Just Another Mobile Phone Blog

Unboxing video of the Son Xperia S Android phone. PLEASE NOTE: BOX CONTENT WILL VARY FROM MARKET TO MARKET! If you don't see something in the box in this video, this doesn't mean that it won't be available in your market and/or with your carrier/operator.

How service developers can focus on adding new value to IMS telephony for both users and operators – without having to apply basic SIP. Multimedia communication networks based on IMS and standards for multimedia telephony (MMTel) provide support for voice-over-LTE (VoLTE) and a basic set of telephony services. The combination of IMS and multimedia telephony (MMTel) make multimedia functions possible, so that users can add or remove services and callers during an ongoing communication session – a user can start a communication session with messaging, complement it with voice or video, add or remove participants, send files, share pictures and more.

MMTel is the IMS standard that facili¬tates telephony, and it includes a defined set of basic services and supplementary services. Value-added services augment these basic and supplementary servic¬es, and must be clearly separated from the telephony when they are applied to MMTel. The interface needed between the VAS, and the IMS/MMTel architec¬ture needs to be well defined.

3GPP has specified, and continues to enhance, an extensive set of telephony services for the next-generation mobile network, including advanced features such as VoLTE, voice-call continuity (VCC), session continuity and ICS. Specific functional entities in the IMS network architecture are standard¬ized and implemented in the Ericsson MMTel architecture.

The separation of value-added servic¬es from MMTel is achieved through a services-specific northbound protocol exposure from MTAS. This approach has two advantages. First, functional¬ity can be added to MMTel’s extensive set of basic telephony and video services, combined with advanced services such as VCC. Second, service developers can concentrate on adding value to telepho¬ny rather than on controlling it.

Diversity within the Ericsson workforce has been highlighted by job hunters at a careers fair in Budapest, Hungary, as one of the most attractive elements of the company.

More than 10,000 students, graduates and professionals seeking a change of career attended the event at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics – regarded as being among the top recruitment fairs in Hungary.

The fair is one of many attended by Ericsson around the world as part of the company’s drive to attract the best young, innovative and professional talent.

The Ericsson stand was one of the most popular at the fair, with enquiries not confined to students, graduates or young professionals studying, or qualified in, engineering. Architecture, environmental science, psychology, economics, programming and food science were among the areas of expertise of visitors to the stand.

Many of them had positive opinions of Ericsson as an employer – often based on advice and references from friends who have been recently employed by the company.

Diversity was highlighted by many attendees as an important factor in deciding which companies they wanted to work for. Ericsson had a good reputation in this regard among the job hunters – both in terms of age and cultural diversity.

We asked some of the attendees for their views on Ericsson and diversity.

Nikoletta Nagy, Psychology graduate and Economics student: "My goal is to work in HR for a multinational company, so that I have opportunities to develop my career and travel.

"A friend of mine really enjoys working at Ericsson’s R&D site in Budapest. I plan to apply for a position because Ericsson has a great reputation, and my friend says it’s a good place to work."

Márk Kovács, Electrical Engineering student: "I’m interested in expanding my understanding and knowledge of networks. I learned more about the company at an Ericsson R&D open day in Budapest.

"Working in an environment where everybody thinks the same can become stale. Having a mix of people with different backgrounds is important because it helps stimulate new ways of working."

Lehotay Terézia, Environmental Science graduate: "It would be good to be able to work in different countries and cultures, even for six months at a time, because the employee can bring new ideas to benefit the company."

András Kóródy, Economics graduate: "I would really like to work in a diverse workplace because I want to learn more about other cultures. Having more people from different backgrounds can also mean more creativity in solving problems."

András Nagy, Electrical Engineering student: "Diversity in age is important, for example, because young people can learn from someone older. Electrical engineering, my area of study, is something you cannot just learn in a classroom. Experience can only come after years of collaborating with senior people."

Horráth Valentin, Electrical Engineering student: "The most important thing for me when looking for an employer is the opportunity to work in teams with people with different backgrounds and different areas of expertise."

Boglárka Fekete, Dietician: "Having a diverse role and working with a variety of people are things I consider when applying for jobs."

The last article in our series on LTE focuses on Ericsson’s dedication to continual development of the technology through research and development, consumer understanding, standardization, and working directly with customers to meet specific needs.

While the origins of LTE go back to the early 1990s, the technology is not standing still. Ericsson's LTE research and development team is working constantly to improve the technology further, based on leading-edge work in the lab as well as input from live networks around the world.

Ericsson has a long history of mobile technology innovation. With more than 27,000 patents to our name, Ericsson is the largest holder of standard-essential patents for mobile communication across 2G, 3G and 4G technologies. The company is a net receiver of licensing royalties and has more than 90 patent-licensing agreements in place.

Our highly active R&D program means we are continuing this leading position in patents into LTE, in which Ericsson holds around one-quarter of all standard-essential Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) – making us the largest single holder of essential patents for the technology.

Ericsson has been at the forefront of standardization efforts for LTE. An analysis of 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) meetings reveals that Ericsson has influenced the released LTE specification more than any other company.

Our influence in the standardization process goes hand-in-hand with a highly active R&D program, which benefits from early participation in standardization groups. In addition, Ericsson interacts regularly with our customers to ensure efforts are being made in the right places.

This works in two ways. First, we hold regular workshops with senior technology representatives from our customers to ensure we understand what they are looking for. Second, we put some of our best R&D engineers – and maintenance and support engineers – to work alongside customers on long-term secondment to get hands-on experience and understanding of live commercial network environments.

These R&D engineers are looking at areas such as traffic and signaling load patterns, developing models and feedback methodologies for network testing and optimization. Another key area is the way user behavior is changing, with the adoption of new smartphones and other devices, and the effect this is having on networks.

Our aim is to complement high-quality lab-based work with real-life fieldwork to arrive at the smartest possible solution. We believe this kind of teamwork is vital not only to gain a deep technical understanding of LTE networks, but also of how different customers use features in different ways.

Getting this end-to-end and top-to-bottom view of how LTE works in the field – and continuously feeding this information back into the design, implementation and testing process – has helped create the best-performing and most stable LTE platforms on the market.

U.S. operator selects femtocell solution from Nokia Siemens Networks

Subscribers of Mosaic Telecom, a regional U.S. operator serving rural areas in Wisconsin, now enjoy substantially improved indoor 3G coverage, resulting in high-speed data services and enhanced voice call quality. The operator is the first in the world to commercially deploy femtocells in the Advanced Wireless Services (AWS)* spectrum that uses the 1710-1755 MHz and 2110-2155 MHz bands. Nokia Siemens Networks provided its end-to-end femtocell solution, which is also the first to be based on the 3GPP release 9 standard**.

Femtocells allow operators to build targeted coverage and capacity in specific locations, which is otherwise very difficult with a macro network. Standards-compliant femtocells are a safe choice for operators, giving them the freedom to select different access point vendors over time without making any changes to the core network.

“Femtocells will greatly reduce our capital and operating expenditures due to the reduced load on our macro network. Enabling improved coverage and high-quality voice and data services in coverage-challenged households and enterprises, they are ideal for our predominantly rural presence,” said Rick Vergin, chief executive officer of Mosaic Telecom. “Nokia Siemens Networks’ femtocell solution was a natural choice for us as we look to offer the best service to our customers.”

Under the contract, Nokia Siemens Networks has deployed an end-to-end femto system comprising its industry leading Femto Gateway and the associated management and provisioning systems, along with femto access points based on Ubiquisys’ technology. This complete end-to-end 3G femto solution will support Mosaic in improving rural coverage and offering a better user experience by enabling the introduction of new low-cost tariff plans that can reduce overall monthly bills.

“This pioneering deployment in AWS spectrum signals our increasingly strong momentum in the femtocell market,” said Timo Hyppola, head of the femto product line for Nokia Siemens Networks. “We are delighted to support Mosaic Telecom in enhancing their customers’ mobile experience.”

Mosaic Telecom has a track record of deploying latest technologies and delivering a superior experience to its customers. In 2011, the operator selected Nokia Siemens Networks to provide Long Term Evolution (LTE) equipment*** in place of its existing WiMAX solution.

About Mosaic Telecom

Mosaic Telecom is a multi-faceted provider of quality telecommunications products and services, including 4G cellular service, high speed Internet, video entertainment, landline telephone and long distance, including 3G and 4G mobile service. Headquartered in Cameron, Wisconsin, Mosaic Telecom provides service to both residential and business customers in a large portion of northwestern Wisconsin. Widely recognized as a leader in the rural telecommunications industry, Mosaic Telecom has been in business for over 50 years. More information about Mosaic’s services can be found at www.mosaictelecom.com

About Nokia Siemens Networks

Nokia Siemens Networks is the world’s specialist in mobile broadband. From the first ever call on GSM, to the first call on LTE, we operate at the forefront of each generation of mobile technology. Our global experts invent the new capabilities our customers need in their networks. We provide the world’s most efficient mobile networks, the intelligence to maximize the value of those networks, and the services to make it all work seamlessly.

With headquarters in Espoo, Finland, we operate in over 150 countries and had revenues of over 14 billion euros in 2011. http://www.nokiasiemensnetworks.com

Is there such a thing as an universal surfing pattern? Are mobile web users worldwide more active during certain periods of the week? In their latest State of the Mobile Web report, Opera Software looks at the shifts worldwide in surfing patterns between weekdays and weekends.

The analysis, based on anonymous and aggregated data from the servers of Opera Mini, the world’s most widely used mobile web browser, shows that users in two-thirds of all countries surveyed are more active on the mobile web during weekdays than the weekends. Different countries have different patterns to their surfing, and many can be divided into “weekend surfers” and “weekday surfers”.

Typical “weekend countries”, in terms of the total number of users, are Egypt, Iran, Ghana, Ethiopia and Tanzania, who top the list for increase in weekend users as compared to weekday users. For Egypt, this means a 7.6% increase in the unique user number as soon as the weekend comes around.

Typical “weekday countries” are Romania, Belarus, Moldova, the United States and Poland, who show the opposite trend on weekend days. When the weekend is over, consumers resume surfing again.

A drop in users on weekends doesn’t necessarily correlate with a drop in page views and data traffic. For example, the country of Georgia had a slight drop in users over the weekend, but topped the list for growth in pages viewed during the weekend.

“With a large population of users of Opera Mini worldwide, you start to see cool trends in the aggregated statistics,” says Lars Boilesen, CEO, Opera Software. “The trends in this edition show that mobile web users in different countries do behave differently on the mobile web. Their reasons to to be a ‘weekend surfer’ or a ‘weekday surfer’ may vary, but the statistics remain very consistent througout the measured period.”

Similar trends could be observed in the page views, but to different degrees. Some countries had more than a 10% increase from weekdays to weekends, while others decreased. However, the increase in page views from weekday to weekend is greater than the decrease after the weekend.

To read more about the differences in country day-to-day surfing habits, go to www.opera.com/smw/ and read the full report.

Opera Mini growth

January 2012 was another strong month for Opera Mini. All in all, more than 159 million users surfed with Opera Mini in January. Compared to December 2011, the increase was 4.2 % on a month-to-month basis.

Opera Mini users viewed 108.7 billion pages in January 2012. Since December 2011, page views have gone up 5.4%. Since January 2011, page views have increased 107.6%.

About Opera Software ASA

The worldwide World Wide Web — any device, any platform, any bandwidth, absolutely anywhere in the world. Opera Software was founded in 1994, based on the idea that access to the web should be a universal right. 250 million people (and counting) use the Opera web browsers for computers, mobile phones, TVs and other connected devices. Opera also delivers tools, distribution, engagement, monetization and market insights to developers, publishers and brands around the world. We are passionate about breaking down barriers, so everyone can share in the power of the internet. Our vision of one web for all remains at the heart of what we do, because we believe that participation changes everything. Opera Software ASA is listed on the Oslo Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol OPERA. Learn more about Opera at www.opera.com.