Alcatel-Lucent said this week it has been chosen to built LTE backhaul services for Japan’s biggest mobile operator NTT DOCOMO using its packet optical based Ethernet transmission systems. The system is part of its Mobile Evolution Transport Architecture (META), all IP backhaul system for networks.
US researcher Parks Associates says that by 2013 there will be annual sales of 310 million smart phones globally, taking the total number in use then to 1.1 billion. Parks has no great legacy in predicting handsets, as it spends most of its resources doing home network buying intentions in the US. However, that said, Parks says that 131 million units were sold in 2008 and that this represents a 20% annual growth rate.
AirTies has combined an 802.11n router with an IPTV and web TV set top and called it the Air 7224, featuring its ‘Air Touch’ self-service customer provisioning software. It is based on the Broadcom BCM7413, has a hardware accelerator for 3D OpenGL ES and has up to 96 GB of Flash memory. It will show it in September at IBC in Amsterdam for the first time. It is HD capable, and the company says that it is the first to offer a seamless wireless video distribution. Ruckus might give it something of an argument there.
The GSMA this week said that it was working to establish standard design guidelines for embedded mobile applications and has a competition to find best-in-class embedded applications for cellular, with prizes in multiple categories. Bet the Kindle gets a prize.
The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) has given first-stage approval to a new standard that enables an IPTV end-user to locate and subscribe to content coming from different, independent service providers, says IPTV News. The ITU believes the standard will “enable a greater deal of choice for end-users and will help service providers offer a more competitive package”.
French regulator Arcep’s decision to force France Telecom to build out fiber within buildings for rivals, has brought a downing of tools by the French operator, who says it will stop installing fiber right across France unless this is changed. Arcep said that alternative operators could request fiber to be run to each home in apartment buildings, said local paper Les Echos. France Telecom says that this ‘challenges its whole business plan.’
InformITV tells us that interactive television games company PlayJam has developed a widget for playing games on TV, which will come out later this year. PlayJam is in 35 million Pay TV homes around the workd usually through satellite TV platforms like Sky in the UK and Dish in the US. It will takes its best games, re-develop them for Yahoo widgets including casual games and puzzles, competitions and instant win formats.
Verizon will slow down the speed of rollout on its FiOS Pay TV fiber deployment, once it gets past the 17 million residences it promised by 2010, according to DSL Prime’s Dave Burstein. He says that FiOS will pass 21 to 22 million residences and businesses in 2014 even though the buildout rate for FiOS will decline from 3 million per year to 1 million. Verizon has confirmed that it will slow capex post 2010.
Sky has come out, in the form of its chief operating officer, and said that it fundamentally disagrees with regulator Ofcom’s approach to sharing out the content it has paid for ‘ specifically its film and sports channels. The company said that anyone could carry its content as long as that content was secure and Sky had the prospect of a fair and reasonable return on its content investment. What it says it cannot go along with is a regulator setting the pricing terms for its content distribution at less than it paid for them.
Global Gaming Factory, a Swedish games software house, says it would like to buy the now defunct The Pirate Bay and has offered around 60 million Swedish Krona ($7.9 million) and says if its bid is successful it will carry on the business legitimately, selling music, and we guess, games. The offer is half cash and half shares in the new venture. Well this happened with Napster and a business of sorts was created out of it. The money would cover the fines imposed by a Swedish Court, but an appeal will still have to go ahead, to try to keep the founders out of prison.
Nokia has just released about a dozen new 3G phones in China, including the Nokia E72 and the new 3710 Fold. The idea is for Nokia to get as many products into the Chinese market which can support Ovi, and want to get Chinese authorities to license Ovi there. Nokia is the number one handset supplier in China with a 34% market share and over 30,000 employees there and sales actually rose in China this year, while in the rest of the world, for the most part, they fell.
According to TechCrunch Yahoo says it will close down its Maven Networks online video distribution and advertising platform. It bought the operation for $160 million 18 months ago. The decision will allow Yahoo to focus its resources its core video offerings, the company said. Yahoo has closed quite a few of its older, less profitable services in the past few months.
US researcher In-Stat says that the market for digital photo frames has just taken-off, mostly due to price falls which came about because of the recession. At present the tendency is for consumers to buy bottom of the range and give them as gifts pre-loaded with pictures. Features like wireless connectivity and access to the Internet are currently being ignored. But In-Stat says that wireless-enabled photo frames will be the key market driver by 2010 and that worldwide shipments of all digital photo frames will reach 50 million by 2013.
US DRM specialist Widevine said that Synchronous Communications has become a licensed reseller of its DRM and Adaptive Streaming for the Apple iPhone. Synchronous Communications sells IPTV DRM systems in Taiwan and boasts Chunghwa Telecom as a customer. Chunghwa is the exclusive distributor of the iPhone in Taiwan.