Today Ericsson is launching a suite of software and hardware aimed at integrating Wi-Fi into carrier networks. Its real-time traffic steering solution is a network software upgrade that constantly assesses performance indicators to find the best connection for the user. The company is also adding support for access selection to enable load balancing between 3GPP and Wi-Fi networks. Wi-Fi, LTE, W-CDMA and GSM are managed from one platform.
NVIDIA demoed its Tegra 4i processor , complete with an integrated i500 LTE modem. With the NVIDIA i500 LTE modem integrated in to the Tegra 4i, NVIDIA has demonstrated speeds of up to 150Mbps with an emulation of an LTE Cat 4 network. NVIDIA’s software-defined radio is at work, allowing for ability boosts like this without the need for new hardware.
Exalt Communications today unveiled ExpandAir, the company’s new point-to-multipoint (PMP) platform. The sub-6 GHz non-line-of-sight offering features a backhaul base station that delivers up to 250 Mbps per sector. ExpandAir eMIMO subscriber units deliver from 10 to 100 Mbps, enabling low initial investment with capacity that can grow over time. List prices start at under US$2,400 for the ExpandAir eMIMO backhaul base station and at US$650 for subscribers units.
Meridian helps people find their way within large buildings, such as malls, stadiums or airports, and enables marketing directed at a phone’s precise location.
Aruba Networks is a wireless LAN vendor selling access points, mobility controllers, and network management software through their Airwave Management Platform product.
AirWave is Aruba’s network management platform. It’s a multi-vendor multi-architecture tool that supports wired and wireless infrastructure from manufacturers such as Aruba, Cisco, Motorola/Symbol, and others. Aruba’s context-aware Wi-Fi architecture lets the network pinpoint Apple devices and apps.
Cellular offload and location-based advertising is hot, especially in malls and large public venues.
“GPS-based wayfinding solutions are extraordinarily popular, but they don’t work well indoors,” said Keerti Melkote, founder and Chief Technology Officer at Aruba Networks. “We intend to address that gap by creating ‘indoor GPS’ using Aruba’s Wi-Fi infrastructure and Meridian’s wayfinding platform.
Plans call for retaining — and expanding — Meridian’s Portland office following today’s deal, according to Drew Bernard, a Meridian board member and member of the Oregon Angel Fund, which backed the company. The Oregon Angel Fund led a $1 million investment round in Meridian in 2011.
Meridian has 14 employees, 11 of them at the Portland headquarters. Chief executive Kiyo Kubo splits his time between Portland and Oakland, Calif. Meridian isn’t exactly a startup. They’ve been working on virtual tours since the Palm Pilot days at MIT.
ABI Research says the indoor location market is set to reach a significant number of installations in 2015-2017.
Startup PDX Challenge may winnow some 240 applicants down to 16 semi-finalists. Six will receive a $10,000 working capital grant, a full year of rent-free office space in Portland’s Produce Row.
Silicon Valley’s incubator, Y Combinator, has become the model for many incubators. They run a three-month program for startups to polish their products for presentation to the investor community. Twice a year startup incubators generally invest a small amount of money ($14-20k + a small ownership percentage) in a large number of startups. The startups work intensively to refine their product and pitch to investors.
Telus, which is Canada’s second-largest wireless carrier with some 7.7 million mobile subscribers, began takeover talks with Mobilicity earlier this year. The Vancouver-based telco says the deal would ensure that Mobilicity’s 250,000 customers experience no interruption in service. It also plans to keep Mobilicity’s 150 employees.
Rogers Communications announced an “option deal” to eventually purchase wireless spectrum from Shaw Communications. Rogers wants to use those radio waves to add capacity to its wireless network in key western markets. Rogers won’t formally apply to take control of that asset until the fall of 2014, t
Bell Canada (BCE) is in the middle of its blockbuster acquisition of Astral Media, but CEO George Cope says that would not prevent the telecom giant from becoming an acquirer of rival wireless carriers if Ottawa allows for such deals.
Wind Mobile has potential bidders including the major incumbents and private-equity firm Catalyst Capital Group. Egyptian billionaire Naguib Sawiris is also partnering with Wind CEO and chairman Anthony Lacavera on a potential buyout of the Toronto-based carrier.
Engadgetreports a fleet of camera-equipped, remote-controlled blimps are live-streaming Google I/O on YouTube, right now, It’s called Google AirShow and it’s taken over the airspace within Moscone Center.
Chris Miller, a software engineer with AKQA (Facebook), explained to Engadget they use an off-the-shelf model airship that’s flown manually via standard a 2.4GHz radio.
Each blimp is outfitted with a servo-controlled USB camera and 5GHz USB WiFi dongle which are both connected to a Raspberry Pi board running Debian, VLC and Python. A custom-designed Li-polymer battery system powers the on-board electronics.
The webcam encodes video as motion-JPEG (720p, 30fps) and VLC generates a YouTube-compatible RTSP stream that’s broadcast over WiFi. Python’s used to pan the servo-controlled camera via the Raspberry Pi’s PWM output.
Android Engineering Director Chris Yerg introduced it yesterday at Google I/O. The new store, which is scheduled to launch this fall, aims to simplify the content discovery process for schools. It enables administrators to distribute applications to multiple users, quickly and easily.
Ebooks made up 20% of trade publishing net sales in 2012, an increase from 2011 when ebooks were only 15% of trade net sales and single-handedly drove $995 million in net new dollars in trade sales, with total U.S. net book sales for 2012 at $27.1 billion.
Audiobooks also saw healthy gains in 2012, with revenue up 21.8% year-over-year to $241 million. This is primary due to large marketing campaigns by Audible and Overdrive and the ability for authors to now self-publish their own audiobooks.
BookStats calculates the entire U.S. trade book industry at $15.049 billion, up 6.9 percent from 2011. The total U.S. book market — including educational and professional/scholarly publishing — was $27.12 billion in 2012, BookStats estimates, down 0.9 percent from 2011.
Tracfone, a no contract operator, became the fastest growing carrier in the United States with 839,000 new customers, in the first quarter of 2013, followed by Verizon Wireless with 720,000 and a resurging T-Mobile with 579,000. The industry grew by a total of 1.36 million subscribers in the first quarter of 2013.
Sprint, Clearwire and Leap were the only carriers losing customers. Sprint lost customers due to further declines on the Nextel side, Clearwire’s losses were due to the switch of Sprint from WiMAX to LTE, and Leap’s decline in users was due to being undercut by lower cost offers from other carriers and from Lifeline.
Meanwhile, churn has continued to move towards historic lows as an indicator of increased customer satisfaction, reports Fierce Wireless.
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