Vodafone Access Gateway (femtocell) launched in UK

Wed, 1 Jul 2009 09:01:22 EDT

Its July 1st and Vodafone have officially launched their access gateway product in the UK. For those who are wondering what this is - its a femtocell with a curious title. Although Vodafone had made a press announcement at the Femto World Summit last week, its nice to see how they are packaging and presenting it to customers here in the UK. Some initial observations

1. Apart from buying it directly for £160, it is being bundled with various free phones right from Sony Ericsson C510 to Nokia N97, all of which are 3G phones. However most plans come with voice minutes and texts, except the N97 and Samsung Tocco which come with unlimited data.

2. The N97 is obviously a device that they are trying to showcase her ...

Nortel 4G IPR no where near $2.9 billion

Wed, 1 Jul 2009 04:01:03 EDT

JP Morgan were cited in Lightreading http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=178671 regarding Nortel's IPR and stated that the Nortel 4G IPR holding could be worth up to $2.9 billion.
This is definitely a good story and might be good to attract more potential bidders for Nortel's wireless assets, however, it is based on the assumption that they will get a royalty rate of 1% of every LTE device sold. This is disproportionate to their patent holdings and cannot be seen as fair and reasonable. I doubt any other single vendor will be looking for this type of return - even Qualcomm.
Qualcomm will bundle LTE with other technolgies in a uber li ...

Nifty Mobile Cloud Computing App: Schlage's LiNK

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 11:06:06 EDT

In March, legendary door lock manufacturer Schlage launched LiNK – a keyless lock system for the home. Keyless lock systems are not new – what’s intriguing about LiNK is its remote capabilities. LiNK enables users to control remotely by PC or mobile not only the door lock, but heating/cooling, security cameras and light monitors.

Femtocell Value Proposition - Fridge Notes or Signal Boosters?

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 09:42:42 EDT

Last weeks Femtocell World Summit in London was a unique blend of optimism and cautious skepticism.

On the one hand, you had the femtocell vendors enthusiastically showcase their fancy femtozone applications, proving that femtos could be fun devices to have within your home. The award winning application was from ip.access which acts like a fridge note - wherein you can send in a note to your friends or family over Facebook, which will then pop up on their phone once they reach home, courtesy the femtocell recognizing the presence of that person when at home.

On the other hand, you had people question the business case for femtocells, with some surveys showing that customers would like these femtocells ...

Are Nortel's 4G IPR Assets Really That Critical?

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 04:08:53 EDT

Much noise has been made recently about the rumor that Nortel’s 4G IPR assets will not be transferred to NSN as part of the current transaction. Light Reading, and its sister company Heavy Reading http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=178537 made a lot of this story on last Friday.

I would argue that they are making something of a mountain out of a molehill. To put this all into perspective, Nortel only owns 1.26% of OFDM patents, 3% of MIMO patents and 0.44% of Beamforming patents. In comparison, NSN has significantly more in each secto ...

Western Union's Latest Move Jolts Growth for Mobile International Remittance

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 10:07:15 EDT

Yesterday, Western Union made a move which will accelerate mobile enabled international remittance when they opened their money transfer services to mobile money platform vendors.
International remittance is a huge business. According to the World Bank, 200 million migrant workers sent $232 billion to relatives and friends in their home country in 2005. Today those funds are sent primarily by wire transfer through banks and money transfer organizations like Nokia Siemens Network’s purchase of Nortel’s CDMA and LTE assets is a great move for NSN. Prior to this acquisition, NSN was one of few radio access network (RAN) vendors with no CDMA equipment and small presence in North America. North America accounted for less than 6% of the company’s 2008 wireless infrastructure revenue. This transaction will provide NSN instant access to CDMA networks and the North American wireless market. CDMA is the primary wireless technology in the region with over 52% of mobile subscribers. North America is also the second largest CDMA market accounting for 31.2% percent of all CDMA subscribers according the CDMA Development Group (CDG). Alcatel-Lucent, No ...

Sprint Expands its Femto Footprint

Thu, 11 Jun 2009 05:37:06 EDT

The announcement of Sprint to offer femtocells to its wholesale partners strengthens its position as a leading femtocell operator. Sprint is using its wholesale supplier strength to allow its partners to take advantage of femtocells. Although Sprint has used the femtocell largely as a churn reduction tool, this announcement indicates that femtocells can go beyond that, adding additional revenues, also be an effective go-to-market strategy for an MVNO or carrier.

The lucky few include not just existing wireless MVNOs but also its wireline and cable partners who now have a good reason to seriously consider adding a wireless component to their business. Femtocells in some ways reduces the barriers to entry for a greenfi ...

“20% of the Non-Chinese 3G Market to be Based on TD-SCDMA in 2020…”

Thu, 11 Jun 2009 02:43:24 EDT

That is not a forecast made by ABI Research. Our forecasts only go out to 2014. That assessment is a market expectation expressed by the Chinese Ministry of Industry & Information Technology. Oh, and in addition, MIIT expect TD-SCDMA to capture 50% of the domestic Chinese 3G market.
The Chinese government is certainly very bold and does very much have an attitude of “build it and they will come”.

It is not a philosophy to be sniffed at. That philosophy has worked with the Beijing Olympics and it has worked with the Chinese economy as a whole but that statement is still extremely bold. To put it in perspective, that is equivalent to 1.4 billion subscriptions of our latest ABI Research subscr ...

Why Push Smartphones - Because We're in a Recession?

Tue, 9 Jun 2009 20:09:42 EDT

Smartphone growth has slowed in 2009 from 2008 shipment levels. However based on recent mobile operator smartphone advertisements of buy-one-get-one free and sub $50 pricing you would think that nothing has changed over the last year. The common wisdom for driving a higher penetration of smartphones into the customer base is to increase adoption of mobile internet services – mobile web access, e-mail, location-based services, application downloads, etc. It could also be the case that current operator promotions are for clearing out inventory based on economically-induced lower demand levels. But at this time in history, increas ...

ABI Research - Wireless Industry Blog Feed