A new open-source solution for video-conferencing?
Google has released the source code for WebRTC (Web Real Time Communication) – a set of Voice and Video technologies to be used with HTML5 for rich chat and collaboration applications to run directly from within the internet browser. [Read more...]
Industry News Summary – SuperOP recap, VoIP security and more
June 6, 2011 By Leave a Comment
Industry News – Wireless Spectrum, LTE, AT&T
March 23, 2011 By Leave a Comment
AT&T to acquire T-Mobile USA
AT&T announced its 39 Billion$ agreement with Deutsche Telekom, in which AT&T will acquire T-Mobile USA. AT&T will pay $25B in cash, and $14B in AT&T shares, this makes Deutsche Telekom the largest shareholder in AT&T with 8% of the company stocks. AT&T expect the deal to help deployment of its 4G LTE, with 95 percent of the U.S. population to be covered – an additional 46.5 million people beyond their current 4G deployment plans.
Who owns and uses AWS Spectrum?
WirelessMoves wrote a short post about the AWS spectrum in USA – 45mhz in the 1700mhz range for uplink, and 45mhz for downlink in the 2100mhz range – this range can be used LTE communications. T-Mobile is the only player with both licencing and suitable devices currently – is this the reason for the 95% expected AT&T LTE-coverage mentioned earlier?
UK regulator, Office of Communications, to offer 800mhz and 2.6ghz spectrum for LTE
OFCOM will make an auction for the 800mhz and 2.6ghz bands in second quarter 2012, expecting that operators will start using the spectrum in 2013.
UK is late in LTE deployment as LTE being tested in various European countries and already being used commercially in Germany, Austria, Finland, Denmark and Estonia.
Nortel to sell ‘Legacy’ IPv4 numbers to Microsoft for $7.5Millions
Nortel Networks will sell Microsoft 666,624 IP numbers, from its pool of ‘legacy’ numbers (IP addresses dating back to the early 90′s). In the last years the industry started shifting away from IPV4 to IPV6 in order to combat the problem with limited amount of available addresses in the IPv4 system. Nortel addresses are one of the last batches of avilable IPv4 space, which total in 4.3billion addresses.
IMTC CTO Roundtable
We began uploading our CTO Roundable content – All presentations are available via IMTC Slideshare account. Movies to be added soon – Stay tuned!
Industry News – Umi Interop, RCS-e, Skype & Panasonic and more
March 13, 2011 By Leave a Comment
Cisco Umi Interoperability
Cisco announced that it’s Home Telepresence offering – Umi, will be interoperatable with ‘Umi-Connect‘ – A umi software client for Mac and PC and Cisco’s professional Telepresence systems.
This announcement puts Umi in a whole different perspective, as Umi can now be used for business purposes, i.e – home workers.
In addition, Cisco revelaed a new 720P only version, for a cheaper $399 price and lowered the monthly fee (for a yearly plan) to 9.95$ a month from 24.99$ a month.
Lack of interoperability and high ownership cost were major points of criticism when Cisco introduce Umi and it remains to be seen how this latest move will improve Umi acceptance in home and SOHO markets.
3G4G blog posted a short article about RCS (or in it’s latest form – RCS-e)
The article gives a good overview of what RCS is, and is a recommended read. Back in July 2010 we interviewed Jose M.Recio from Solaimes about RCS and it’s relevancy in the age of the smartphone – As it seems, it’s still is.
Panasonic Viera Blu-ray players to include Skype
Panasonic announced Skype support for it’s new blu-ray player line (2011). Video-Chat will be supported via the Freetalk Conference Camera, which will cost 99$ and be available starting this month.
Spectrume Reform Legistlation
US Senators Olympia Snowe and John Kerry recently introduced the Reforming Airwaves by Developing Incentives and Opportunistic Sharing (RADIOS) Act. The proposed RADIOS Act aims to provide FCC and NTIA detailed information needed for smarter allocation of the Radio spectrum.
LTE sprint
Spirt is one of the few operators in USA that use CDMA for voice and data connectivity – Steve Elfman, Sprint’s president of network operations said that the company will make a decision regarding LTE in mid-year, however if Sprint does decide to use LTE it could be deployed by year-end 2013.
IMTC BOD Interview – Frédéric Gabin, Ericsson
February 14, 2011 By 1 Comment
IMTC Blog is proud to Interview Frédéric Gabin, Standardization Manager at Ericsson, France and IMTC Board of Directors member:
IMTC Blog: Hello Frédéric, Please Tell us about yourself, your positions in Ericsson and past positions.
Mr.Gabin: My name is Frédéric Gabin, I’m French and I live in Paris, France. My role in the Ericsson standardization organization since 2008 is to lead and coordinate the development of Multimedia standards. I started my career as a signal processing research engineer in 1998 and since then was involved in research, system design and standards with both network and mobile terminal vendors.
IMTC Blog: Why did you volunteered to be an IMTC board member?
Mr.Gabin: The IMTC organization has a strong history of making upcoming key multimedia features a reality without which originating standards would look like mere litterature. The board member position gives a direct ability of steering the organization towards the real needs of my company and the industry. I wanted to be part of this.
IMTC Blog: What are your goals as an IMTC board member ?
Mr.Gabin: My goals are to give existing and future AGs visibility and support in their developments by establishing clear directions in agreement with the key industry players.
IMTC Blog: How does IMTC benefit Ericsson?
Mr.Gabin: IMTC benefits Ericsson as well as ST-Ericsson and Sony-Ericsson in that it gives a framework for terminal interop tests of key multimedia services which speeds up deployments and adoption on the market.
IMTC Blog: In your opinion – What are IMTC greatest achievements? what were 2010 greatest achievements?
Mr.Gabin: IMTC greatest achievements in 2010 were that VoLTE F2F test events started February 2-4 (Ericsson AB), Stockholm and October 20-22 (Nokia Siemens Networks), Athens.
IMTC Blog: What are the major goals for IMTC at 2011? What are the major interoperability issues for 2011 (in Ericsson, in the industry as a whole)?
Mr.Gabin: Firstly, with more and more fragmentation in the various multimedia standards and fast pace deployments, for example in streaming services, one major goal for IMTC is to avoid fragmentation itself and focus on the most relevant standards and services. Secondly, the ongoing deployments of LTE networks around the world should drive a focus on VoLTE terminal interoperability undertaken in the IMS AG . This group should grow by involving more operators and device vendors.
We thank Frédéric for his time and dedication.
As always, If your company does IMS, VoLTE – Join IMTC to help shape the future of Telecommunication Interoperability.
Frédéric Gabin can be reached via E-mail: frederic.gabin@ericsson.com or LinkedIN – http://fr.linkedin.com/in/fredericgabin
Frédéric Gabin, Ericsson
A Short Introduction to VoLTE
February 15, 2010 By 6 Comments
- Image by markhillary via Flickr
A few years ago, when it seemed apparent that all communications are moving to an IP based world, mobile operators had to decide on the standard to use in their all-IP world. SIP was selected for that purpose as the base protocol, with a lot of additional protocols taking part to comprise the whole network. The end result (which is an ongoing standardization effort) is IMS – the IP Multimedia Subsystem.
IMS was adopted by all other incumbent service providers – wireline, wireless and cable, which in a way made sure of continuity of service, interoperability and roaming between operators. Fun as it is, the problem with IMS is its complexity: it comes to replace a hundred years of developments in voice technologies, and wrap into their future network advanced services such as rich multimedia and presence. [Read more...]
