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  • Mobile Operators Risking $5bn Roaming Fraud Bill


    Roaming fraud could cost mobile operators USD $5 billion globally in 2009 because of a failure to implement detection measures.

    That’s the warning from James Stewart, director of fraud product management at MACH and chairman of the roaming sub-group of the GSMA fraud forum.

    He said that many operators around the world have yet to comply with near-real time roaming data exchange (NRTRDE) recommendations – making it likely that fraud will shift to those who are less well protected.

    But he said that carriers could not afford to neglect security measures, even in the current economic situation.

    "Perpetrators of roaming fraud rely on poor operator visibility and slow inter-operator processes to profit at the operators’ expense," said Stewart.

    "Many operators are re-evaluating the use of their existing fraud detection measures, looking for ways to reduce expenditure.

    "Their margins are under pressure from increasing roaming tariff regulation and competition but they cannot afford to increase their exposure to fraud and their subscribers will not accept any disruption to service caused by fraud prevention."

    Stewart said MACH clears two out of every three roaming calls on GSM and CDMA networks and settles more than 60 per cent of global inter-operator wholesale invoice amounts.

    The company has over 300 NRTRDE clients, and a growing Fraud Protection client base that is doubling every six months.

    Stewart said that minimising mobile fraud losses involves the rigorous execution of four key disciplines:

    • timely visibility
    • quick analysis
    • intelligent investigation
    • rapid action

  • Teething Troubles Disrupt Nokia's Ovi Store Launch


    Nokia has officially opened the doors to the Ovi Store application site – but its answer to Apple’s app store immediately ran into problems.

    High traffic "spikes" – which would surely have been expected, right? – meant users experienced slow downloading and page upload times.

    Effort were immediately made to rectify this by adding additional servers, according to Eric John, head up product marketing for the Ovi Store.

    But it meant Nokia didn’t get the smooth launch it would have hoped for.

    The Ovi Store is the fourth major mobile app software store to open, and the third since Apple launched iTunes in July 2008, following the Android Market and BlackBerry App World.

    Some analysts suggest the market can only sustain five such ventures.

    Nokia said the applications and services storefront will target an estimated 50 million Nokia device owners, across more than 50 Nokia devices, including the forthcoming flagship phone the Nokia N97.

    Users will have the ability to download mobile applications – starting with an initial offerering of over 20,000 – including games, videos and podcasts.

    The mobile client is available in English, German, Italian, Russian and Spanish and supports operator billing in Australia, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Russia, Singapore, Spain and the United Kingdom.

    Globally, credit card billing is available through the mobile application and the mobile website.

    AT&T plans to make Ovi Store available to its customers in the United States later this year. Additional countries, languages, devices and features will be added throughout the year.

    We’d be interested in hearing your experience with Ovi – good or bad?

  • Ingate and Dialogic Announce Secure SIP Trunking for Legacy PBX


    Ingate Systems and Dialogic Corporation have announced a partnership that will allow enterprises using legacy PBX and Contact Center systems to adopt SIP trunks as a replacement for traditional PSTN voice services.

    The companies said they have completed the necessary testing to validate the Dialogic 2000 Media Gateway Series (DMG2000) as interoperable with Ingate SIParator and Ingate Firewall products.

    Steve Johnson, president of Ingate Systems, said most SIP trunking providers and resellers focus on getting SMB customers to migrate from PSTN service, along with an upgrade to a SIP-ready IP-PBX system.

    He said this strategy remains logical and compelling – but added that there is also a significant opportunity to migrate Enterprise class customers who maintain legacy (non-SIP) PBX and contact center systems.

    "The combined security features of the Ingate SIParator with the SIP to PBX trunk conversion capability of a DMG2000 gateway enable a cost effective, secure and reliable SIP trunk interface for these customers," he said.

    With this interoperability solution, both Ingate and Dialogic products are deployed on the customer premises to support the SIP trunking service.

    The Ingate products are deployed at the network edge between a wide area IP network and the corporate LAN, securely passing SIP signaling and VoIP media streams to and from the corporate LAN.

    The Dialogic gateway resides on the corporate LAN and is connected to the legacy PBX or contact center via traditional T1/E1 trunk ports.

    The DMG2000 gateway passes the SIP Trunk signaling and media from the Ingate SIParator to the PBX by emulating traditional PSTN trunk services.

  • IP Desktop Market Revenues to Decline Until 2011


    The IP telephony endpoint market will be affected by the economic downturn – despite the fact an increasing number of enterprises are recognizing the benefits of both IP desktop phones and enterprise soft clients.

    That’s the conclusion of Melanie Turek, principal analyst at Frost & Sullivan, which has just released its latest global study of the sector’s enterprise market.

    She says that IP desktop phones are rapidly proliferating in the enterprise, displacing their analog and digital predecessors.

    Today, this is largely due to declining prices and clear productivity benefits, according to Turek.

    "Last year, we anticipated that PC soft phones offered a natural transition to more sophisticated UC clients," she said in her No Jitter blog.

    Melanie Turek, principal analyst Frost & Sullivan

    "Today, we can confirm that this new generation of soft clients is quickly penetrating the market, often replacing their old counterparts."

    Turek said that thanks to the strong case around UC and the continued shift from hardware-based to software-based solutions, more telephony vendors are aggressively pursuing bundling strategies.

    This includes combining platforms, server software, advanced UC clients, and access to either a-la-carte or bundled applications.

    She said this has considerably boosted the penetration of enterprise soft clients such as PC desktop soft phones, advanced desktop UC clients, and mobile clients (FMC and UC).

    The world enterprise IP desktop phone market continued to grow in 2008, generating USD $2.57 billion in total revenues, a 3.1 per cent increase over 2007, according to the Frost & Sullivan report.

    Steady revenue decline is expected until the end of 2010, but the market is expected to gradually recover by 2011 and continue with a healthy growth pattern until at least 2015.

    Turek said the world enterprise IP soft client market has more than doubled its size, from 1.0 million units shipped in 2007, to almost 2.4 million clients in 2008.

    "This prominent increase in client shipments has been driven not so much by a swell of customer demand, but rather by the effective penetration strategies that many IP telephony providers have been implementing," she said.

    As a result, Frost & Sullivan estimates that less than 45 per cent of total enterprise soft clients shipped in 2008 are being used as a primary tool for voice communications.

    Although PC desktop softphone revenues are expected to considerably decrease over time as UC offerings penetrate the market, the higher profit margins granted by advanced UC clients and mobile FMC/UC clients are expected to largely offset this revenue decline.

  • China 3G Build Props Up Global Mobile Gear Market


    Huawei Technologies doubled its market share in the mobile network infrastructure market in the first quarter of 2009.

    The Chinese company’s success comes as domestic mobile operators prepare to spend over USD $20 billion this year on rolling out the initial phases of China’s 3G deployments.

    This has led to a record number of 3G base station shipments.

    However, while Huawei now occupies third position in the market, there appears to be little sign of cheer asides from the activity in China.

    A quarterly market report from Dell’Oro said the global mobile infrastructure market contracted by nine per cent in January-March compared to the same period a year ago.

    It said the GSM market experienced its largest year-over-year decline and without China’s 3G tenders in WCDMA and CDMA base station deployments, the market would have fallen further.

    Scott Siegler, senior analyst at Dell’Oro Group, said China Unicom’s WCDMA deployment is shaping up to be the single largest 3G deployment in history.

    He said it was the primary contributor to the most ever – 100 thousand – Node B shipments in the quarter.

    "With the CDMA market declining elsewhere around the world, China Telecom’s spending resulted in the most CDMA base station shipments in over four years," he said.

    "As the two GSM operators, China Mobile and China Telecom focused their spending on the rapid deployment of their 3G networks, spending on their GSM networks significantly declined.

    "We expect this spending to accelerate in the second half of the year."

    During the quarter, Huawei experienced the greatest rate of growth, almost doubling its share of the total infrastructure market to 15 cent compared to the same quarter last year.

    Meanwhile, market leader Ericsson increased its share slightly to 33 per cent of the market in January-March, while Nokia Siemens Networks dropped to 21 per cent from 24 per cent a year ago, according to Dell’Oro.

    Alcatel-Lucent saw its share fall to 14 per cent from 16 per cent.

    Even less fortunate was North American’s largest maker of telecommunications gear Nortel, which saw its market share halving to 4 per cent from a year ago.

    The company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in US federal court and for creditor protection in Canada’s Ontario Superior Court of Justice in January.

    With the market expected to remain tight and extremely competitive, other’s could well be going down the same path.

  • SanDisk CEO Harari Bullish About Flash Memory


    SanDisk CEO Eli Harari believes that at $2/GB SSDs aren’t competitive yet with hard drives.

    But he is bullish about the technology’s prospects and believes it offers an ideal storage solution for netbooks.

    In an interview with Tech Trader Daily, he said that you can buy an 80 GB HDD for USD $30-$35.

    SanDisk CEO Eli Harari

    However, that same USD $30 would only get you 15 GB of flash. He suggests that 32 GB of storage is probably enough for many netbook applications.

    But to be competitive with hard drives, Harari said the flash industry will have to be able to sell at USD $1/GB while maintaining profitability.

    He said that wasn’t possible at the current 42-43 nm process technology now used for manufacturing flash.

    But he believes it should be possible at 24 nm, or two generations ahead of the current technology.

    Harari told Tech Traders usage of SSDs will start to pick up in this year’s second half and hit the mainstream in a big way in 2011.

  • Phoenix Introduces Fastest, Most Versatile SSD VME Mass Storage Module


    Phoenix International has unveiled its new VS1-250-SSD Serial Attache SCSI (SAS) or Serial ATA (SATA) based VME data storage plug-in blade.

    The VS1-250-SSD delivers high capacity, high performance data storage – with burst data transfer rate to 300MB/sec and sustained data transfer to 120MB/sec.

    The 6 U module can hold one or two SAS or SATA SSDs with a total capacity up to 512GB.

    It can be interfaced through its front panel connector or its P2 connector.

    The module is intended for military, aerospace and industrial applications requiring rugged, secure and durable mass data storage.

    Other major features of the Phoenix VS1-250-SSD Solid State Disk Module include:

    • Operational temperature from -40o to 85o C
    • Individual point-to-point device connectivity
    • Low power consumption
    • 1,300,000 MTBF
    • Integrated SLC NAND Flash
    • Meets military and IRIG 106-07 declassification standards
    • Advanced flash management for enhanced reliability and durability
    • 80,000 feet operational altitude
    • 50g, 11 ms operational shock
    • 16g rms, 10-2000Hz random vibration

    No information has been released on pricing and availability.

  • Optical Media With 1.6 Terabyte Capacity Created


    Researchers have announced they have created a "five-dimensional" optical media that can hold up to 1.6 terabytes of data.

    The team from the Swinburne University of Technology in Australia said the technology could easily be on the market within 10 years.

    In order to create the massive storage capacity the scientists used ‘nanoparticles and a "polarization" dimension’.

    The team has already signed a deal with Samsung, which says the disc could potentially hold up to 10 terabytes.

    Min Gu, a team member, said they were able to show how nanostructured material can be incorporated onto a disc in order to increase data capacity, without increasing the physical size of the disc.

    "These extra dimensions are the key to creating ultra-high capacity discs," he said.

  • NetApp Buys Data Domain For $1.5bn


    NetApp announced this week that it has agreed to buy data backup and disaster recovery systems provider Data Domain Inc. for USD $25 per share in cash and stock, or about USD $1.5 billion.

    The data storage company said it will operate Data Domain as a product line.

    The result should accelerated growth and market adoption, according to NetApp, since Data Domain has the distribution channels and global reach to offer its products to more customers.

    Data Domain’s board has unanimously approved the deal, which is expected to close in the next two to four months.

    On Wednesday, NetApp reported a drop in fiscal fourth-quarter profit as revenue declined amid the economic turmoil.

  • WD Adds 2TB Hard Drives As Demand Grows


    WD has expanded its WD AV-GP line of hard drives to include a 2 TB capacity, which it claims is the industry’s largest available drive to-date.

    The company said the move was in response to growing demand for higher capacity storage continues to increase due to large video applications, including high-definition video.

    Jim Welsh, senior vice president and general manager of WD’s branded products and consumer electronics groups, said consumer electronics consumers require hard drives that consume less power, generate less heat and operate quietly.

    He said audio and video recording applications, such as DVRs, media servers, media centres and mainstream surveillance systems, often demand 24×7 operation from hard drives.

    "Our drives meet the demanding requirements of these markets including higher reliability, universal compatibility, low power consumption and the ability to simultaneously record multiple audio and/or high-definition video streams," he said.

    The WD AV-GP 2 TB hard drive (model WD20EVDS) is available now for USD $299.00.