Worth Noting

The following news blurbs address a wide spectrum of topics that are of interest both as trend indicators and technological developments.

Focal Points:

• Hittite Microwave of Massachusetts has signed a joint development agreement with IBM related to millimetre wave technology – high speed wireless connections running in usually license exempt bands above 50GHz. Hittite designs and supplies analog and mixed-signal RF, microwave and millimetre wave chips and will now manufacture and market silicon IC millimetre wave transceivers developed by IBM.
• China had 25.2m 3G users at the end of June, lagging the government's target because the three mobile carriers had problems with network coverage and supplying suitable hand-sets. 3G users have grown from 18.08m at the end of March, but Zhang Feng, a director at the telecoms ministry, said that the new figure was "still far from the expected target”. The ministry has targeted 150m 3G subscribers by 2011. China Mobile said it had 10.46m 3G users at the end of June, or 41.5% share, while China Unicom had 7.56m. This would leave China Telecom, which does not publicly disclose its figure, with 7.18m, if government figures tally with those of the carriers. Investment in China's 3G networks in the first half of 2010 totaled CNY19.2bn ($2.83bn), far less than last year's total of CNY160.9bn, though the 2010 total could reach CNY9bn.
• Exalt‘s latest microwave backhaul product is designed to offer carriers the ability to add capacity incrementally and minimize the costs of spare equipment. For less than $20,000 operators can get a gigabit connection that covers distances of twelve miles, said CEO Amir Zoufonoun. ExploreAir weighs eight pounds and supports a pay-as-you-grow approach, Zofonoun said. It uses field replaceable diplexers, so the need to keep spare radios on hand at numerous frequencies is minimized, reducing sparing costs by 50% to 90%, according to Exalt.
• Two operator driven organizations, the TM Forum and the NGMN Alliance, are to create a set of 10 shared requirements and then build on these for future standards for management of wireline and wireless networks, with a special focus on LTE. “For a few years now, NGMN has focused on understanding the requirements that next-gen mobile operators have, but they don‘t produce standards; rather, they will liaise with us, and perhaps we will liaise with 3GPP and others in the next six months to a year to address LTE and 4G network management requirements after we come up with a converged set for wireless and wireline concerns,” said TM Forum‘s president Martin Creaner. Wireline technologies like MPLS will also be addressed.
• After a four year process led by the ITU, three companies have pooled their resources to create a new standard to address next generation voice quality. Opticom, SwissQual and TNO have combined to create the test standard, POLQA (Perceptual Objective Listening Quality Analysis), which updates the current standard, PESQ/P.862. The solution is expected to be standardized and made available during September 2010. The partners claim that POLQA will offer strong support for testing of new wideband 4G/LTE networks delivering HD quality voice services.
• Two US senators have introduced legislation that creates a national wireless spectrum inventory, seen as a crucial part of the FCC's plan to free up 500MHz for mobile broadband use over the next 10 years. Senators John Kerry and Olympia Snowe sponsored a bill that directs the FCC and the NTIA to take an inventory of current spectrum allocations, in order to identify efficiencies.
• Apple has responded to a congressional probe into its location data collection policies, contending its geospecific services exist to enhance the user experience and emphasizing that it only activates location solutions upon receiving consumer consent.
• Driven by improvements in the terrestrial backbones and last mile networks, the new undersea cables surrounding Africa will boost the broadband penetration rate from 3.2% in 2010 to 6.8% in 2015, according to Pyramid Research. New undersea cables will drive the total broadband base in Africa from 40m in 2010 to 92m in 2015 at a CAGR of 18%, while revenue will increase at a CAGR of 16% in the same period to $20bn. WiMAX will take center stage in the coverage for the last mile. "We predict that WiMAX will grow at a CAGR of 30% between 2010 and 2015; we also foresee similar trends in mobile broadband, particularly in the data cards/modems,” says the report.
• ARM is targeting the future looking 20nm process, for low power chips, via a deal with massive foundry TSMC. It will provide the Taiwanese firm with access to a broad range of ARM processors. The companies have collaborated frequently in the past, but on a node-by-node basis, and this is a far broader agreement. The agreement will enable TSMC to optimize the implementation of ARM processors on its process technologies.
• The US Patent and Trademark Office has granted Hewlett-Packard a trademark for the term ‘PalmPad‘, hinting at the name of its promised webOS slate device. HP has already cancelled projects to create Windows 7 and Android tablets to focus on its newly acquired Palm platform.