News Archive - March 2008

At CTIA Wireless 2008, Nortel will demonstrate the ways its mobile convergence and 4G mobile broadband technologies - LTE and WiMAX - are reducing the complexity of a hyperconnected world to deliver better, faster wireless networks that simplify work, study and even play for today's "always connected" consumers.

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Oil giant Shell has handed out a series of managed services deals worth billions of dollars as part of a move to outsource most of its communications and networking capabilities, with AT&T Inc. and T-Systems Inc. dividing the spoils.

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Motorola has decided to spin-off its mobile phone unit as a separate public, publicly traded company that some analysts believe will breathe new life into the mobile phone business and will also help Motorola get back on its feet.

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Organizations upgrading their standard-definition videoconferencing systems should purchase high-definition systems from now on, says Gartner. Gartner expects the move to HD systems to be a driving factor behind a 20% to 30% annual growth rate of the worldwide market during the next couple of years.

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Mirial released the new version of its Mirial Softphone for professional video conferencing, including a set of useful, eagerly anticipated new features. In addition to its support for both SD and HD 720p video resolution, the product now supports H.239, call management and embedded MCU functionalities that enable unprecedented possibilities for small to mid-sized business environments.

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Australian wireless carrier Buzz Broadband has shuttered its WiMAX network, describing the technology as a "disaster" that has "failed miserably". The industry was quick to blame Airspan, which provided the infrastructure to Buzz, but the supplier was equally quick to blame its customer, saying that cost-cutting had led to an ineffective network. So, is it the carrier, the supplier, or the technology?

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Motorola has started the process to split itself into two independent, publicly traded companies — tentatively referred to as Mobile Devices and Broadband and Mobility Solutions — in an effort to speed the recovery of its struggling mobile devices business.

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Three cable giants are accusing Verizon of illegally using proprietary information it obtains as a wholesale telecom provider to retain customers who had planned to switch to the cable providers for their phone service.

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PacPhone, the Windows Video Collaborator, again stuns the world by delivering High-Definition (HD) and standards-based 8-way video conferencing from the PC or the Wi-Fi laptop for free. It supports strong encryption and NAT/FW traversal, as a well as natively supporting a number of USB phone devices.

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The mobile phone maker High Tech Computer (HTC) has been developing a phone model that will run the Android software from Google called "Dream". Like other models HTC had made in recent years, it will have a large touchscreen and full QWERTY keypad that will slide out.

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Microsoft is working with Tandberg to deliver a $300 high-definition video camera by next year that it said will bring high-quality video conferencing to the masses.

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Studies have found that in January, nearly 85% of iPhone users in the U.S. used the device to access news or other items on the Web. Nearly 31% of iPhone owners watched mobile TV or video, more than double the overall rate for smartphone users.

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The European Commission moved to simplify the nascent mobile phone TV sector by adopting a standard backed by Nokia called Digital Video Broadcasting Handheld (DVB-H).

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Through a new, non-exclusive global agreement, Nortel and TANDBERG will jointly deliver fully-managed telepresence and high-definition (HD) video conferencing solutions to enterprises worldwide. These solutions will be offered through service providers or direct from Nortel.

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Nortel is unveiling new unified communications solutions that let today's mobile worker connect more quickly with colleagues, make faster decisions, and increase responsiveness to customers while helping enterprises make better use of their mobile communications budgets.

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Aggressive pricing for triple plays is expected to see 88 million VoIP subscribers in Western Europe by 2012 according to research group.

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This report talks about how the NSA AT&T, various countries, your spouse, your boss, and criminals might all be monitoring your communication over the Internet.

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Just a few days after IBM celebrated the 10th anniversary of its collaboration product Lotus Sametime, Big Blue said it would pump $1 billion into its unified communications and collaboration products, which is led by Sametime.

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Apple reported that within days of releasing the SDK for the iPhone that will enable third-party developers to create applications for the iPhone, more than 100,000 developers have downloaded the software.

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Apple has licensed technology from Microsoft so that the iPhone can synchronize with the Microsoft Exchange Server, making the iPhone a more attractive tool for the corporate business user.

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Motorola said it won a $335 million contract with Zain Saudi Arabia to deploy and manage a mobile phone network. Zain plans to start operations this year after it paid $6.1 billion for Saudi Arabia's third mobile license.

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