Clearwire launches in the Windy City

US WiMAX poster child Clearwire made its debut in the city of Chicago this week as the service provider expands its nationwide footprint.

The Chicago area- which coincidentally, is US kit vendor Motorola’s hometown – is served by cell sites built with Motorola’s WAP 600 and WAP 450 Diversity access points. The WAP 450 uses tower-top power amplifiers that are linked by fibre optic cable with the base control unit, creating a very compact cell site configuration that is significantly smaller than traditional cellular infrastructure products.

Motorola is also supplying two WiMAX devices, the USBw 100 and CPEi 150 to users of the Clear service. The CPEi 150 caters to desktop users, while the USBw 100 is a dongle form factor device catering to users on the move.

Both the USBw 100 and CPEi 150 are data-only devices that operate in the 2.5GHz frequency band.

Telstra outlines organisational shake up

Australian incumbent carrier Telstra on Monday announced an organisational overhaul that will see the company divided into four main groups as well as a reshuffling of the top brass.

Telstra CEO David Thodey said the shake up would help the company better compete in fixed and mobile markets as well as boost its presence overseas.

Two new product units will be created with the wireless data and apps division to be headed by Philip Jones and the fixed broadband unit to be led by Justin Milne. Tarek Robbiati meanwhile will take charge of an international unit, including Telstra’s businesses in China, international sales and business development and Robert Nason has been appointed as head of customer satisfaction, simplification and productivity, responsible for improving customer service. Network, technology and IT functions will also be consolidated under the leadership of Michael Rocca, acting chief operations officer.

“Asia is a very important market for Telstra and the creation of this new unit enables us to take a co-ordinated approach to our performance in one of the world’s fast-growing markets,” Thodey said.

Telstra also announced that Holly Kramer, group managing director of Telstra product management, has left Telstra the company.

In September Telstra butted up against the national government as the minister for communications, Stephen Conroy, called for the carrier to be broken up.

Conroy announced fundamental reforms to existing telecommunications regulations that would prevent Telstra from acquiring additional spectrum for advanced wireless broadband, unless it agrees to a functional separation plan.

The proposed break up, which is similar to that undergone by BT in the UK, would seek to end Telstra’s dominance in the sector and would see the firm conduct its network operations and wholesale functions at arm’s length from the company; provide equivalent price terms to its own retail business and non-Telstra wholesale customers; address the company’s vertical integration; address its ownership of a hybrid fibre coaxial cable network; and assess its interest in the Foxtel pay TV network.

but the reforms leave scope for Telstra to keep these assets if it can come up with a plan of its own that satisfies the government.

Published by ZTE

ADSL plus is currently being deployed worldwide as the new mainstream broadband technology for residential and business customers. But at the same time, the industry is gearing up for the next step of the DSL evolution: VDSL . This second version of the very high-speed digital subscriber line (VDSL) standard from ITU-T promises to deliver 100Mbps symmetrical traffic on short copper loops.

The greater bandwidth of VDSL gives telecommunications operators the ability to offer advanced services such as multiple streams of interactive standard and high-definition TV over IP over the existing copper plant. TV services are fast becoming strategically important to telecommunication operators who are competing head-to-head with cable operators launching voice over IP (VoIP) and high-speed internet services.

ITU began drafting its VDSL standard (G.99 . ) in January 004. Consensus for the standard was reached at a meeting in Geneva in May 005. As with ADSL/ /plus, the underlying modulation in the VDSL standard is discrete multitone (DMT). VDSL is based on both the VDSL1-DMT and ADSL /ADSL plus recommendations. Therefore, it is spectrally compatible with existing services and enables multimode operability with ADSL/ /plus. VDSL extend the spectrum to 0MHz and can deliver 00Mbps symmetrical traffic on short copper loops at most.

 Click here to read this whitepaper: vdsl2-a-feasible-solution-fore2809clast-milee2809d-nov

The Sony Ericsson Satio is one of the handsets affected

It’s been a rough week for struggling handset manufacturer Sony Ericsson, with issues affecting two of its flagship devices in the UK.

Earlier in the week high street retailers the Carphone Warehouse and Phones 4U pulled the Symbian S60-based Satio device from sale after customers began returning the device due to a software issue when using certain applications.

Operators Vodafone, Orange, T-Mobile, 3 and O2 are still selling the device, and there is some speculation that those carriers which put their own user interface on the handsets – Orange and Vodafone – are not seeing the problem. This suggests that the bug may be in Sony Ericsson’s own UI layer.

Sony Ericsson said that only a “small number” of consumers have experienced software issues and the company is working quickly to solve the problem.

Then in the last couple of days, Sony Ericsson’s Aino device, which runs the company’s in house developer OS, was also flagged up with software issues affecting the touchscreen interface. The Aino is still on sale in the UK and again, Sony Ericsson claims “only a very small number of handsets” are affected.

There was a time, not so long ago, when the iPhone was a byword for exclusivity. Carriers fought for the right to offer it and queues formed outside the small number of shops which shone with its presence. Now you can buy the thing in Tesco. The UK’s largest supermarket, which pockets something like one of every seven pounds spent in Britain, will soon be making the latest versions of Apple’s iconic handset available on its MVNO, Tesco Mobile.

No doubt Apple is pleased that the phone will be available to so many people, but the Informer can’t help but feel that there will be some reservations at the firm’s Cupertino headquarters about its brand being tossed about among the great, unwashed masses.

To balance out this social descent, a new version of the iPhone has been created, by a UK luxury goods firm called Goldstriker. This phone, built for an anonymous Australian gold magnate, cost $3.2m. Yup, three point two million dollars – for a phone. The diamond set as the home button on this grotesque creation is 7.1 carats. In total there are 68 carats of diamonds on the front of the handset. Truly wealth and taste do not always go hand in hand. No wonder the customer wants to stay anonymous, he’s probably acutely embarrassed.

There are no plans for this phone to be made available at Tesco. Yet.

O2, which plays host to Tesco Mobile and was the first UK carrier to offer the iPhone, announced this week that it is to bulk up its network with the deployment of 1,500 new cell sites starting immediately and continuing throughout next year. The rollout, which will see 200 new sites in London alone, is necessary because of the popularity of data centric handsets like the iPhone and the usage patterns they’ve inspired, said O2’s CTO Derek McManus. By way of illustration, he said, watching a youtube video on a smartphone can be equivalent to sending 500,000 text messages simultaneously.

O2 says its 3G network covers more than 84 per cent of the UK population and is 100 per cent HSDPA enabled. And earlier this year O2 and Vodafone announced a pan-European network sharing agreement that in the UK will see both companies focus on joint building of new sites and the consolidation of existing 2G and 3G sites.

O2’s competitors Orange and T-Mobile announced earlier this year their intention to merge their UK operations and Orange revealed a similar deal in Switzerland this week. Orange owner France Telecom and Danish incumbent TDC, which operates Swiss carrier Sunrise said they will combine the operations, creating a new fixed and mobile player.

Figures from Informa Telecoms & Media for the end of Q3 this year show that the two carriers combined mobile customer base was 3.41 million, 38 per cent of the market but some way behind incumbent Swisscom, which had 5.54 million customers at the end of September. The new player would also have 1.1 million fixed and broadband customers.

The merger, if completed, would leave just two mobile carriers in the Swiss market. Under the deal, the French incumbent will pay €1.5bn to TDC and will become a 75 per cent shareholder in the combined entity, while TDC will hold the remaining 25 per cent. The firms predict synergies of €2.1bn.

The move may presage TDC’s eventual departure from Switzerland, as it will have the right to sell its stake to third parties from the second year or launch an IPO from the third year.

Over the border in Austria, there’s been an unusual development in the telecommunications industry this week. Austria’s one of those countries where you can’t make civil servants redundant, where bureaucracy remains very much a job for life. Because Telekom Austria used to be state owned, its staff have civil servant rights, which makes things tricky for TA when it wants to make like the rest of the industry and cut a few heads.

The firm’s found a novel way to sidestep this issue, though, and has transferred 500 staff whom it no longer needs to the Austrian police force. You can have a job for life, it seems, they just don’t specify which job. It’s a brilliant idea, because there’ll always be crime, so there’ll always be a need for police. Although it must make for a strange transition, leaving your job at a telco, being given a badge and a gun and being told to go and shoot some criminals. Although perhaps they’re going to work on the administrative side…

TA’s former head man Boris Nemsic, who looks like he’d make quite a good hard- boiled detective himself, oversaw some handy results at his new employer Vimpelcom this week. The firm’s subscriber base grew by 1.7 million during the third quarter, reaching 65.4m. Net profit more than doubled to RUB13.51bn, while the firm also successfully launched its Beeline brand into Vietnam, and struck a deal to enter the Laotian market.

The Nortel sell-off came closer to its natural conclusion this week, with Ericsson and Ciena picking over the carcass. Ciena paid $769m for the Canadian firm’s optical networking and carrier Ethernet business on Monday after an auction that ran through last weekend.

Ericsson nabbed “certain assets of the Carrier Networks division of Nortel relating to the GSM business in the US and Canada,” the firm said, stumping up just $70m, while the GSM-R business and other bits and pieces outside of North America went to Kapsch, an outfit making its debut in A Week in Wireless this week. For Ericsson the deal represents is a relationship builder with Nortel customers AT&T and T-Mobile.

“Along with our recent acquisition of Nortel’s CDMA and LTE assets, the transaction emphasizes Ericsson’s commitment to the North American market and strengthens our position as a leading provider of telecommunications technology and services in the United States and Canada,” said Hans Vestberg, incoming president and CEO of Ericsson.

Ericsson may well be the world leader in managed services, but that didn’t sway MEA carrier Zain, which this week outsourced its East African network operations to Nokia Siemens Networks. Under the agreement, NSN will pick up five-year management contract in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, with an eye to optimising, modernising and managing 3,000 plus multi-vendor mobile sites catering to nine million customers. Upgrades to energy efficient technologies and off grid power solutions will be a key component of the deal.

It’s NSN’s biggest multi-vendor outsourcing deal in the region and is also one of the first such deals of its kind in Africa, the firm said. As part of the agreement, approximately 350 Zain employees will be transferred to NSN. Zain will no doubt hope this will help with the financial drain its African operations are putting on the firm’s coffers.

Finally, off to the world of crime, and the news that a UK prison inspector has recommended that phone jamming technology should be used in Brit clinks given the spread of mobiles among inmates. They’re not supposed to have phones, but they are routinely smuggled in by visitors hiding them in their underwear, corrupt prison officers, or even thrown over the walls. They are also, if you believe certain sources, taken by visitors into prisons secreted in what might most politely be described as ‘nature’s pocket’.

Last year 7,000 phones were seized from prisoners, although inspectors reckon three times as many are in circulation. They change hands for around £400 a pop. That sounds like a niche MVNO business model if ever there was one. It could be called Cell-cell. Or Con-comm. Or, if there’s a business to be had providing jamming services to prisons, it would have to be called Cell Block.

Take care

The Informer

Almost three years after the launch of the iPhone, it was clear at the recent FT World Telecoms conference that the mobile industry is still catching-up with the new paradigm the device has created.

In recent months handset vendors such as Palm, Motorola, HTC and Nokia have launched new handsets that compare favourably with aspects of Apple’s device. However, notwithstanding the achievements of some handset manufacturers in emulating the iPhone, the mobile industry as a whole is still leagues behind Apple in creating a truly compelling user experience of mobile internet and services.

While it’s clear for handset vendors what they have to do to close the gap on Apple in the smartphone space – produce something that’s as good as the iPhone – operators are still struggling how to replicate the level of experience Apple has created for high-spending mobile users.

Mobile operators have long been guilty of burying their collective head in the sand when it comes to assessing the success of their mobile data efforts. For five or so years, countless operator CEOs would stand up at conferences and tout the success of their closed mobile portals.

This would probably still be going on today had Apple not forced them to admit the reality: the experience they were creating was appalling. It finally became clear that the success of these portals the CEOs said for so long was just about to happen was never going to happen. No wonder data about uptake and usage of mobile portals was always so hard to come by: had this been made public investors would have taken their money from the industry in droves.

But the iPhone changed everything in the mobile industry, not least forcing executives at operators to admit that they didn’t have a clue what they were doing with advanced mobile services.

Which brings us to this month. At the FT conference held in London, I was amazed to hear almost every single speaker, including senior figures at Vodafone, France Telecom and Deutsche Telekom, state that, essentially, they were still looking for the right approach to mobile services.

Each one of these speakers cited the iPhone experience as the benchmark they were all looking to emulate. And with the exception of Vodafone and its 360 initiative, none of the speakers had much of an idea about what their response was going to be to the iPhone.

And Apple wasn’t even at the event. Come to think of it, Apple hasn’t been a speaker at any major mobile event that I can think of. What’s incredible is that Apple hasn’t needed to come and find out from the mobile industry what the latest themes and trends are. It’s created the biggest shift the industry’s ever seen itself.

And I wouldn’t like to bet against Apple or another company outside the industry creating the next major shift, because on the evidence of this week, it’s not the senior executives at the mobile companies who have the slightest idea what this is going to be. And this by their own admission.

But I think this admission of ignorance is hugely positive. For once, the mobile industry is saying: we’re not making the most of the technology (mobile broadband) available to us, and we need help to do so.

Aside from the iPhone, the overwhelming theme of the conference was partnerships. This was also something of a first. One after the other, the speakers stated the need to become genuine partners with Internet companies to capitalise from the mobile broadband technology opportunity. Most admitted their past failings in this.

The great advantages operators have, and it’s almost the only ones they have, is that they own the networks and they bill the people who use them. Aware of this, Michel Combes, CEO, Europe region, Vodafone Group, spoke about being a ‘smart pipe’ for other companies to sell their services through. Combes said that Vodafone was aiming to be the best operator partner to work with for companies outside the industry. Vodafone, among others, has now thoroughly embraced this stance – a massive turnaround from two to three years ago.

Operator executives should be commended for admitting that they’ve been bad partners to companies outside the mobile industry. Now they’ve gone to the other end of the spectrum, and are tripping over themselves to be the best partner to outside companies that have popular services to sell in the mobile space.

The big question now is: will this new attitude create tangible benefits to operators?

One other theme that dominated the conference was application stores. Companies are tripping over themselves to make application stores, and I question the wisdom of doing this. Each of these companies is, of course, following the path created by Apple in the hope that making a comparable store will lure users away from the iPhone

But I think this is ill-conceived and misguided. People buy the iPhone not for the Application Store. They buy it because it’s the best designed and made device on the market, the one that also offers the best mobile internet experience, the best media player and a great email service. Oh, and you can also play some of the best hand-held games and do a host of other things too. But the latter are just compelling extras to the rest.

The Application Store has been great for software developers, but whether it will be equally as positive for device vendors and operators is another question. I find it hard to see people buying a device mainly because it’s got a great application store. The application store is just one small part of the puzzle.

No doubt the day will come when a new device offers a whole new experience that makes Apple’s look old-hat. But given the vision Apple has manifested in the past, and the dearth of new ideas coming from within the mobile industry, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if this new vision didn’t come from Apple itself, or another that is similarly outside the mobile industry.

Operators won’t be completely dis-intermediated by Internet companies in the future. But they will have to accept sharing much less of the pie than they would like.

Zain outsources East Africa to NSN

African and Middle Eastern carrier Zain streamlined its East African operations this week, with the announcement Thursday that it has awarded three network outsourcing deals to Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN).

Under the agreements, NSN will pick up a five year management contract in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, with an eye to optimising, modernising and managing 3,000 plus multi-vendor mobile sites catering to nine million customers. Upgrades to energy efficient technologies and off grid power solutions will be a key component of the deal.

This contract marks NSN’s biggest multi-vendor outsourcing case in the region and is also one of the first such deals of its kind in Africa. As part of the agreement, approximately 350 Zain employees will be transferred to NSN.

The move should free Zain Africa up to focus on its core business in the region, where sub par performance is weighing on the group’s profits. Earlier this month Zain reported that net profit for the nine months to the end of September fell 17 per cent year on year to KWD195.7m ($677m), although revenues for the period were up 24 per cent year on year to KWD1.78bn. Africa is causing much of the company’s financial pressure, with the intensive expansion of Zain’s network in key operations such as Nigeria, Zambia, Sudan, and Iraq, resulting in increases in fixed costs from depreciation and amortization, with the company being further burdened by increases in financing costs.

Read our recent Q&A with Chris Gabriel, CEO, Zain Africa

In late September, confusion reigned as a consortium of buyers that included Indian operators BSNL and MTNL were thought to be carrying out due diligence on Zain in a bid to acquire some or all of Zain Africa. But nothing came of the supposed interest and at the recent Africa Com 2009 event in Cape Town, South Africa, Chris Gabriel, CEO of Zain Africa repeated a number of times that “Zain Africa is not for sale. We are focused on our objective to become a top ten player by 2011 and we still have an appetite for expansion,” he said.

The iPhone will be available in Tesco

iPhone exclusivity is well and truly over, in the UK at least, with the news that supermarket Tesco is to stock the device and might even do so in time for Christmas.

It might be that Tesco Mobile, which is a 50:50 joint venture MVNO with O2 UK, had something of an edge in the negotiations, given that O2 has had iPhone exclusivity for the past two years.

O2’s advantage was brought to an end however with Orange’s recent launch of the device, and news that Vodafone will sell the handset after Christmas. So it looks like Tesco might even beat Vodafone to the punch, allowing consumers to buy an iPhone 3G or 3GS whist picking up the turkey. There’s no detail on pricing however, although telecoms.com doesn’t reckon the much talked about iPhone price war will happen, especially in light or Orange’s offering.

Telefonica bolsters IPTV offering with Digital + buy

Spanish carrier Telefonica said Wednesday that it has agreed to acquire 21 per cent of local satellite TV player Prisa, which operates under the Digital + brand.

At a price of €470m, Telefonica will get access to Digital +’s pay TV services, giving it access to content for its own Imagenio IPTV offering.

Under the deal, the two companies also formed a framework collaboration agreement to explore “potential co-operation in fields regarding audiovisual development, and other services of both companies, in Spain.”

Meanwhile, Telefonica has collared infrastructure firm Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) to sort it out a six month long LTE trial for its O2 operation in the Czech Republic.

Telefonica is now running LTE test projects in six countries, with a view to selecting technology providers for its 4G deployments. Last month, the operator tapped up Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson, Huawei, NEC, NSN and ZTE for test networks in Spain, the UK, Germany, the Czech Republic, Brazil and Argentina.

The Spanish firm reckons its will be able to offer peak speeds of up to 340Mbps in ideal conditions using LTE, exploiting benefits from more flexible spectrum management, increased efficiency through greater operating automation and the mass adoption of the technologies such as MIMO.