Posts Tagged ‘technology vendors’
Mobile – carrier ENUM
December 17th, 2008 | 
Author: Pilot programme achieves successful traffic exchange PathFinder? brand name announced First certified vendors appointed
November 17th 2008, Macau: The GSM Association (GSMA), the global trade association for the mobile industry, and NeuStar (NYSE: NSR) a provider of clearinghouse and directory services to the global communications and Internet industry, today announced the successful completion of the pilot of their Carrier ENUM service. The service, recently branded ?PathFinder??, is now generally available to mobile and fixed network operators, carriers and related service providers.
Supported by Bharti, Lleida.net, mobilkom austria, SMART, Telekom Austria, Telecom Italia and Telenor, the PathFinder service pilot achieved an industry first by successfully exchanging international packet voice and MMS traffic enabled via a global, fully-interoperable deployment of Carrier ENUM, validating ENUM as an effective solution to IP-based routing and interconnection. The service automatically translates a phone number into an IP-based address, making it simple and transparent for users to initiate a wide range of IP-based communications via their existing phone numbers and handset address books.
“We found this trial tremendously useful in familiarising ourselves with the practicalities involved in using ENUM. Cooperation between operators is crucial in establishing how to make the telephone number a universal means to link up with IP-based applications. A simple, standardised process will benefit everyone,” said Napoleon L. Nazareno, President and CEO of Smart Communications, Inc. (SMART) and GSMA board member.
By providing mobile and fixed-line operators with a single routing mechanism, PathFinder simplifies and reduces the cost of delivery of a wide range of IP-based services to end-users. It will serve as a central ?directory? for all operators, and enables them to rapidly launch new IP services including packet voice, Instant Messaging (IM), MMS, email, and video, by facilitating the linking of an IP address to a phone number for mobile devices, fixed-line phones and IP devices.
“The successful testing of ENUM on Telekom Austria?s next generation environment demonstrates yet again that the infrastructure is ready for commercial customer pilots. With the ongoing improvement in capabilities of our global GRX/IPX platform, recently enhanced by the Carrier ENUM functionality, we are able to provide best-in-class interworking solutions for mobile network operators,” commented Boris Nemsic, CEO of Telekom Austria Group and GSMA board member.
Alex Sinclair, Chief Technology Officer of the GSMA added: “PathFinder will accelerate the rollout of innovative IP-based services that will be the key to ensuring profitability in tomorrow?s industry. PathFinder provides a one-stop solution for operators to overcome the complexity of delivering IP-based services to communications devices. Furthermore, it helps mobile operators to cut costs and leverage their greatest asset: subscriber phone numbers.”
GSMA and NeuStar also announced that Acme Packet and iXLink, a business unit of Telarix, have become the first vendors to successfully complete the PathFinder vendor certification programme, launched as part of the GSMA Industry Partner Programme earlier this year. The Partner Programme initiative is designed to foster working relationships with companies offering products and services complimentary to the PathFinder service, and provides certification of technology vendors, ensuring that PathFinder interoperability testing is available industry-wide.
Posted in Communications | 
Tags: application, business, car, Communications, Design, email, Environment, functionality, gsm association, Internet, Mac, mms, Mobile, mobile device, mobile devices, mobile industry, mobile network, mobile network operators, mobile operators, Network, service providers, Technology, technology vendors | 
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Adobe frees mobile flash: It’s about time
–The next version of the mobile Flash runtime will be free of license fees. Adobe also confirmed that the mobile version of the Air runtime will be free.
–Adobe changed its licensing terms and released additional technical information that will make it easier for companies to create their own Flash-compatible products.
–The company announced a new consortium called Open Screen supporting the more open versions of Flash and Air. Members of the new group include the five leading handset companies, three mobile operators (including NTT DoCoMo and Verizon), technology vendors (including Intel, Cisco, and Qualcomm), and content companies (BBC, MTV, and NBC Universal). Google, Apple, and Microsoft are not members. It’s not clear to me what the consortium members have actually agreed to do. My guess is it’s mostly a political group.
Adobe said that the idea behind the announcements is to create a single consistent platform that lets developers create an application or piece of content once and run it across various types of devices and operating systems. That idea is very appealing to developers and content companies today. It was equally appealing two years ago, when then-CEO of Adobe Bruce Chizen made the exact same promise (link):
If we execute appropriately we will be the engagement platform, or the layer, on top of anything that has an LCD display, any computing device — everything from a refrigerator to an automobile to a video game to a computer to a mobile phone.
If Adobe had made the Open Screen announcement two years ago, I think it could have caught Microsoft completely flat-footed, and Adobe might have been in a very powerful position by now. But by waiting two years, Adobe gave Microsoft advance warning and plenty of runway room to react — so much so that ArsTechnica today called Adobe’s announcement a reaction to Microsoft Silverlight (link).
Also, the most important changes appear to apply to the next version of mobile Flash and the upcoming mobile version of Air — meaning this was in part a vaporware announcement. Even when the new runtime software ships, it will take a long time to get it integrated into mobile phones. So once again, Microsoft has a long runway to maneuver on.
Still, the changes Adobe made are very useful. There’s no way Flash could have become ubiquitous in the mobile world while Adobe was still charging fees for it. The changes to the Flash license terms remove one of the biggest objections I’ve seen to Flash from open source advocates (link). The Flash community seems excited (link, link). And the list of supporters is impressive. Looking through the obligatory quotes attached to the Adobe release, two things stand out:
–Adobe got direct mentions of Air from ARM, Intel, SonyEricsson, Verizon, and Nokia (although Nokia promised only to explore Air, while it’s on the record promising to bundle Silverlight mobile).
–The inclusion of NBC Universal in the announcement will have Adobe people chuckling because Microsoft signed up NBC to stream the Olympics online using Silverlight. So NBC is warning Microsoft not to take it for granted, and Adobe gets to stick its tongue out.
What does it all mean?
Nothing much in the short term. As I mentioned earlier, this is mostly a vaporware announcement (other than the license changes). Some people are speculating that this will put pressure on Apple to make Flash available on the iPhone (link). That’s possible, if Apple’s real concern was that they didn’t like Flash Lite. Now they can port full Flash, or someone else can do it. But if Apple is in reality unwilling to let anyone else’s platform run on the iPhone then we’ll see other objections to Flash emerge.
The marketing competition to control the future of web apps is continuing to heat up. Microsoft is trying to take the whole thing proprietary by creating a comprehensive architecture, Adobe is trying to drive its own platform, Sun is trying to re-energize Java, Google is making its own moves, and so on (link). Plus, of course, most web app developers today are happy with what they’re using now and have little interest in switching to any of the new architectures (check out the dandy commentary by Joel Spolsky here).
It’s an enormously complex situation, and it’s going to take months, if not years, before we can start to see who’s winning and who is losing. Rubicon is working on a white paper that will try to clarify the situation a bit. I’ll let you know when it’s published.
In the meantime, enjoy the marketing fireworks. The intense competition is forcing companies to innovate faster and open up their products, as Adobe did today. I think that process is good for just about everyone in the industry.
Copyright 2008 Michael Mace.
Posted in Flash, Phones |
Tags: apple, apps, ash, bbc, blog, developers, docomo, free adobe, game, google, iphone, lcd display, Mac, microsoft, microsoft silverlight, mobile operators, mobile phone, mobile phones, mobile version, mobile world, mtv, ngage, nokia, ntt docomo, olympics, online, operating system, qualcomm, silverlight, sony, sonyericsson, system, t mobile, Technology, technology vendors, vaporware, video game, web applications platform, Windows |
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