Telecommunications (International Edition) articles from December 2002

Telecommunications (International Edition) archives from December 2002

Every man his own service provider. (Commentary).
December 1, 2002... The bad news is that there are no revenues (or profits) in selling content under most current internet business models. Occasionally, we get an opportunity to stop fighting something and start joining it. Indeed this is how most revolutions...

TIM reports higher ARPU on back of MMS surge. (Italy).
December 1, 2002... Due to a steady increase in voice traffic and an acceleration of VAS take-up, Telecom Italia Mobile (TIM) was able to report a 3.9 per cent ARPU increase to [euro]29.5 in its domestic market in 3Q 2002 compared with the previous quarter. In its...

Mobile wholesale to the rescue? (Europe).
December 1, 2002... Due to market saturation, and declines in retail voice and SMS revenue growth, mobile network operators (MNOs) are increasingly focusing on the wholesale sector. So much so in fact that new research from PBI Tarifica -- a provider of...

Microsoft ups the mobile ante (but loses Sendo). (Global).
December 1, 2002... PC software giant Microsoft is ramping up its presence in the smartphone market. In October 2002, the US company -- in partnership with pan-European mobile operator, Orange -- launched the first commercial smartphone based on Microsoft's...

PC cards can kick-start UMTS, says Lucent. (Europe).
December 1, 2002... High-speed mobile data for enterprise users is where the first serious UMTS action is going to be. At least that's the view of Bruce Dale, vice president of UMTS/WCDMA product and offer realisation division in Lucent's Mobility Solutions group....

DSL growth but 'triple play' doubts. (Berlin).
December 1, 2002... The Broadband DSL World Forum 2002 conference, held in Berlin from 28-31 October, was a time for the DSL community to pat itself on the back after the progress made during the last 12 months. William Rodey, chairman and president of the DSL...

GSM/GPRS 850MHz network. (News in Brief).
December 1, 2002... Ericsson and Cable & Wireless Panama have said that they have launched the 'first ever' GSM/GPRS 850MHz network. The vendor is the sole supplier of equipment and services for the deployment of the network, which uses existing spectrum to enable...

3G Americas/GSM Association alliance. (News in Brief).
December 1, 2002... The GSM Association and 3G Americas, a new organisation promoting GSM in the US, have announced a collaborative partnership to ensure that 'the GSM family of technologies -- GSM, GPRS, EDGE and WCDMA -- dominate the next-generation of wireless...

What did you say?
December 1, 2002... "The UK is sleepwalking towards a broadband monopoly, with little opportunity or incentive for innovation within the network." James Wilsdon, author of a C&W-commissioned report which advocates the break-up of BT "Other operators, such...

Australian DSL line growth. (News in Brief).
December 1, 2002... Telsyte, a strategic planning consultancy and research organisation specialising in broadband technologies, has determined that over 44,000 new DSL lines have been made available to Australian end-users in the space of just two months between...

IMS warns of mobile data delay. (News in Brief).
December 1, 2002... According to UK-based research group, IMS, many mobile operators can forget about achieving mobile data revenue targets of 25 per cent within the next year or two. "It will take another five years before data makes up 20 per cent of worldwide...

Uphill battles. (View from the Top).
December 1, 2002... Since the dawn of telecom competition, regulators have been routinely criticised -- it goes with the territory. Toothless, biased and downright incompetent are just some of the more printable adjectives that have been thrown their way. And...

Cablecos: still credible? NTL and Telewest, despite their extreme financial difficulties, are still pitching the business customer. Can they be taken seriously? (Serving the Corporate Market).
December 1, 2002... Europe's major cable operators are in a spot of bother. Far from greedily 'eating the lunches' of telcos as they once anticipated, the priority of Telewest, NTL and UPC is now to put their own balance sheets in order. In the process,...

An under-exploited market: fixed-line telcos aren't taking full advantage of the SME market opportunity. (Serving the Corporate Market).
December 1, 2002... In western Europe, 99 per cent of all businesses are small-to-medium enterprises (SMEs). The companies who makeup the SME market differ in size from just one employee to anything up to 500 and the sector covers a vast range of contrasting...

Is now the time for IP videoconferencing? (Serving the Corporate Market).
December 1, 2002... Video eats bandwidth and IP-enabled conferencing is coming to the desktop. Is this the 'killer app' that carriers need so desperately? Or is it too little too late? We have a bandwidth glut. Figures vary, but right now there seems to be at...

A business model back-up: storage area network (SAN) solutions are becoming a key enterprise application and a promising addition to the service portfolio of many carriers. (Serving the Corporate Market).
December 1, 2002... In the information age, data is king. And I the volume of data that companies typically process and store today has reached numbers that could not be thought of a few years ago. This unprecedented growth has created a huge demand in data...

Room for SLA improvement. (Serving the Corporate Market).
December 1, 2002... The lack of 'bite' to traditional SLAs has opened the door for third parties to negotiate more meaningful service level agreements between carriers and their business customers. SLAs between carriers and IT managers have, all too often,...

Keep the business customer satisfied. (Serving the Corporate Market).
December 1, 2002... Operators can drastically improve their relations with business customers through 'innovative' billing & customer care. But a word of warning -- it takes a lot of time and effort. Albert Einstein once said that it's 'high time that the...

New DSL active simulator. (New Products and Services).
December 1, 2002... Sparnex According to Sparnex -- a provider of DSL OEM transmission solutions -- a number of industry players over the last few years have become increasingly dissatisfied with the limitations of passive line simulation. Due to this,...

Multimedia conferencing solution. (New Products and Services).
December 1, 2002... Polycom Polycom, an audio and dataconferencing systems manufacturer, has announced the availability of its iPower 9000 series of multimedia conferencing solutions, which deliver audio and video, IP functionality and options for conference...

MMS test system. (New Products and Services).
December 1, 2002... Sigos Sigos, a telecoms systems integrator, has developed a fully automated test system, which the vendor says makes it much easier for operators to check the functionality of MMS. The company says that some of the features of its MMS...

SIM application range. (New Products and Services).
December 1, 2002... Bluefish Bluefish Technologies has announced a new range of SIM-based applications aimed at network operators who are looking at attracting new subscribers and increasing their revenues. The company says that its SIM-based applications are...

Optical spectrum anaylser. (New Products and Services).
December 1, 2002... Ando Electric Ando Electric has started accepting orders for the AQ6319 optical spectrum analyser. The company says that the new OSA offers superior wavelength accuracy and wavelength resolution, wide dynamic range and high-speed...

Enhanced security system. (New Products and Services).
December 1, 2002... APW ENCLOSURE PRODUCTS APW Enclosure Products have announced the availability of an updated and enhanced IMsuite, a modular security system that delineates and segregates individual areas within data centres, ISP hosts and other multi-user...

Embedded connectiviy processor. (New Products and Services).
December 1, 2002... National Semiconductor Corporation National Semiconductor Corporation has announced a 'major advancement towards an industry-wide goal of creating a single, seamless worldwide network'. The vendor's new CP3000 family includes the hardware,...

Bluetooth ROM-based products. (New Products and Services).
December 1, 2002... CSR CSR (Cambridge Silicon Radio) has launched a new series of BlueCore2, its single chip bluetooth solution for low cost, high-volume applications. The company claims that BlueCore2-ROM and BlueCore2-Audio offer the smallest size and...

IMT/UMTS passive inter-modulation analyser. (New Products and Services).
December 1, 2002... Smiths Interconnect A new IMT/UMTS band passive inter-modulation analyser has been launched onto the T&M marketplace courtesy of Summitek Instruments, a Smiths Interconnect company. A complete integrated unit requiring no external...

Polymer chips. (New Products and Services).
December 1, 2002... Infineon Infineon Technologies announced last month (November) that it has developed and manufactured organic transistor-based electronic circuits on various substrates to achieve previously unattainable performance levels. The thin-film...

Bluetooth adapter. (New Products and Services).
December 1, 2002... BRAIN BOXES Brain Boxes, the bluetooth and serial PC add on specialists, have launched a bluetooth RS232 adapter -- the BL570 -- which plugs into the standard RS232 serial port of any PC and provides a bluetooth transceiver and antenna....

New range of RF coaxial products. (New Products and Services).
December 1, 2002... Link Microtek Link Microtek, a distributor of specialised RF & microwave equipment, has launched a new range of RF coaxial products from manufacturer Narda Microwave. The offering is aimed at wireless systems and test applications, and...

Eastern Europe hungry for mobile. (Conference Watch).
December 1, 2002... GSM in CEE (November 2002, Prague, hosted by Informa Group) Possibly one of the worst mistakes you can make in international business is to assume that customers in 'developing' markets are not as sophisticated or have the same aspirations...