India. They have been successful in developing a broad family of products that meet the stringent requirements of Tier 1 service providers. Tata is the second Tier 1 service provider in India to select their equipment.
LG boasts of Android-based Optimus Pad
LG has launched Android based Optimus Pad. The LG Optimus Pad is powered by Google’s Android 3.0 platform and NVIDIA’s Dual-Core Tegra 2 mobile processor. The world’s first tablet with a 3D camera, the LG Optimus Pad supports a multimedia environment with a full HD 1080p decoding.
According to Dr. Jong-seok Park, President and CEO of LG Mobile Communications Company, with a flood of tablets hitting the market, they felt strongly that the LG Optimus Pad needed to set a new standard for what a tablet should be. The company thinks that the LG Optimus Pad achieves the right blend of portability and view ability with no performance compromises.
The pad has 8.9-inch diagonally and 149.4-mm horizontally. The company stated that its tablet device offers a sensible solution to other tablets on the market that are either too large for comfortable portability or too small for ideal viewing. With 15:9 aspect ratio, the LG Optimus Pad allows users access to the full range of applications in Android Market and its 1280 x 768 WXGA resolution displays multimedia content in full widescreen format.
The LG Optimus Pad will begin shipping in local markets starting from the next month.
Millicom sees 10 % rise in Q4 revenue
Millicom International has posted that its fourth-quarter revenues increased by 10% to US$1.07 billion, including the consolidation of its Honduras subsidiary earlier in the year.
Net profit decreased to US$157 million, compared to US$454 million a year ago. After issuing the one-off gain of US289 million in 2009, the profits dropped by almost 5%. For the full year, revenues rose by 16% to US$3.9 billion.
In Q4 10, Millicom added 1.1 million net new mobile customers, reaching 38.6 million total mobile customers, which is an increase of 14% versus Q4 09. Out of this number, over 1.7 million were using 3G enabled devices for data services (handsets and data cards) in Latin America, a gain of 15% from Q3 10. One half of all the new customers added in Latin America in 2010 were 3G data users.
According to Mikael Grahne, President and CEO of Millicom, the execution of Millicom’s value creation strategy continues to deliver good results, with close to $1.1 billion of revenues, $497 million of EBITDA and an EBITDA margin of 46.5% recorded in the fourth quarter. They have produced double digit top line growth in all four quarters of 2010 with an evolving distribution of growth by region in the latter part of the year. Growth in Africa remains strong at 12% in local currency although it is lower than in previous quarters as market price decreases have accelerated lately. In Central America, revenue growth has improved quarter on quarter and is now reverting to positive.
They have also made further progress in the fourth quarter with a number of their strategic objectives. In the area of asset optimization, they were pleased to announce two additional tower deals with Helios Towers Africa in December. Almost two thirds of their towers in Africa should be outsourced by the end of 2011, creating over $400 million of value through cash and equity and expected future cost savings.
To optimize balance sheet, they have redeemed their 10% corporate bond in full on December 1, following the raising of $450 million of debt by their operation in El Salvador in September. The company is now in a position where 100% of their debts are at an operating level which reduces net financing costs, improves tax efficiency and mitigates country risk.
He added that this year, as in 2010, the company aims to achieve the right balance between top line growth, profitability and cash flow generation. They expect their EBITDA margin to be in the mid 40s and operating free cash flow to be in the mid teens as a percentage of revenues for 2011. The company also expects capex to exceed $800 million in 2011, excluding new spectrum expenditure, as they roll out 3G in Africa and add capacity in Latin America.
Aircell raises $35 mil for In-Flight Wi-Fi service (USA)
Aircell, In-flight Wi-Fi service provider, has raised an additional US$35 million financing from its existing investors and Aircell’s management team.
The company currently offers in-flight Wi-Fi services on nine of the top 11 USA based airlines and on nearly 6,000 business aircraft. Proceeds of the financing will be used to fund growth in both commercial and business aviation markets.
According to Michael Small, Aircell President and CEO, 2010 was the year when In-flight Internet went mainstream and Aircell established its leadership in this exciting new mobile Internet venue. Since securing their exclusive spectrum license in 2006, they have raised more than $500 million. Existing investors include Ripplewood Holdings, a major private equity group, Blumenstein/Thorne Information Partners and other investment entities associated with investor/entrepreneur Oakleigh Thorne.
Moving forward in 2011, Aircell is expected to increase its base of installed aircraft by an average of three per day in the airline market. Gogo is available on all AirTran Airways, Virgin America and mainline Delta Air Lines flights as well as flights operated by Air Canada, Alaska Airlines, American Airlines, United Airlines and US Airways, with service on Frontier Airlines expected to begin shortly.
China Telecom’s Chongqing Telecom Builds Massive Smart Wi-Fi Infrastructure throughout China’s Largest City with Ruckus Wireless
Ruckus Wireless today announced that Chongqing Telecom, a unit of China Telecom, has selected its Smart Wi-Fi products and technology for a large-scale, citywide deployment of Wi-Fi hotspots supporting an innovative new service called Tianyi Broadband.
Chongqing Telecom has now deployed over 4,000 Ruckus ZoneFlex indoor and outdoor Smart Wi-Fi access points (APs) along with ZoneDirector WLAN controllers across the city. Situated in southwestern mainland China with a population of 31 million people and covering 31,800 square miles, Chongqing is one of four direct-controlled municipalities by the People’s Republic of China the largest province in China.
The Ruckus Smart Wi-Fi APs now cover hundreds of hot zones within five districts and have been installed in a wide range of locations spanning from universities to restaurants, office buildings to shopping centers and public venues.
“It’s very clear that smarter Wi-Fi has now become a strategic imperative by Tier 1 carriers around the world to deal with the Mobile Internet,” said Selina Lo, president and CEO of Ruckus Wireless. ”Chongqing Telecom is widely viewed as a leader in their use and deployment of Smart Wi-Fi to deal with the explosion of dual-band devices that are consuming and generating huge amounts of data traffic. Operators like Chongqing are quickly recognizing the need for carrier-class Wi-Fi solutions designed for this specific purpose.”
According to Chongqing, with the proliferation of mobile devices, subscribers are now accessing the Internet from every conceivable location.
Tianyi Broadband a user-centric solution that bundles wired broadband, Wi-Fi and CDMA 3G in the same package allows users to connect to China Telecom’s services through a single account. Services include email, SMS, Tianyi-live (a chat service), love music (streaming music) and Tianyi video (video streaming).
Chongqing’s stated aim was to give subscribers the same Internet experience wherever they are: at home or outside, with the same user account for them to use in any location. Therefore, it was critical to have a high performance and very reliable mobile network to deliver that experience. By offloading data traffic from the current CDMA 1X and EVDO to Wi-Fi, Chongqing is delivering a superior user experience without dramatically investing, while adding new capacity to the 3G infrastructure, operation and maintenance.
Wi-Fi represents the ideal complement to Chongqing’s existing wireline network providing broader and reliable wireless coverage to mobile Internet subscribers. By linking with CHINANET, the backbone of Chinese public Internet operated and managed by China Telecom, Chongqing Telecom can more easily and flexibly provide users with high-speed Internet access nearly everywhere they roam.
According to Chongqing Telecom, a key challenge has been to achieve good stable network coverage across schools, hospitals, shopping malls, commercial streets, hotels, office buildings and other environments where unlicensed spectrum is inherently unpredictable.
Chongqing said it selected Ruckus because of its ability to deliver reliable connectivity on such a large scale at the most attractive price point. According to the company, Ruckus Smart Wi-Fi systems were found to be among the easiest to manage and deploy. More importantly, Ruckus was the only Wi-Fi supplier Chongqing found to deliver predictable throughput in such challenging RF environments.
In public and private venues alike, there are now many other Wi-Fi networks that cause considerable interference. Ruckus patented technology was able to elegantly mitigate interference for Chongqing through the use of dynamic beamforming technology. This saved Chongqing from the worries of not delivering good throughput to support demanding applications such as music and video chatting.
Ruckus’ patented BeamFlex smart antenna array technology with complete RF management, constantly focuses and directs RF signals over the best path for each client. This reduces co-channel interference between access points (APs) and minimizes packet loss while extending signal coverage. With the technology, Chongqing was able to significantly reduce the number of APs to cover a given area and lower operational and capital expense compared with alternative solutions.
Chongqing’s new Smart Wi-Fi infrastructure includes thousands of ZoneFlex 2741 outdoor 802.11g and indoor ZoneFlex 2942 802.11g APs. Every Ruckus ZoneFlex AP uniquely integrates a dual-polarized, high-gain intelligent antenna array that allows operators to build a new class of hotspots capable of supporting streaming multimedia services.
For management, Chongqing deployed new, high-capacity ZoneDirector controllers with WAPI and IPv6 support. The Ruckus ZoneDirector supports a variety of applications needed to plan, deploy and operate the wireless network, including Wi-Fi planning, user authentication/billing and integrating with operators’ management systems. With the combination of campus network and value-added services from Tianyi, Chongqing Telecom is able to gain ROI more quickly.
With the ZoneDirectors, Chongqing makes use of multiple service set identifiers (SSIDs) to allow for a range of differentiated services at each hotspot. For example, wireless services on a university campus can be divided into two different types the campus network access for students and faculty, and the service used for high speed Internet access to meet different demands of students, teachers and visitors.
Today, subscribers can enjoy quality wireless broadband services in any Chongqing hotspot. Looking forward, Chongqing said it plans to extend the Wi-Fi network to suburbs and rural areas to achieve complete coverage across the entire city.
World-class fibre-to-the-home network expanding to Halifax Regional Municipality
Bell Aliant, with the support of the Government of Nova Scotia, today announced a $55 million investment to expand FibreOP, its world-class fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) network, to approximately 160,000 homes and businesses in the Halifax Regional Municipality.
The FTTH network for Nova Scotia was introduced last spring with Bell Aliant’s $15 million investment to launch FibreOP services first in Sydney. This brings the total FTTH investment in Nova Scotia to over $70 million to serve approximately 190,000 homes and businesses.
“The response to our FibreOP service has been outstanding, and we’re pleased to now expand this network to customers in our largest and most competitive market,” said Karen Sheriff, President and CEO, Bell Aliant. “Giving our customers access to the most advanced technology available not only serves their communication needs today, but ensures they are ready for whatever the future holds. We know that the demand for bandwidth will only continue to grow, and we’ll be ready.”
The Government of Nova Scotia contributed $2 million to the project to help ensure economic development opportunities for Nova Scotia with leading edge technology infrastructure.
“To ensure Nova Scotia’s economy continues to grow, the province needs to remain competitive in the global economy,” said Premier Darrell Dexter. “That means making sure we have the right telecommunications infrastructure in place, right across the province. This is a significant step forward in achieving that goal.”
The first in Canada to cover an entire city with fibre-to-the-home, Bell Aliant was recently recognized as the best in all of North America for innovation and leadership in FTTH deployment with the FTTXcellence Award, presented at the 2010 FTTH Conference in Las Vegas.
FibreOP Internet offers choices in speeds, including the fastest Internet available in Nova Scotia with 170 Mbps download and 30 Mbps upload service. These speeds enable customers to not only download music or movies and share video or photos faster than ever before, but also accommodate the growing need for multiple users within the home.
FibreOP TV offers a 100 per cent digital TV service including High Definition television available on all TVs, and watch and record PVR. Customers can enjoy unmatched digital picture and sound quality on over 200 video channels, 70 HD channels and 98 music channels.
FibreOP service will be available to customers in Halifax, Dartmouth, Eastern Passage, Cole Harbour, Sackville, Hammonds Plains, Waverley, Timberlea, Spryfield, Bedford, St. Margaret’s Bay and Lake Echo starting in mid-2011. Customers in Sydney and Sydney River currently have FibreOP service, to be followed by Glace Bay, North Sydney, Sydney Mines and New Waterford later this year.
Customers can pre-register for FibreOP service by visiting www.bellaliant.net/fibreop or calling 1-866-FIBREOP (1-866-342-7367) and will be notified when service is available in their area.
By the end of 2012, Bell Aliant will have invested almost half a billion dollars to extend FTTH to over 600,000 homes and businesses in the areas we serve.
About Bell Aliant
Bell Aliant (TSX: BA) is one of North America’s largest regional communications providers and the first company in Canada to cover an entire city with fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) technology with its FibreOPâ„¢ services. Through its operating entities it serves customers in six Canadian provinces with innovative information, communication and technology services including voice, data, Internet, video and value-added business solutions. Bell Aliant’s employees deliver the highest quality of customer service, choice and convenience.
