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www.pipelinepub.com Volume 11, Issue 9

The Chicago Auto Show brought a bevy of new connected technology to the marketplace, along with a slew of high-end hybrids like the Porsche 918 Spyder (pictured below), which gets 67 miles per gallon and accelerates from 0-60 in 2.2 seconds (the fastest Car and Driver has ever tested).

BMW also had a hybrid super car on display, the BMW i8. This speedy performer is a battery-powered vehicle that has the ability to go 0-60 mph in four seconds, yet still get 76 miles to the gallon.

One of the coolest applications of connectivity came from MedEx, an ambulance provider. The company has integrated Google Glass to enable advanced telemedicine and improve communications between paramedics and emergency room doctors. “At MedEx, we work hard to stay ahead of the curve when it comes to equipping our ambulances with the latest innovations,” said MedEx CEO Lauren Rubinson-Morris. “Google Glass is particularly helpful in medical situations involving health risks that require visual assessment for treatment, such as trauma, burns, cardiac arrest, strokes and seizures.”

Buick showcased its comprehensive connected car offerings that touch all the bases. Buick’s new iteration of the OnStar brand combines 4G LTE connectivity with on-board Wi-Fi hotspot capable serving 7 devices, and On-Star telematics and safety services.

Leveraging unlicensed spectrum

Communications service providers have been using unlicensed Wi-Fi spectrum since it became available, and now Wi-Fi plays a key role in both the voice strategies of

MSOs and mobile network operators. Cable companies like Comcast have offered Wi-Fi calling through an app for years, and this February Cablevision launched Freewheel, a Wi-Fi-exclusive mobile offering. Meanwhile, mobile

operators like T-Mobile have rolled out Wi-Fi calling offerings that don’t require a separate app. As with everything in tech, Wi-Fi can be leveraged even further. The latest technology is Licenses Access Assist (LAA), also called LTE-U. This innovation enables Wi-Fi spectrum to be used like cellular spectrum for things like carrier aggregation. In other words, LAA extends the benefits of LTE to unlicensed spectrum to deliver high data rates (450 Mbps) in areas that are sometimes hard

to reach with LTE alone. Ericsson and Nokia Networks are already pitching LAA products, and T-Mobile has publicly announced support for Nokia’s LAA-enriched small cells.

“As the Internet enters a new phase of growth, in which more devices are connected and share richer data, there is a need to cost effectively address the challenges of a 1000x increase in mobile data traffic. To do this, we need a combination of more spectrum, more efficient use of existing spectrum, and more small cells,” said Matt Grob, Executive Vice President, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., and chief technology officer. “Our job is to help the industry make the best use of all available spectrum, using both LTE and Wi-Fi technologies, to increase capacity.”

Neville Ray, Chief Technology Officer, T-Mobile, commented on the advantages of LAA in late February. “LAA is an attractive solution to tap the unused potential of the 5 GHz band to give our customers LTE efficiencies and smooth co-existence with Wi-Fi. Nokia Networks’ early demo not only shows the next generation of small cells, but is a critical first step to staying ahead of the increasing LTE capacity demand. Our mission is giving our customers better mobile

Industry News: March 2015 By Jesse Cryderman

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performance and capacity when and where they need it the most. This demo is a testament to Nokia’s ability to innovate quickly and bring products to market when we need them.”

While Qualcomm, Ericsson, and Nokia Networks are already running with the ball, LAA hasn’t yet been standardized. According to the 3GPP, LAA is planned for 3GPP industry standardization in mid-2016.

Extending the reach of M2M and IoT

Machine to machine (M2M) communications and the Internet of Things (IoT) continue to generate joules of heat in these winter months. Last month, M2M platforms from Telefónica and the Global M2M Association extended their reach and capabilities, accelerating the arrival of ubiquitous M2M.and IoT services.

In case you didn’t know, the Global M2M Association (GMA) is a cooperation of six international tier-one operators (Deutsche Telekom, Orange, TeliaSonera, Telecom Italia Mobile, Bell Canada and SoftBank) in the Machine-to-Machine (M2M) market. The group is promoting a single consolidated global M2M offering under the bill “One platform, One SIM, One experience.” Gemalto and Ericsson are key technology providers for the GMA’s initiative.

Amdocs’s mobile money win in Norway

Amdocs scored a significant win with its mobile money solution this week. Norway’s three leading operators, Telenor, TeliaSonera, and Tele2, tapped Amdocs to support their Strex joint venture for mobile payments. Amdocs will deploy the solution on a public cloud and manage Strex’s daily operations under a multi-year managed services contract.

The solution consolidates the operators’ multiple SMS-based payment systems into one, enabling Strex to offer their users a single mobile wallet with which they can pay for any digital or physical good or service, send money to friends and family and pay bills using either SMS, Web, USSD (Unstructured Supplementary Service Data) or via a mobile app. Strex users can load their mobile wallet from their bank account, credit card or debit card, or use their carrier bill for mobile purchases.

“Mobile financial services are already very popular in Norway, with Strex handling more than 75 million SMS-based payment transactions annually,” said Hege Kosberg, Chief Executive Officer of Strex. “Once we launch our single

mobile wallet, we will be able to offer our customersa the most convenient shopping experience with a wide choice of funding and payment options, as well as provide merchants with a state-of-the-art platform for marketing their goods with integrated loyalty programs.”

Amdocs scored a significant win with its mobile money solution this week. Norway’s three leading operators, Telenor, TeliaSonera, and Tele2, tapped Amdocs to support their Strex joint venture for mobile payments. Amdocs will deploy the solution on a public cloud

and manage Strex’s daily operations under a multi-year managed services contract.

The solution consolidates the operators’ multiple SMS-based payment systems into one, enabling Strex to offer their users a single mobile wallet with which they can pay for any digital or physical good or service, send money to friends and family and pay bills using either SMS, Web, USSD (Unstructured Supplementary Service Data) or via a mobile app. Strex users can load their mobile wallet from their bank account, credit card or debit card, or use their carrier bill for mobile purchases.

“Mobile financial services are already very popular in Norway, with Strex handling more than 75 million SMS-based payment transactions annually,” said Hege Kosberg, Chief Executive Officer of Strex. “Once we launch our single mobile wallet, we will be able to offer our customers the most convenient shopping experience with a wide choice of funding and payment options, as well as provide merchants with a state-of-the-art platform for marketing their goods with integrated loyalty programs.”

3G: Not dead yet

With so much buzz about LTE, LTE-A, and 5G, it’s easy to forget that innovation is still occurring in 3G. Huawei and Qualcomm, for instance, just ratcheted up 3G speeds in Thailand to 63mbps. This is significantly faster than the 4G speeds in many major markets. The enabling technology is the same we see in LTE-A: carrier aggregation.

In early February, Huawei, Qualcomm and Thailand AIS, successfully tested the 3-Carrier High-Speed Downlink Packet Access (3C-HSDPA) and the Dual-Carrier High-Speed Uplink Packet Access (DC-HSUPA) on a commercial network in Bangkok. The peak rate of the 3G network increased to 63 Mbps (downlink) and 11Mbps (uplink). Thailand AIS has become the first mobile operator to successfully test the world’s fastest 3G technology in Southeast Asia.

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© 2015, All information contained herein is the sole property of Pipeline Publishing, LLC. Pipeline Publishing LLC reserves all rights and privileges regarding the use of this information. Any

unauthorized use, such as distributing, copying, modifying, or reprinting, is not permitted. This document is not intended for reproduction or distribution outside of www.pipelinepub.com.

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Mobile privacy

Is your phone spying on you? It very well could be, and this time it’s not the NSA -- new research from Alcatel-Lucent’s Motive Security Labs warns that 16 million mobile devices are infected by malicious software secretly spying on users, stealing confidential information and pilfering data plans. The report reveals a trove of information related to mobile security that should inform personal and workplace mobile data decisions.

At the same time, recent revelations by investigative journalists indicate that government agencies may have already hacked the encryption keys that are used by more than 400 mobile operators globally. Allegedly the NSA and its UK counterpart, the GCHQ, hacked into Gemalto in order to snag the encryption keys in SIM cards. These SIM cards protect the privacy of billions of users, so the story has legs. Gemalto , however, believes the hackers were not able to make off with the keys to the kingdom. The company responded with a very detailed report of the activity in a press release:

“While the intrusions...were serious, sophisticated attacks, nothing was detected in other parts of our network,” the report read. “No breaches were found in the infrastructure running our SIM activity or in other parts of the secure network which manage our other products such as banking cards, ID cards or electronic passports. Each of these networks is isolated from one another and they are not connected to external networks.”

Look into the crystal ball

Two recent Pipeline predictions have come to pass: Verizon has sold off a bundle of towers and legacy wireline assets, and BT has confirmed the purchase of EE from Deutsche Telekom and Orange for $19 billion. For Verizon, the sale means an influx of needed capital and an enhanced focus on LTE-A and FiOS. For BT, it’s all about the quad-play and the synergies it will create with a well-developed mobile arm -- EE reaches nearly 8 million customers with its 4G network. Since we are on a roll, I’ll predict that Mobile World Congress will be dominated by four technologies: 5G, SDN, NFV, and IoT.