NEWS APRIL2010
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Cisco pulls out of WiMAX market, almost
technologies like wifi and femtocells. “After careful
review of our mobility strategy and investments, we have decided to discontinue designing and building new WiMAX base stations,” a company spokesman said. The move raises
some questions over Cisco’s $330m acquisition of WiMAX kit maker Navini Networks
IP and core network equipment vendor Cisco has pulled the plug on its WiMAX base station operation, further highlighting the ill health of the sector. Cisco has been stepping
up its game in the telecoms sector ahead of the shift
to all IP next generation networks, since it missed the boat during the rollout of 3G. The US company has a presence in both the WiMAX and LTE sectors but more as a provider of packet core networking equipment as well as edge
in 2007. Texas-based Navini develops smart beamforming technologies with MIMO (Multi-Input Multi-Output) antennas, making it a strategic player in the Mobile WiMAX 802.16e space. But Navini might be just
as at home in Cisco’s edge technology portfolio where it extends the company’s wifi and wifi mesh portfolios to include WiMAX. “We are committed to
continue with our current service provider mobility strategy to provide a radio- agnostic approach to focus on the packet core and to also focus investment in radio technologies such as femtocell and wifi,” the company spokesman said. Despite the bad press
WiMAX is getting in the telecoms market, Motorola’s still flying the flag for the technology. The US firm said in late March that it has shipped its two millionth WiMAX device, just five months after shipping its one millionth. Moreover, since hitting the two million device
shipment milestone in February, Motorola said it has also received a significant order from Mexican service provider Axtel to deliver additional WIMAX CPE units. Axtel now offers a fixed WiMAX service across Mexico, with plans to offer nomadic WiMAX service to its customers in the future. “At the end of 2009,
WiMAX service providers were covering more than 621 million people,” said Ron Resnick, president and chairman of the WiMAX Forum. “Based on that estimate and the traction we’re seeing in the market, the WiMAX Forum now forecasts that by 2011, there will be more than one billion people across the world within WiMAX coverage,” Resnick said.
Amdocs buys MX Telecom for $104m
Customer experience firm Amdocs has swooped in and acquired messaging and mobile payments provider MX
Telecom, for $104m. MX Telecom will become part of the company’s OpenMarket platform, a business unit of Amdocs
that focuses on mobile transactions. Amdocs said the
acquisition accelerates plans to expand OpenMarket into key markets, providing a hosted platform to extend mobile payment and messaging capabilities through an integrated network and product portfolio. Jay Emmet,
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general manager of OpenMarket, said, “This strategic acquisition expands OpenMarket’s global footprint and substantially increases our market leadership in the rapidly growing mobile payments market that will extend well beyond messaging in the coming years. In addition, it strengthens our product portfolio with an extensive set of value-added services for merchants.” As we noticed at
Mobile World Congress in
Barcelona, transaction management and billing has become sexy again. In our billing feature on page 32, we look at how traditional carrier revenues are declining and billing models introduced relatively recently to stimulate data uptake are proving to be unworkable. In the piece, MCI talks to a range of billing specialists about the different strategies operators can employ to create new revenue streams.
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