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  • Rising Demand Makes Toshiba Reconsider Blu-Ray Products


    Ever since losing the high-def format war to Blu-ray, Toshiba has resolutely refused to join the enemy camp and start manufacturing Blu-ray products.

    Until now that is. According to reports coming out of its annual shareholder meeting in Tokyo, Toshiba is considering making Blu-ray products.

    The company’s president, Atsutoshi Nishida, told shareholders that Blu-ray recorders in particular appear to be a viable option, reports CrunchGear.

    The logic appears to be that with demand for Blu-ray recorders increasing (especially in Japan) Toshiba cannot afford to miss out on a slice of that market.

    There is also Toshiba’s current financial plight – although for the current fiscal year, Nishida said his company is expected to save USD $3.5 billion after a poor 2008.

    The company’s change of attitude comes as a survey by Harris Interactive suggests the picture for Blu-ray is still far from rosy.

    It shows that the percentage of American adults with a HDTV is up from 35 in May 2008 to 47 per cent today.

    But the only 7 per cent of Americans own a Blu-ray player – up from 4 per cent a year ago. By comparison, 11 per cent of Americans own a machine that plays the now-defunct HD DVD format.

    Milton Ellis, VP and senior consultant for Harris Interactive, said only 7 per cent of non-Blu-ray owners is considering buying a Blu-ray disc player within the next year, down from 9 per cent in May 2008.

    He said Blu-ray adoption is being hampered by competition from alternative technologies, such as cable and satellite TV and the Internet, all of which offer HD content.

    "Consumers today can easily watch high-definition TV channels or use the Internet or video-on-demand to access high-definition movies," he said.

    "In the near future, access to high-definition movies may be a download or streaming delivery of one’s favorite movies to a home media server that eliminates the need for a Blu-ray player and Blu-ray disc."

    However, the Blu-ray Disc Association has challenged the accuracy of the Harris Poll.

    It said the Harris survey doesn’t chime with actual shipping and sales numbers for Blu-ray.

    The BDA cited Adams Media Research data that puts the numbers closer to nearly 8 per cent for Blu-ray and less than 1 per cent for HD DVD.

    Calling the Harris data "grossly inaccurate", the news release states that by the end of 2009, Blu-ray players will be in nearly 15 per cent of American TV homes.

    Tom Adams, president of Adams Media Research, suggested the Harris survey findings were a result of consumers’ inability to identify what exactly is next to their TVs.

    "Some people believe a DVD player on an HDTV is high-def," he said.

    "There’s just so much confusion out there. Everybody makes mistakes, but we have models that show those numbers just can’t be true."

  • Boxee Extends to all Windows Users, Adds Apps


    Boxee is extending its media center access to Windows and will shortly change its "alpha" status to "beta".

    The open source media site has also announced four major new app partnerships that will be available to everyone downloading its software.

    While Boxee has been available for Linux computers and Macs, it was only possible to get it for Windows as an invite-only alpha.

    Despite this it has gained enthusiastic following for its support of almost any major file type and Internet apps.

    Boxee has promised to keep the three platforms in sync as the service undergoes updates and upgrades.

    With around 120 apps in the Boxee App Box, users can now chose from the likes of MLB.tv, Current, Digg, and Tumblr.

    Among the new partnerships announced at its App Developer Challenge in San Francisco, the Major League Baseball one is the most interesting.

    The MLB arrangement marks Boxee’s first live streaming deal. MLB.tv Premium subs can now stream games through Boxee’s system in full HD from anywhere in the country on their TV.

  • I-MOVIX Announces New Deal with CANAL+ France


    I-MOVIX has announced a new contract with CANAL+ France to use its ultra slow motion SprintCam solution for sports broadcasting.

    The SprintCam Live V2.1 and SprintCam V3 HD offer broadcast integration and have the ability to work at 500 fps under restricted lighting conditions.

    The V3 – the first broadcast-integrated, native HD, ultra-slow-motion solution offering with instant replay – was launched in March.

    It produces slow-motion output equivalent to 20 to 40 times slower than normal speed.

    Coralie Piton, head of sports production at CANAL+ France, said the collaboration between I-MOVIX and CANAL+ France is not new.

    Both partner teams have worked together on several occasions this year, including football matches between Olympique de Marseille and Girondins de Bordeaux, Real Madrid and Liverpool, Paris Saint Germain and Olympique de Marseille and more recently, Olympique de Marseille and Olympique Lyonnais.

    Depending on the stadium, with only a little bit more than 700 LUX, CANAL+ was able to make the most of the SprintCam system unique capacity from 500 to 5,000 frames per second.

    "The I-MOVIX technology matches our expectations in terms of innovation and stunning images," said Piton.

  • IPsmarx Releases "Cost Cutting" Wholesale Softswitch


    IPsmarx Technology has released what it describes as a user-friendly all-in-one solution for managing billing routing, taxation, and complex routing tables.

    The company claims the new VoIP Softswitch will allow carriers to reduce their operating costs by automating billing and customer management processes.

    Aimed at wholesale VoIP carriers, it integrates call routing, SIP and H323 handling, advanced billing, client management, taxation and reporting.

    Arash Vahidnia, CEO of IPsmarx, said the solution offered enhanced security features and advanced database technology.

    "Carriers will also benefit from our new enhanced features, such as Distributed Architecture and Advanced Least Cost Routing along with carrier grade reliability," he said.

    In May, IPsmarx launched Unified Customer Management (UCM), a solution designed to streamline the billing process for service providers.

    Vahidnia said the new wholesale softswitch was designed based on the needs of the current carrier market.

    He said trends such as package billing and promotional bundles have been developing in the VoIP wholesale space.

    "So this new IPsmarx solution will include management tools for carriers to design their own promotional offers and rate packages," he said.

    The solution is intended for carriers at all growth stages, from start-ups to larger carriers.

  • JAJAH Connects One Billionth Call, Promises "Genuine" UC


    JAJAH has announced that it has just connected its one billionth call – a 29-year-old woman in San Francisco who was calling her mother in India.

    Not bad going for a company that launched just three years ago as a web-based consumer VoIP service and now has has over 25 million users and partnerships with the likes of Intel, Microsoft and Yahoo!

    In announcing it billionth call, JAHAH said it was particularly special because it came via one of its partners – in this case Yahoo! – which uses the JAJAH platform to operate its Yahoo! Voice service.

    Earlier this month JAJAH CEO Trevor Healy said there is a "sea change" currently taking place in the communications industry – and that has resulted in JAJAH itself evolving from a consumer VoIP focus to become a global IP communications platform provider.

    The company is currently preparing a new "in the cloud" Unified Communications Platform able to manage any form of data communication.

    It claims this will open up a new phase of genuinely unified communications – something that has been hampered by issues with interoperability and integration.

  • Nimbuzz Offers VoIP Calling Without 3G or WiFi


    Nimbuzz is partnering with Voxbone to offer its VoIP calling service using local DID access numbers – without the need for 3G or Wi-Fi connectivity.

    The arrangement means that users can make voice calls to contacts using most of the popular IM and VoIP services, including Gizmo5 and Skype, in over 50 countries.

    The Nimbuzz service, which runs on all Internet-capable mobile phones, detects when the handset is out of Wi-Fi or 3G range and steps in.

    It requests permission to automatically dial a local access number and route the call over the Internet.

    With most mobile plans, such calls are free except for a low charge (if any) to the local access number.

    The Nimbuzz software client determines the correct access number to dial from the user’s Nimbuzz profile.

    Headquartered in Brussels, Belgium, Voxbone provides worldwide local and toll-free phone numbers over its own private intercontinental VoIP network.

    Tobias Kemper, Nimbuzz head of communications, said the intention is to make Nimbuzz a truly mass-market application.

    "Not one limited to this mobile platform, or that chat/calling network, or a particular click sequence," he said.

    "By adding the DID numbers supplied by Voxbone, we can provide reliable mobile VoIP outside of Internet range and over 2G networks in over 50 countries, with any Internet-enabled handset and no change in user behavior."

    Currently growing at a rate of over 750,000 sign-ups per month and operating in 200 countries, Nimbuzz offers mobile VoIP, chat, location, file sharing and MMS services under one application.

    It works across popular communities and social networks, including Skype, Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, ICQ, GoogleTalk, AIM, Facebook and MySpace.

    Nimbuzz VoIP also reaches PSTN phones through Skype-Out, using any of 10 VoIP third-party VoIP services (including Skype).

    A full phone keypad is part of its interface, along with the multi-service buddy list.

  • OnRelay Releases Open Source Mobile PBX


    OnRelay has released its mobile PBX solution following successful trials in Europe, Asia Pacific and the Middle East.

    Unified MBX is a software-only IP business communication system built for mobile phones.

    The Cellular Fixed Mobile Convergence (FMC) provider said the solution provides Unified Communications (UC) without the expense of proprietary telephony hardware or IP PBX licenses.

    It does so by pre-integrating cellular FMC software with an open source IP PBX.

    The result is that Unified MBX can be deployed on-premises, or hosted in the cloud to provide mobile business communications as Software as a Service (SaaS).

    OnRelay said customers across ten countries have so far self-installed the solution with only remote OnRelay support.

    It is built around OnRelay’s Telephony Internetworking Protocol (TINP).

    TINP uses voice and data signalling to bring full IP PBX functionality to the mobile phone, over any cellular network – 3G/GSM, EVDO and Low Power GSM.

    In an interview with smartphone.biz-news earlier this year, Ivar Plahte, CEO and co-founder of OnRelay, said he had no doubt that mobile PBX is the future – with smartphones increasingly replacing desktop phones to become the sole business phone.

  • WiMAX MENA: Gulf Offers "Real Opportunity" For WiMAX


    Richard Jones has just overseen the largest WiMAX deployment in Europe, Africa and the Middle East for a telecom startup in Saudi Arabia.

    Yet the managing partner of Ventura Team said his biggest concern is whether WiMAX will make it as a technology.

    "LTE is coming. The difficulty is can WiMAX be in service before LTE arrives?"

    Jones told smartphone.biz-news that WiMAX is suffering from not having a "poster boy" to accelerate its adoption, perhaps a contributing factor to why it has failed to take off so far in India and the US.

    Another is cost.

    He said that despite there being plenty of WiMAX development around the world, prices for base stations are still high.

    "Volumes are needed to get down the production price because WiMAX is still expensive," he said.

    "The economies of scale that could normally bring equipment costs down will not occur. It’s a real challenge."

    Richard Jones, managing partner of Ventura Team

    Jones said WiMAX has to succeed and the key to increasing the number of subscribers is a successful deployment.

    "If that happens, other people will get confidence in it."

    He is part of an expert panel at the this week’s WiMAX MENA Forum in Dubai discussing how WiMAX can create profitable opportunities for new entrants in the Middle East and North Africa.

    His 16-month stint as Chief Commercial Officer for the Saudi Arabia company making the WiMAX deployment makes him well qualified to comment.

    Jones said the Gulf does offer a real opportunity since it is a market with relatively low broadband penetration.

    The area’s mix of villas and apartments often means it is not possible to put fibre in economically.

    In addition, there is the presence of an incumbent and the fact the industry has been slow to de-regulate means prices remain relatively high.

    "DSL is very poor in the region as a whole," he said. "There’s a long distance between people’s houses and exchanges, so no-one is getting a reasonably fast DSL service from the incumbent."

    Earlier this month, ZTE announced that it has partnered with Etihad Atheeb Telecom (Atheeb), the largest WiMAX operator in Saudi Arabia.

    They have agreed to build the Kingdom’s first nationwide WiMAX network.

    What WiMAX offers, according to Jones, is coverage which is so far lacking.

    "WiMAX provides an interesting opportunity for companies to provide broadband in areas that are uneconomical for fibre and places where people would not get a DSL service," he said.

    The existing gap in the market has led to a rise in 3G services but Jones said the opportunities for WiMAX are considerable.

    "WiMAX is still there. There is still the potential for services based on WiMAX to cover lots of subscribers not covered by fixed and around the 1-2 meg broadband service," he said.

    Jones said that WiMAX has become the fast roll-out technology of choice.

    But he said it is also being exploited by fixed licence operators in the Gulf who currently have a very good 3G service.

    In this situation the operators may have a WiMAX license – obtained at a fraction of the cost of a mobile licence – that doesn’t allow them to do anything mobile with the technology.

    But when licences are unified to pave the way for fixed-mobile convergence (FMC) these carriers will be able to become good quality mobile providers.

    "What’s happening is that people are using WiMAX as part of a very innovative strategy," said Jones. "There are huge cost saving to be made."

  • WiMAX MENA: Roll-Out Strategy Key To WiMAX v LTE Debate


    Arguing that WiMAX is a better wireless 4G system than Long Term Evolution (LTE) – or vice versa – is a waste of time.

    That’s the view of Dr Hans-Peter Petry, head of radio access and transport at Detecon International, who is adamant that it’s pointless claiming either side in the 4G debate is superior to the other.

    "I would violently fight against those that say LTE is better than WiMAX," he said. "This is absolutely wrong.

    Even so, Petry, who is a speaker at this week’s WiMAX Forum Mena in Dubai, said that a key question in the WiMAX community is how it compares to other wireless technologies.

    He is addressing this in his presentation to the conference, which is entitled: Exploring The Capabilities Of Potential 4G Candidates And Understanding The Best Parameters For Benchmarking And A Successful Rollout.

    As part of this, Petry will "clarify the landscape" – essentially spelling out what makes a technology 2G, 3G or 4G.

    He told smartphone.biz-news this is necessary because many people are confused by what a technology has to offer before it can be classed as 4G.

    "There is a lot of confusion in the market," he said. "A lot of protagonists are confusing people with conflicting messages."

    "For 4G there are very clear pre-requisites and without them being implemented in the technology, you can not claim it is 4G."

    Dr Hans-Peter Petry, head of radio access and transport at Detecon International

    So WiMAX partly belongs to 3G – along with LTE and Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) – and only in certain circumstances can they claim to be 4G, according to Petry.

    He said Detecon had defined a metric that enabled each of the technologies to be evaluated in a fair way.

    This included: marketing, geography, services, tariffs, and technology inputs.

    "All these parameters are important for an evaluation," he said. "We have mapped these into a single Service Production Cost (SPC)."

    So it is possible to show the SPC for individual technologies under similar conditions.

    Petry said this has produced some "astonishing results", the outcome of which shows that the decision on which 4G technology to implement is not a question of the technology.

    "Under the same boundary conditions, the difference in the technology is minor."

    Where there are differences, according to Petry, they lie in the roll-out strategies.

    He said this came down to whether an operator is looking for coverage first, then capacity or vice versa.

    "The recommendation is that before you talk about the technology, talk about other things such as roll-out strategy," he said.

    So factors such as the kind of customer, whether the area is green field, brown field, rural or densely populated, all have to be considered.

    Petry said boundary questions then had to be dealt with before, finally, talking about the appropriate technology.

    "Then you can choose the right technology," he said. "Do not choose WiMAX because you think it is better than LTE."

    As a footnote, Petry said he believed LTE would ultimately capture a larger market share than WiMAX.

    That may prove correct, but as the performance and capabilities of WiMAX and LTE get better over time, the competition between them will become less important than that between wireless and wired broadband.

  • Storage Cost Savings and Dynamic Provisioning


    Hitachi Data Systems Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of Hitachi, Ltd.  and the only provider of Services Oriented Storage Solutions, has introduced unique capabilities across software and services to enable customers to reclaim underutilised storage capacity and increase the return on their assets.

    This announcement highlights the company’s strategic Global Services capabilities to further extend the economic and optimisation benefits customers can achieve leveraging Hitachi Dynamic Provisioning technology.

    Coupled with the recently announced Switch IT On programme, the enhancements can help customers improve the efficiency of their existing environments by reclaiming storage capacity across all storage tiers.

    Customers have realised up to 200 TB in reclaimed storage capacity and CAPEX savings upwards of $2M, thereby deferring future storage purchases. Specifically, Hitachi Data Systems today announced the following innovative capabilities:

    • Zero Page Reclaim – examines volumes of physical capacity on or on storage connected to the Hitachi Universal Storage Platform, returns unused storage blocks back to the storage pool and reclaims storage space
    • Industry-first Automatic Dynamic Rebalancing – improved automatic performance optimisation on the Universal Storage Platform by automatically rebalancing existing virtual volumes to take advantage of physical storage added later. Hitachi Data Systems is the only enterprise-class storage vendor that does this automatically upon a customer’s pool expansion.
    • Support for the Hitachi Adaptable Modular Storage 2000 family – brings the advantages of dynamic provisioning such as cost savings, automated performance optimisation and easy provisioning, to Hitachi midrange customers.
    • Storage Reclamation Service – assesses the customer’s environment, plans the new dynamic provisioned environment, migrates the data and reclaims unused capacity with Zero Page Reclaim without disruption to the application, thereby deferring CAPEX and increasing ROA.

    “Storage economics, our best practices for helping companies assess their storage requirements and investment returns through true ownership cost, has never been more critical to enterprises and thin provisioning can play an integral role in saving organisations money while improving operational efficiency,” said Hu Yoshida, Chief Technology Officer, Hitachi Data Systems.

    “Today’s software and services announcement is part of our focus to help our customers do more with less. Dynamic provisioning simplifies operations by replacing the management of hundreds of volumes with the management of one or two pools of virtual capacity.

    Dynamic provisioning can also reclaim capacity on existing open systems volumes without disruption for significant cost savings that go straight to customers’ bottom line.”

    New Hitachi Storage Reclamation Service

    Hitachi Data Systems has extensive experience helping customers take advantage of its dynamic provisioning technologies to increase utilisation, reduce the cost of storage growth and extend the life of storage assets. Through the Storage Reclamation Service, customers can gain the benefit of this experience to accelerate time to results with lower risk. Key aspects of the service include:

    • End-to-end Service – includes assessment, planning, design, migration and storage reclamation
    • Quick Analysis – to show the type of benefits that customers can expect, Hitachi Data Systems can perform a quick analysis of a sampling of a customer’s environment
    • Shared Risk – to lower the risk to customers, Hitachi Data Systems will perform the assessment in a shared risk model, where customers pay only if Hitachi Data Systems exceeds the pre-set customer expectations for storage to be reclaimed.

    "In today’s challenging economic conditions, enterprise customers are seeking to create highly-efficient storage environments that reduce cost and extend the value of existing investments," said Brad Nisbet, Program Manager, IDC Storage Services Research.

    “With the Storage Reclamation Service, Hitachi Data Systems is creating a services package built on a strong technology portfolio of storage virtualisation and dynamic provisioning, affording customers the opportunity to reduce capital and operational expenses more quickly and with less risk."

    Hitachi Dynamic Provisioning Customers

    Carter Lee, Vice President of Technology Operations, Overstock.com: "Hitachi Data Systems has quickly simplified the process of non-disruptively provisioning storage. With Hitachi virtualisation technologies, we’ve seen storage capacity savings of 50 percent on some arrays, now provision storage in 25 percent of the time, and have increased utilisation rates by over 30 percent. We’ve reduced data migration related down-time from several hours to less than 30 minutes. Overall, by using Hitachi virtualisation, dynamic provisioning and tiered storage, we’ve reduced our capital and operating costs for an improved return on our storage investment."

    Steve Carlberg, Principal Network Administrator, University HealthSystem Consortium: “University HealthSystem Consortium leverages Hitachi Data Systems for the functionality and scalability needed for a large and growing healthcare consortium, while providing an easy to manage system for IT staff.

    Hitachi virtualisation technologies give us the flexibility and cost efficiency to run many heterogeneous applications, databases and workloads concurrently off of a single virtualised storage pool.

    With Hitachi Dynamic Provisioning we have reclaimed 40 percent of our storage capacity, have increased storage utilisation rates and pushed out new storage acquisitions."