Communications and Technology Blog - Tehrani.com - M2M Archives

How M2M, Telematics & GPS Helped Catch the Boston Bombers

2013-05-03T09:48:55Z

The Boston bombers stole a Mercedes Benz equipped with mbrace2 the m2m/telematics system allowing a user or law enforcement to track the vehicle. While typically the system is useful for users who want to remotely unlock or lock their car door, it can also be used for synchronizing PC mapping apps with the car, allowing you to send a location and directions to your car. This is useful for people who don't want to enter an address into the GPS once in the vehicle.

The carjacking victim alerted police to the fact that the car had mbrace2 and at this point law enforcement tracked the car and was able to end the chase shortly thereafter. There is no telling what would have happened if a brand of car without such technology had been stolen.

Read more at Extreme Tech.

Altair Semiconductor's 4G Chip Bet Pays Off

2013-02-26T16:54:16Z

As wireless markets globally move to 4G, Altair Semiconductor has targeted this newer network standard with a single-mode line of chips which cost less and use less power than mult-mode solutions which have to grapple with 3G and older standards. As consumer electronics devices become more price-competitive, choosing a streamlined solution means OEMs/ODMs can reduce their costs and pass part of the savings on to customers allowing more inexpensive solutions to be marketed.

The big news for the company at Mobile World Congress 2013 in Barcelona was the release of a new chipset for LTE-A, the 3800/6300 FourGee line which can download at 150Mbps and upload at 50 Mbps. The chips support carrier aggregation and a wide frequency band span of 400-3800MHz with 6 concurrent LTE bands for both primary and diversity antennas, enabling global band combinations. There is further support for VoLTE and HD-voice as well as interference cancellation an peripheral interface support for a wide variety of applications from consumer electronics to M2M.

The company hopes it becomes the go to source for connectivity in an "internet of things" world and spokesman Matthew Krieger (pictured) brimmed with excitement about how their solutions are replacing competitors in the market. Moreover they see larger competitors selling 3G-disabled solutions as a sign they are on the right track.

Other recent achievements have to do with certification on the networks of Telefonica and Verizon, meaning ODM/OEM customers no longer need to get their products certified themselves.

Krieger continued to tout current success in the market and spoke of future opportunity which they believe will be quite bright as 4G markets in India and China begin to emerge.

AMDOCS Allows Carrier Self-Service at MWC2013

2013-02-25T18:01:45Z

The big news from AMDOCS at Mobile World Congress 2013 was a suite of solutions dubbed CES 9 which the company internally calls the "Wow release." The company says it has seamlessly connected its customer management, billing, OSS, CRM and network controller solutions allowing customers for the first time to see connect their experience from the device down to the network.

You have heard me go on about the age of acceleration and apparently carriers feel the pressure of providing things faster as well. One of the biggest advances in this new solution will allow carriers to let their customers take advantage of self-service on the devices they use. For example, a tablet user will be able to upgrade their data account without having to call into a customer service representative or CSR. The company believes the release will actually allow 80% common transactions to be completed without a call center call-in.

Company representative Rebecca Prudhomme pictured above explained that the industry is adopting a new metric regarding customer satisfaction which gauges a customer's willingness to recommend a service to friends or family. This Net Promoter Score or NPS gave the company the opportunity to evaluate a new KPI which helped them roll out new products.

One is the Multichannel self-service solution which I described briefly above. In addition to allowing customers to make changes on their accounts it also allows seamless transfer of transactions across devices from start to finish.

In addition the company's new Proactive Care solution uses big data methodology to determine the most common reasons customer call and subsequently arms carriers with information they need to be proactive on future calls.

The company's Order-to-Activation service is designed to help carriers deal with the fact that by 2016 over 24 billion connected devices are expected to be in service. Finally, the company touts is cloud solutions which span a wide range - from enabling MVNO solutions, M2M and connected home to cloud enablement which allows carriers to provide and effectively monetize cloud-based solutions as they provide MSP products to SMBs. Moreover they also provide private cloud solutions or virtual private clouds for their customers.

Thoughts on Alcatel-Lucent

2013-02-08T19:42:16Z

One of the greatest challenges incumbent companies face is the ambivalence and corporate politics incumbency breeds and it only gets worse in what we call the age of acceleration where competitors arise faster and technologies shift more quickly than ever. Nortel, NSN and Alcatel-Lucent are all companies who enjoyed decades of leadership in the carrier market and in the process decided to provide generous benefits for their workers which would eventually help make them uncompetitive.

There is more to it - in the late nineties, Lucent acquired companies so quickly that its workers didn't know exactly who did what. Nortel too made a great deal of acquisitions. The challenge for both companies was they didn't integrate their new assets into their companies effectively.

Cisco on the other hand was a master of buying companies with good technology and rapidly rolling the products out to its global salesforce allowing sales of the acquired companys' products to accelerate rapidly. To some degree they play an arbitrage game of taking a good local technology and providing it globally with a solid salesforce.

Few other companies have mastered the art of the acquisition like Cisco.

When Alcatel decided to Merge with Lucent Technologies the competition told me privately that the merger would take a few years to integrate well and then the new entity would be a force to reckon with. There was certainly much to look forward to - the merger of the best of US and french technology. In reality - the way things have been going lately, some have said the Franco-American company with power bases in New Jersey and France resembles the offspring of Snooki and Pepe Le Pew.

Of course this is why Alcatel-Lucent recently announced that CEO Ben Verwaayen will be stepping down.

On the financial front, ALU just reported a net loss of $1.85 billion for 2012. The explanation was that it has been suffering from lower than expected sales in Europe and China and it took a write-down in its wireless and optics businesses.

Highlights from the earnings release:

Sales fell 5.7 percent to $19.3 billion in 2012.
Adjusted operating profit was $156.6 million.
Margin of 2.9 percent was below the 5-9 percent Verwaayen had promised.
Cash was depleted $908.6 million in 2012.
Fourth quarter sales fell 1.3 percent from a year earlier as only the U.S. market was strong

The net loss stemmed largely from a write-down of $1.9 billion, which the company said was "related to the depreciation of goodwill and fixed assets, and the corresponding impact on deferred tax," which CFO Paul Tufano said was linked to the lower value of ALU's wireless and optical assets.

Like Nortel, Lucent had a number of problems this past decade and also had to deal with numerous acquisitions made at inflated telecom and dotcom bubble valuations. Moreover, Asian competitors have been ferocious and are taking the company on in ways it frankly can't compete with.

Last week at ITEXPO in Miami I had a chance to speak with Payam Maveddat of Taqua about telecom competition from Asia - this is before the Alcatel-Lucent news even broke. I reached out to him to get his precise words:

As I travel internationally to promote our US-based technology overseas, it has become evident to me that the holistic approach of the Chinese government of combining infrastructure financing and development, including roads, railroads, refineries, power generation, farming, and telecom does not allow for other companies to be able to compete on the same playing field in these developing markets and I am not surprised that Alcatel-Lucent is struggling to survive in this environment.

Of course there is more to it - Alcatel-Lucent is losing business in its own backyard as it hasn't innovated fast enough, some say it didn't cut deeply enough and its R&D investments are smaller than those of Huawei, a company with a smaller product line and access to cheaper labor.

Moreover, the company has (or had anyway) a strong enterprise PBX line of products but they are hardly heard about anymore - at least in the US. Of course the spin-off of Genesys makes little sense if you truly value your enterprise business. But the company has decided the carrier space will get the majority of its attention based on its outbound comunications with media and analysts.

Another area for expansion is the cloud where the company could have come up with many more services for resale by carriers, VARs and MSPs.

Having said that - the company's expansive line of business is bewildering and Oracle's acquisition of Acme Packet could signal yet another ferocius competitor - Oracle knows how to integrate and grow acquired businesses and if they pick up GENBAND things get a lot more interesting in the market as they can compete across a much broader product line.

TMC's Peter Bernstein had this to say about this news:

I’m on record as saying that the next 12-18 months will be a tipping point in the ICT industries, and what happens in this time period will dictate industry structure for years to come. This includes the telecom equipment sector, service provider as well as enterprise, where the accommodation of change and moving quickly are not historic attributes. In that respect, Verwaayen may turn out to be prescient about his successor needing to be focused like a laser on execution.

And he is right. So much can happen over the course of the next few years which will determine the future for years to come in the telecom and datacom markets.

Finally, we can't expect European and American leaders to get their act together in a manner which allows them to compete with China Inc. in developing markets. This means players like Alcatel-Lucent will have to have better products at better prices to become more competitive than Huawei, ZTE and a host of ther new entrants. Sadly this isn't likely but the positive news is the company is still a leader in advanced technologies like optical and wireless as evidenced by its announcement of a 400G/s optical connection spanning 275 miles in France.

See Payam Maveddat of Taqua's keynote from ITEXPO Miami last week - "Federation as a Service"

See GENBAND President and CEO Charlie Vogt be interviewed by me at ITEXPO Miami last week

Some Shots From Related ITEXPO Events

2013-01-30T19:56:16Z

The collocated events at ITEXPO Miami 2013 are doing great - here are some shots from Super WiFi Summit (below) and M2M Evolution. Hopefully the attendance at these events is indicative of the growth these markets will experience this year.

ITEXPO Miami 2013 Pre-Show Show Daily

2013-01-29T15:48:10Z

The show daily from ITEXPO Miami 2013 is out and it features articles about MSPs and UC, social video collaboration from Polycom and Meetrix, REVE Systems, The White Space Alliance, BYOD and more. Here is my post from yesterday about today's events. So far Asterisk 123 and M2M sessions are packed and things are going great. I've included some pictures from set up from last night - we hope to see you at the show.

How M2M Saves the Amazon Rainforest

2013-01-23T20:37:24Z

Machine-to-machine technology is generally any sort of grouping of devices where machines talk to machines. When your car tells a central computer you need an oil change and the dealer calls to remind you – that’s M2M in action. Perhaps the best example of how M2M can be used for good is a recent report that Gemalto’s Cinteron M2M technology is being used in Cargo Tracck in the Amazon rainforest to protect an area the size of the United States.

By placing these tracking devices in the tree trunks, authorities will be alerted when one reaches within 20 miles of a cellular network.

“The rainforest in Brazil is approximately the size of the United States so it’s impossible to monitor each and every acre,” added Ramzi Abdine, General Manager of Cinterion M2M at Gemalto Latin America. “The Cargo Tracck solution offers a compelling example of the power of M2M technology in overcoming unique business challenges to extend the reach of traditional tracking and tracing methods.“

This is one of the reasons M2M is such a fascinating space for me, because it allows you to do things which you couldn’t dream of just a few years ago. Battery technology has improved tremendously in recent years but more importantly, wireless devices are smaller, smarter and can get by on less power. This enables a new generation of devices to go places which were previously unimaginable.

Next week, M2M Evolution Conference & Expo will take place in Miami and the event should be the best ever as it will cover everything you need to know on M2M including the following:

Digital Signage
Emerging Role of OSS-BSS Systems in the M2M Value Chain
Facilities Management
How M2M Will Take Mobile Healthcare to the Next Level (Hardware & Apps)
M2M in Smart Buildings
M2M in Smart Homes
M2M in the Enterprise
Mobile Workforce Management
POS Vending
ROI Models for Success
Security, Surveillance and Connected Safety
Social Machines – M2M and Web 2.0
The impact of Smart Grids on Electricity Transmission Network Resilience
The Emerging Role of Integrators in M2M

The agenda of the conference is worth reading for more information and we have the most solid list of sponsors for any M2M event I am aware of. They include, Platinum: HP, ILS Technology, Spireon, Vodafone & Verizon. Gold: Axeda, AT&T, Gurtam, Inmarsat, Kore Telematics, ThingWorx & Wilson Electronics. In addition there is a technology workshop on M2M and the semi-famous Battle of the M2M Platforms which takes place on Tuesday, Jan 29.

If you have any interest in learning more about one of the most exciting technologies which crosses over between tech, telecom and networks – be sure to register and attend M2M Evolution. The event is collocated with ITEXPO.

New Bluetooth Tech Lets You Find Anything

2013-01-17T02:00:18Z

With the tens of thousands of people roaming around CES its amazing that I ran into contributing writer to TMCnet - Doug Mohney. I actually saw him twice - without any planning. But now that I read one of his pieces from the show regarding tracking devices that will use low-power bluetooth and not run out of battery for a whole year, I have to wonder if he stuck one on me.

According to Doug:

Based in Florida, SSI America has been developing Bluetooth devices for over 12 years for large companies. Rebranding itself as Stick-N-Find Technologies, the company is rolling a number of solutions around Bluetooth Low Energy.
Its name-brand Stick-N-Find Stickers are barely bigger than a CR2016 coin cell battery, at 0.16 inches thick. A fresh battery will last for about a year with the device, which includes both a light and a buzzer to help people find devices in the dark.
To find a sticker, you load up a free "Radar" app – IOS and Android both supported and if you remember the motion tracker from "Aliens," you know what the user interface looks like – to track and find stickers. Multiple stickers can be tracked at the same time, with users able to select a buzz, flashing lights or both from the radar screen.
Additional modes include a "Virtual Leash" and "Find It." The Virtual Leash triggers an alarm if a sticker moves out a selected distance while the Find It feature will alert you when a sticker comes within range.
Max range for the sticker is around 30 meters, and the company recommends you track no more than 20 devices.

How amazing is that? It seems the Internet of things is becoming a reality - before our very eyes. Now I have to find some glue remover - I expect to see him at ITEXPO in 2 weeks and don't want to make it that easy for him to find me again. :-)

xG Technology Scores Another Potential Win

2013-01-15T18:29:37Z

Yesterday I discussed how xG Technology scored with a big $6M win and today the company has announced Cornet Technology has entered into an agreement with xG to resell $5M worth of the company’s products to the government and DoD.

Cornet Technology, Inc. is a privately-held concern which designs, engineers, and manufactures a wide range of advanced command, control, communications, computer, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (C4ISR) solutions targeted at U.S. and international defense and aerospace agencies.

The deal covers part of an end-to-end two-way video streaming solution for vehicles that is currently under development.

For a company which so many predicted wouldn’t make it – the potential for $11M in sales in two days is pretty impressive. Still, while the news of this partnership is great for company backers and employees, it isn’t a done deal quite yet.

A few other points. If the company is successful selling to the government via this deal - it could do exceedingly well selling to other governments around the world and to more US agencies as well. Also, M2M could be a market which can benefit from the company's solutions.

On the negative side of the ledger is the potential for ubiquitous WiFi coverage and Super-WiFi technologies to make the company's solutions less valuable over time.

How Mobile Will Destroy Retail Margins

2012-12-21T22:45:17Z

Some of the news of the week has to do with eBay deciding mobile advertising doesn’t work for them as it clutters small screens and doesn’t provide that much revenue. This seems to make sense but if you think this in any way is going to change the impact of mobile advertising and commerce you are dead wrong.

Logic and rumors tell us Amazon will be releasing a telephone soon and the reasoning for them to do so goes far beyond expanding its ecosystem and pushing people to download apps and watch videos online.

Location based advertising is where everything is going.

We all know about the potential to flash an ad for a company when the customer is nearby and this will no doubt be an effective strategy to boost sales and traffic. Especially for restaurants who want all their tables filled.

The real power of mobile ads however comes into play when customers aren’t near the company’s retail location. Imagine you go to a car dealer and its competitor across town flashes an ad on the spot with a $1,500 rebate on any car in their lot and maybe offers to buy you lunch as well. You may not get up and go to the other dealer but you’d be a fool to not show the salesperson your cellphone in order to get a better price.

Think of all those purchases you have made over the years on your supermarket loyalty card and imagine if your supermarket had an opportunity to flash ads at you for the items you’ve previously purchased when you are at a rival grocer or at a pharmacy which now stocks almost everything the grocery store does.

And so it begins.

Sure, many savvy customers currently collect coupons and look for numerous retailers before going on a shopping expedition but the sheer ease of discovering competitive pricing will mean everyone will have access to the best prices at all times.

And retailers will have to price match or risk watching customers turn their cars around before they even park their cars in front of the store!

This is why the Amazon Kindle Phone has to happen. This is why Google purchased Motorola and is working on a killer “X Phone” to rival Apple and Samsung.

Moreover, this is why mobile devices will get cheaper as commerce will continue to subsidize them. Amazon and Google will no doubt want to get these devices into as many hands as possible – even if it involves losing (more) money on each one sold. Apple and Samsung will have to find ways to get a piece of this market and may have to partner or acquire. Suddenly Groupon has become more valuable. Suddenly, eBay has a chance to proactively sell you used products when you are in a retail store looking for something new.

Today, Amazon will sell you a Kindle Fire for $159 if you don’t mind the ads or $174 if want an advertising-free experience. In other words it is worth at least $15 to Amazon to show you ads on a tablet. Over time, if Amazon is successful with this dual-pricing strategy we can imagine it lowering the price of the subsidized model even more. A phone with permission to show you ads would be even more valuable than a tablet as you take it everywhere. Certainly Google can’t wait to bring its massive ad network into play in new ways. It certainly shows location-based ads today – but on a less proactive basis.

The takeaways are as follows:

Mobile devices will increasingly be subsidized
Google and Amazon have to have the best devices possible in order to compel users into their mobile commerce ecosystem
Apple, Samsung, HTC, Microsoft, Nokia and RIM have to come up with a strategy to compete in mobile advertising, commerce and location-based services
Retail margins for electronics and many other items have already taken a massive hit as a result of the Internet and mobile – but we haven’t seen anything yet
There is the potential for consumer backlash as they deal with ad overload
Apple will likely come out with an ecosystem for commerce and shopping – let’s call it iShop where it will handle flashing the offers while taking a cut of the sale
They may even (gasp!) charge less for a device which shows ads just like Amazon
Samsung may do the same
Carriers have an amazing opportunity in this space they will likely squander over the next few years
Consumers will win

Dunkin Donuts App Lets You Pay More Quickly

2012-08-16T10:34:40Z

Allowing you to utilize a virtual credit card, the new Dunkin Donuts app available on iOS and Android allows you to send "gifts" electronically through text and Facebook for example. The app also functions as a nutritional guide and allows you to find the closest store.

While there has been much chatter about the Starbucks relationship with Square, Nigel Travis, Dunkin's CEO thinks that there will be a mix of payment options and he sees a future where voice integration plays a role in future apps.

Dunkin outsourced its app development to Digitas among others and Travis touted the company's ad budget - likely referencing the fact that this app will be getting some serious publicity in the future. The company expects to order 600 new stores globally in Korea, the west coast of the US, Latin America and "Even Europe," he says.

Although the popular east coast US coffee chain is late to the mobile app game, studies have shown that coffee shops whether they are Starbucks or Dunkin have loyal customers - who more than likely haven't switched loyalties because of the ability to order online via mobile device.

The upshot of the news is that it's more convenient to get your morning java fix regardless of the store you frequent and that mobile devices continue to boost productivity beyond the workplace.

Intel Finally Gets Mobile?

2012-05-17T15:08:44Z

Intel is selling its computers quite nicely into PCs and servers and although we are in a so called "post-PC era" people keep buying computers by the tens of millions. The long-term challenge is in-part ARM, the instruction-set architecture which is being turned into highly efficient chips used in most mobile devices.

The challenge of course for Intel is the typical one of disruption from below. An example is how RAID allowed inexpensive and less reliable hard drives to replace larger disks in the market.

Likewise, the ARMv8 64-bit architecture application profile was defined two months ago and at some point soon we will see these chips in the field. Moreover, expect them to rapidly go multicore if not initially. From a price/performance standpoint as well as in the power consumption arena we can surmise this processor to be something Intel should worry about. After all, companies like HP are known to be experimenting with ARM chips in their HPC initiatives.

The good news is Intel says they finally understand operators. More specifically, Herbert Weber, EMEA marketing director for mobile and communications at Intel, told Telecoms.com that they finally see the differences between mobile and the PC market.

Moreover he says Intel will begin to integrate a variety of connectivity technologies into its mobile chipsets such as WiFi, GSM, GPS, LTE.

But it isn't like companies like Broadcom haven't been doing the same thing for many years, allowing them to grow more quickly as mobile supplier. Moreover, Intel started to integrate GPUs and WiFi onto CPU chips and motherboards many years ago - certainly this isn't a new concept.

It is obvious the main problem Intel has keeping it from becoming a dominant mobile supplier has been and will continue to be size and power consumption and to that end Weber had this to say:

We have made significant improvements into our design and architecture and now we don’t need to hide behind anyone in terms of battery lifetime of our phones and power consumption. We are now on par with where the market is today and we intend with our next devices – the Maryville chipset going to 22nm and the next wave of chips coming in the 14nm platform – to be better than the rest of the market in terms of power and battery lifetime.

Although Intel has given up much of the mobile market its efforts in the Ultrabook space have been fantastic and in my opinion severely under-reported by the media in general. Intel finally seems to get the concept that if they don't make more efficient chips their days will at some point be numbered. And based on my usage of a Asus UX31 Zenbook Ultrabook, I can tell you that Intel has come a long way.

In fact this powerful yet featherweight computer lets me work for about 9 hours without wireless turned on and with the screen pretty dim.

But they better keep going as Apple is likely looking for ways to switch entirely to ARM to lower its costs as it makes its own processors already for the iPhone and iPad.

There is no way to know Apple's future plans for sure but Intel is keenly aware that the loss of the fastest market-share gaining computer platform won't be good for its company or share price. And once we start to see these chip roll outs being released as planned, we can believe that Intel finally does really get mobile.

Monetizing the Mobile Data Explosion with Tektronix Communications

2012-03-20T19:26:10Z

Remember when you were in the engineering lab and you relied on a Tektronix oscilloscope to analyze signals? I do and I deeply craved one of my own but could never afford one. But the company once part of Tektronix, Tektronix Communications does its best to ensure that not being able to afford their products is not a reason to keep you from buying. The company provides solutions for carriers which help with pre-deployment, network operations, customer care, network and RF engineering solutions as well as business performance. You see they want to ensure the solutions you buy, pay for themselves so carriers are more likely to purchase their products than a college kid eyeing a high-quality scope.

In a recent meeting with Laurence Alexander and Samir Marwaha they shared with me the news that the company has been awarded more than 50% of the LTE monitoring opportunities worldwide partnering with more than 15 tier one carriers around the globe. The company helps its customers across multiple “technology domains” such as EUTRAN, EPC, IMS and VoLTE.

Moreover the company is assisting carriers maximize revenue per subscriber as well as ensuring commercial readiness of LTE networks. They also assist with OTT partnerships between carriers and companies who can utilize such QoS enhanced pipes like perhaps in the video space. According to Laurence this is a win/win because carriers can charge for it and consumers get a better quality service.

Moreover deep packet classification enables service providers to get a better sense of what users are doing on the network. Moreover the company’s solutions allow operators to determine network quality from a user perspective – and at this point they can even alert customer care that a problem is taking place. Quality issues are just one cause of churn but certainly a very large portion of the churn pie. This sort of solution is designed to help carriers be proactive and retain customers – even ones which just had a negative experience.

Certainly one of the reasons carriers to choose Tektronics Communications has to do with the breadth of product line starting with a product like K2Air/NSA for advanced RAN and RF performance analysis to OptiMon for deep drive RAN troubleshooting. Then there is the Iris series – traffic analyzers, session analyzers and performance intelligence solutions – all the way up to touchpoint CEM for customer experience management.

And as the growth of LTE and VoLTE accelerates so should the opportunities for the company to assist carriers in providing better quality of service to customers. In addition, the company aims to help them find new ways to generate revenue by providing differentiated, higher quality services.

Disclosure: I am a shareholder in Tektronix Communications parent Danaher. Pictured is the graphic of Danaher's holdings in the tech, telecom and related spaces.

How Aricent Group Enables Rapid LTE Adoption

2012-03-08T15:49:44Z

One of the most important companies in the wireless space you may never have heard of is Aricent Group, the product engineering, carrier services and design company which renamed itself last year by combining Aricent and frog (formerly Frog Design). The name change was not done for cosmetic reasons, Aricent Group’s customers are carriers, and equipment providers who live in a brave new world requiring ever-faster time to market. In addition, in an increasingly standardized world of LTE, companies have to be able to provide bullet-proof interoperability and product and service stability while simultaneously adding value in order to reduce the brutal effects of commoditization which plagues virtually all markets where standards take hold. So faster product integration is necessary to keep up with evolving and hypercompetitive markets.

With financial backing from KKR and Sequoia Capital and 10,000 employees in 36 countries, Aricent Group is a major player in helping design and implement leading-edge wireless systems. And at MWC the company touted its 35^th LTE win. Yes the word holistic is thrown around a lot but there seems to be no better term to describe how this corporate behemoth is helping customers from the consumer touch point to the core of the network. In fact many customers rely on Aricent Group’s 5,000 wireless engineers to provide them with protocol stacks and software frameworks to speed their time to market.

As an example, the company supports 3GPP Release 9 and Release 10 compliant protocol stacks and software frameworks for LTE span eNodeB platforms and components, IP Backhaul, and the Evolved Packet Core. Moreover they support reference frameworks support both the Frequency Division Duplex (FDD) and Time Division Duplex (TDD) modes of operation on LTE across different bands.

At MWC 2012 in Barcelona I spent time with Tim Leberecht the company’s CMO and Shrikant Latkar VP of Product and Solutions Marketing to learn about how the company is helping MVNOs with sophisticated OSS/BSS systems helping provide revenue assurance for MVNOs to how the drive towards the consumerization of IT has helped their company grow more quickly.

Some of the areas where they provide assistance have to do with designing products consumers don’t even know they want and helping their customers speed up their internal organizational structures to keep up with the rapidly accelerating market.

In the future, the company hopes to expand beyond the core telecom market into healthcare, financial and automotive spaces. In addition they have noticed a trend in the market where their customers now have in-house design departments meaning Aricent Group is becoming more of an advisor and partner.

Other areas where they see opportunity are M2M where they mentioned that if a machine-to-machine system is monitoring a heart patient they have to make sure it works and meets an SLA requirement. Other spaces of growth include big data, apps and the smart grid where they say they are helping consumers become aware of their energy usage.

Finally, we can expect the company to focus more on helping customers develop ecosystems as well as providing network-based apps.

At MWC much of the focus on the consumer press centered around the latest gadget and gizmos but the reality is while design is important, without the wireless infrastructure, support, billing and OSS systems – all our fancy smartphones and tablets would become paperweights. So while Aricent group does focus on the glitz and glamour side of the wireless space, they also help make sure our devices keep working as efficiently as possible while helping carriers make the money they need to keep reinvesting in their networks.

Off to MWC 2012 Next Week

2012-02-23T19:34:46Z

I've got lots on my plate this week before I take off to Barcelona to attend Mobile World Congress (MWC) - which was once called 3GSM. I've got great meetings lined up and I am very interested in seeing what is happening in the world of 4G, white spaces, M2M, tablets and smartphones. Apple won't be there - formerly anyway so I consider this event to be kind of like the anti-Apple confab. Interestingly, all the major events I attend these days are devoid of the iconic Cupertino brand as well. It doesn't seem to be hurting them does it?

Yet face-to-face events like this one are crucial to get the word out and generate buzz around brands which don't have the Apple halo. Companies that will really need to shine this week include Microsoft, Nokia, RIM, Samsung, Google and HTC.

I will be sure to keep you posted as I travel to the show (www.tehrani.com)- you can also follow me on Twitter at @rtehrani. In addition the TMCnet Mobile World Congress news page will give you access to articles written by 100+ TMCnet contributors.

These are some of the MWC stories produced so far today: