Glenayre’s messaging division  is set to be bought by applications server provider IP Unity for $25 million in cash.

Despite a better year for Glenayre’s wireless messaging sales in 2005, the company and it messaging unit have recorded losses in each of the three reported quarters in 2006.

The messaging division showed a cumulative nine month operating loss of $3.2 million for the quarter ended September 2006, according to Glenayre’s unaudited accounts, and operating loss of $7.8 million for the nine month period, on sales of $45.1 million. Glenayre as a whole lost $9.2 million in the nine months to September 30 2006.

The sale, for $25 million, of the messaging business represents the final step in Glenayre’s strategy to separate its entertainment and telecoms businesses. Glenayre intends to rename itself EDC, standing for Entertainment Distribution Company.

The merged busines with IP Unity will be known as IP Unity Glenayre.

Glenayre’s stock price was up 13.8% at $2.61, against a 52 week high of $6.02.

Nokia has bumped back the proposed date for the merger of its Networks division with Siemens’ networks unit, to allow a bribery investigation into Siemens’ telecoms division to run its course.

Nokia said that Nokia Siemens Networks “is now expected to start operations in the first quarter 2007, instead of January 2007 as previously expected”.

But that date will still be subject to  agreement between Nokia and Siemens on the results and consequences of Siemens’ compliance review. The review is expected to be performed during the first quarter 2007, which may make the target date for completion of the merger somewhat aggressive.

Nokia has made clear that it wants the new company to start “with a clean slate” and is keen to see the results of Siemens’ own review before confirming the deal.

Investigations into Siemens have centred on claims that executives syphoned off funds into slush funds used to pay consultancy fees as bribes to contracts.

Earlier this week former senior executive Thomas Gaswindt was arrested, and the firm now says it is probing possible bribery of more than €420m (£283m) in consultancy payments, more than twice previous estimates.

Ex-Mobile 365 EMEA vp Bernadette Lyons has joined End2End as managing director of its value added services business, replacing current boss Atte Miettinen at the end of the year.

End2End, owned by Mach, operates as a standalone company but it looks as if her brief will be to drive the company to work more closely with its parent.

Before joining End2End Lyons was the Chief Operating Officer of Digital Rum.

Channel 4’s schedule is now available on BT Movio, a wholesale service for UK mobile operators to combine live TV and digital radio content onto mobile phones. The full range of Channel 4 content, including popular programmes such as Hollyoaks, Countdown and Deal or No Deal will be simulcast to mobiles and home TVs. 

Previously, Channel 4 Short Cuts, a made-for-mobile channel of programme highlights was broadcast on the BT Movio service. Channel 4 will now provide a full service with the exception of some film, sport and US-produced content.

Launched in October 2006 with Virgin Mobile, BT Movio is the first wholesale mobile TV and radio service in the world that combines live TV channels, DAB digital radio, a 7-day programme guide and ‘red button’ interactivity. It is also the only mobile TV service available in the UK that boasts a line-up of the most popular live TV channels from the UK’s biggest broadcasters. Live TV content is now available on the BT Movio service from BBC One, ITV1, Channel 4, E4 and ITN News.

Emma Lloyd, Managing Director, BT Movio said “Consumers gave us a clear message during the BT Movio pilot that they want the full, live TV channels they are familiar with at home on their mobile, rather than watered down highlights. At launch we indicated that Channel 4 would move to full simulcast as soon as possible and I am delighted that we have been able to deliver this so quickly.”

 “Channel 4 is known for its innovative programming and a key part of our public service remit is to make our award winning content available across multiple platforms.  We are delighted to have simulcast broadcast for both Channel 4 and E4 on the BT Movio service so consumers can enjoy our programming wherever they are.” said Riccardo Donato, Head of Telephony Business Development at Channel 4.

CDMA2000 offers operators a clear advantage; Nokia still doing well in CDMA

By 2010 there will be around a billion 3G subscribers globally, pretty much equally split between operators offering services on the WCMDA or CDMA2000 progression paths, Perry LaForge, chair and executive director of the CDMA Development Group (CDG) has told Mobile Europe.

Currently, CDMA2000 operators have about 300 million 3G subscribers under management, LaForge reckoned, representing somewhere around 75% of the total market. By 2010 though, with WCMDA operators playing catch up, and with the boost to usage from HSDPA and HSUPA, LaForge thinks the UMTS operators will have boosted their figure to 500 million, putting them on roughly equal footing with the CDMA operators.

“We’ve got be careful with those numbers though,” he said, counseling caution.

Numbers that he is less cautious about though is the head start that CDMA2000 operators have had over their WCDMA counterparts in 3G.

“I think that those guys [the CDMA2000 operators] are blowing every one away. The CDMA operators are best in class. KDDI and SK, their data [service revenues] as a percentage of ARPU is 28%, and KDDI is gaining subs from NTTDoCoMo which has just announced negative adds [net subscriber additions].

“In North America you’re seeing data higher as a percentage of ARPU. And as they move to RevA, with the ability to improve the uplink and increase revenues from user generated content and social interactivity, those numbers are going to grow, and they’ve double and tripled in the last year.”

LaForge contrasted this situation with that of the UMTS operators, who had to move customers from frequencies and handsets that worked well to less efficient frequencies, with clunkier, more expensive handsets, and sell that as a benefit, without having many additional services to do so.

“What’s it [the move to WCDMA] cost them? It’s cost them a lot. You remember when they told us they would have 3G commercially available by 2001. Well it only really started to happen in 2005. You could argue it cost them five years.”

But it’s not all bad for the seven hundred or so GSM and UMTS operators out there. LaForge thinks that HSDPA irons out many of the problems, and he concedes that the services are now on a roughly equal footing in terms of service capability.

But with CDMA 2000 1x EV-DO RevC, which the CDG has helpfully renamed Ultra Mobile Broadband, promised for commercial release in 2009, offering label speeds of 280Mbps, LaForge contrasted that favourably with the LTE plan for WCDMA operators.

He also said that the apparent defection of Nokia from CDMA, with its dissolving of its handset JV with Sanyo may not be all it seems.

“I met with the Nokia guys and they are saying that they are getting the best numbers for CDMA phones, through Verizon, that they’ve ever had. I don’t know if it’s the decision to go with an ODM strategy that’s made them a bit more nimble, or what it is, but I think that’s really interesting,” LaForge said.

Elsewhere the CDG continues to push a technology neutral policy to the world’s regulators. In India, GSM operators are asking for more frequency than CDMA operators because their technology doesn’t work as well, LaForge said. “That’s not fair.”

Games preloaded on two handsets

Qualcomm has heralded the arrival of BREW gaming services at TIM, with the operator launching games from Gameloft and EA for its BREW platform.

Users purchasing the Samsung Z630 handset will be able to access a free download of Asphalt: Urban GT 2 – 3D and free download demos of the other titles.  Users purchasing the ONDA Communication N5050 will have access to pre-loaded demo versions of most titles.

“As the first operator in Europe to launch services based on Qualcomm’s BREW Gaming Signature Solution, TIM is committed and well positioned to deliver the ultimate gaming experience for our subscribers,” said Massimo Castelli, chief marketing officer, Telecom Italia.  “We are excited to offer this initial line up of 3D gaming titles from EA and Gameloft – names that have become synonymous with innovation and high performance in the mobile gaming world.”

“We continue to realise tremendous value from the BREW solution, as it has enabled us to publish and develop some of the most advanced mobile games available today and efficiently deliver and monetise them to users around the world,” said Javier Ferreira, vice president, European publishing, EA. 

“With gaming as one of the most exciting and dynamic sectors in the mobile entertainment space, we believe that the relationship between TIM and Qualcomm will significantly raise the bar for mobile gamers in Europe.”

Huawei today launched an HSDPA data card capable of a theoretical maxiumum 7.2Mbps throughput. At the same time, Option, which has had a commercially shipping 7.2 card (the GlobeTrotter GTMAX 7.2 product) for months, announced a 7.2 version of its Express range.

Huawei’s E600 card is aimed pretty squarely at the European and Asian market, where the operator has deals currently with T-Mobile, Vodafone and Telefonica.

Ren Feng, senior marketing manager of Huawei’s terminal business unit, said that his company is on course to ship 1.5 million units in 2006 (from a standing start two years’ ago), and said that was now enough to make it the number one data card company in the world.

Guo Ping, executive vp of the terminals business unit, said that operators are drawn to Huawei’s fast turn around times, its ability to customize and the extra value they can create for operators by producing at lower cost.

He added that the partnership with Vodafone was proving a success, with the v710 3G phone proving popular. Vodafone launched the phone in the UK and with SmarTone in Hong Kong.

Douglas Ros, VP of business development and marketing at Option, said that he was unable to comment on Option’s stats before it releases year end finanancials, but he did say that Options sales target is “somewhat higher than the stated [Huawei’s figure] 1.5 Million units”.

Whoever sells more millions, it will be good news for Qualcomm, which licenses its baseband processor chipsets to both companies.

A few facts amidst the chat

The ITU kicked off its conference proper with a panel of eight ceos, one of them acting as moderator. The top guns from Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson, Motorola, NEC, Samsung, NTT DoCoMo and Orange sat at a long table. The audience waited below for a session that the moderator, NeuiStar’s Reza Jafari, told us would break with the normal mould by offering an interactive panel debate.

Lord knows what the cost per minute is of these people’s time, but they wasted approximately 120 units here. Add to that 120 minutes of everyone ele’s time in the hall, and that’s quite a productivity dip caused by one conference.

Although this was to be a panel debate, half the speakers preferred instead to speak first at some length to powerpoint slides, by way of introduction. This would have been OK if they had come prepared with anything challenging or new to say. But as the third speaker launched into a presentation on the benefits of the connected lifestyle, time was already going into reverse. By the time all seven of them had had a go, the effect, and most of them knew it themselves, the poor things, was stultifying.

Still, in an otherwise moribund session, bereft of interest outside the vaguest of platitudes, there were some nuggets of interest. First, NTT DoCoMo’s president and ceo, Masao Nakamura, said that the company would have one and a half times the number of 3G base stations in the country at the end opf March 2007 as it did at the end of March 2006.Significantly, many of those are being accounted for by in-building antennas. This would give 70% of the population of Japan access to its FOMA network.

The company also has i-mode roaming in 90 countries, Nakamura said,

Kitae Lee, president of telecommunications and networks business at Samsung, had some forecasts for WiMax, which Samsung loves. Mobile WiMax, he said, would give actual user speeds whilst on the go of 100Mpbs, and 1Gbps whilst nomadic (good news for nomads). Lee said his company thinks there will be 130 million mobile WiMax subscribers by 2011, from an estimated 14.5 million by the end of next year. 130 million in four or five years’ time is a lot, but against 3 billion ceullular mobile users, it’s not the mobile operator killer, the “disruptive threat”, that some portray WiMax as.

Apart from that, Patricia Russo told us that she thought the way the industry can make money (well actually she said “create value”, but we know what she meant) would be to be user-focussed, focusing on value added services, from now on. This would mean much more personalization in the industry she said and would lead to three types of transformation – in the services, the networks and in the industry itself. And as someone who’s transformed Lucent Technologies into Alcatel-Lucent herself, she clearly knows a lot about that topic.

Microsoft has launched a test programme for developers and service providers looking to launch “Mash Up” services combining telco services with all the fun of the Web 2.0 fair.

Pieter Knook,  senior VP of the mobiole and embedded devices devision at Microsoft, said the test environment, called the Sandbox, is intended to provide a “safe”‘ place where developers, network equipment vendros and operators can test out new services.

The Sandbox will initially offer a number of Microsoft products and solutions for participants to utilise, including itsConnected Services Framework, its Solution for Hosted Messaging and Collaboration,its Solution for Windows-based Hosting and its Customer Care Framework.

Creating the Sandbox will mean Mash Ups can be carried out ina  “managed” way, and of course in a Microsoft environment.

Founding members include BT, Bell Cananda, Ubiquity, Ensim, Nortel and Syncast.

Knook also announced the launch, in China, of Windows Mobile 5.0 based smartphones that could retail for under $250. The EDGE phones were based on Texas Instrument’s v1030 chipset, a single core solution whose development to support cheaper implementation of Windows Mobile OS was announced by Microsoft in partnership with TI at 3GSM in February.

A single core solution means both the applications processor and the baseband comms processor can be integrated onto the same chip, reducing build cost. Or, you can still havea  dual core, but use the other chip to load more features onto.

At the time of the Barcelona launch Microsoft said that Sagem and HTC were also lined up to produce devices based on the new chipset with the Windwos Mobile OS.

Knook said he saw these phones, produced by manufacturer Amoi, as part of a range of devices targetting the more mass market end of the market. He said that Microsoft was keen to expand its market reach into other sectors to grow its market share in OS – which he describes as being “low but growing “currently.

Of course Amoi’s phones are not 3G solutions (unless you are on of those who counts EDGE as 3G).

But something that definitely is a 3G phone is the Samsung Ultra Messaging i600. Known in the States already as the Blackjack (with Cingular), this is a 5.0 based HSDPA capable phone that, as Samsung and Microsoft announced today, will be available in Asia Pacific and Europe in the first quarter of 2007.

Cheaper smartphones?

Standardised platform for operators

Sun Microsystems, Ericsson and Nokia have joined up to work together for a common platform management infrastructure for network equipment. 

The initiative, which will see the companies collaborating on a series of publicly available requirements documents for the Operations, Administration and Management Layer (OA&M) and Service Layer environments, is aimed at making it easier for operators to manage their infrastructure.

“We are faced with huge integration issues today when we purchase solutions from multiple NEPs,” said Javier Gutierrez, Enablers Development Senior Manager of Telefónica Moviles España. “The results of the newly formed Telecommunications Platform Initiative will help us simplify platform management, allowing us to focus more on rapidly launching innovative services for our customers.”

Nokia’s Jyrki Holmala, Vice President, OSS Software, Networks, said, “The Initiative shows our willingness to work together to find cost-efficient and open standards-based solutions for the industry. There is an excellent fit with Nokia’s Operations Support Systems (OSS) middleware strategy and our Open EMS Suite platform product roadmaps.”

Standardised operations management, middleware, Sun Microsystems? Sounds like Java OSS to us, which is currently being developed within the Telemanagement Forum (TMF) with a view to standardisation. With next generation OSS (also undergoing specification within TMF) also all about open platform architecture, rather than proprietary systems, why the need for this separate intitiative?