• SpinVox appointed Todd Ferguson to senior director – Microsoft. Ferguson will be charged with driving the co-development of Microsoft unified communications and enterprise applications with SpinVox services. Ferguson joins SpinVox from Gold Systems where he was the director of business development, sales and strategy – establishing global relationships with Microsoft Corporation, its partners and affiliates in the area of speech and unified communications.
• picoChip launched the PC3xx family, a new range of system-on-chip baseband processors specifically targeted at the femtocell market. These devices incorporate picoChip’s modem software in a highly integrated form, enabling femtocell manufacturers to reduce bill-of-materials while increasing performance. The picoChip PC302, the first member of the family, is a single-chip solution for HSPA femtocells compliant to TR25.820 and the newly standardized Iu-h interface. The PC3xx family also offers an upgrade path to more users (picocells), higher performance (Release 7 with HSPA+ and MIMO) and other air-interfaces such as LTE.
• InnerWireless’ Horizon Converged Wireless Platform is compatible with 802.11n from Cisco. The Richardson, Texas-based company is now expanding its WLAN product portfolio to include offering the Cisco Aironet 1250 Series Access Point for Horizon. A next-generation layered WLAN architecture that enables multiple Wi-Fi access points and channels to co-exist in the same coverage area, Horizon provides inherent redundancy and the ability to separate mission- and life-critical applications from casual applications. Traffic management, by either wireless protocol, such as 802.11b/g and 802.11n, or by application type, such as VoWLAN and clinical, assures the integrity of the services in specific layers and provides improved application performance.
• Incipio Technologies announced its distribution agreement with TESSCO Technologies. The Irvine, Calif.-based firm provides cases and accessories.
• Blueslice Networks completed interoperability testing with Cisco’s IMS soft switch using its HSS 3000. Blueslice’s HSS 300 helps evolve subscriber information from the legacy home location register (HLR) environments to the home subscriber server (HSS).
• Qatar Telecom (Qtel) announced the launch of the first WiMAX services of Wi-tribe, Qtel’s broadband Internet subsidiary in Jordan. While Jordan is the first market to go live with the new services, Qtel says more markets are to follow throughout the Middle East, Asia and Africa. Wi-tribe was founded by Qtel and Saudi Arabia-based A.A. Turki Corporate Trading and Construction (ATCO), and enjoys a strong partnership with U.S.-based WiMAX operator Clearwire.
• Bangladesh’s top mobile phone carrier Grameenphone, majority-owned by Norway’s Telenor announced that its subscriber base has passed 20 million, rising more than 21% since January.
• LG Electronics opened a new European Design Center in Covent Garden, London, in order to create European designs. The center is expected to employ a multinational team of 22 expert designers by 2009. The current team already includes British, Irish, Italian, French and German designers, who will design products for LG’s entire range of consumer goods, including mobile handsets and devices, flat-screen TVs and audio systems, white-goods and other home electronics. The Covent Garden center joins LG’s global network of 6 Design Centers, which are part of a wider network including 29 Research and Development Centers. Combined these centers employ 16,000 staff, nearly a fifth of LG’s global workforce. LG said it will invest more than $4.8 million into design programs in Europe in 2008. The first fully European designed mobile handset is expected to be announced in August.
• Comverse won a contract from Indonesian wireless operator Excelcomindo for a major SMSC expansion. Comverse said the expansion will help Excelcomindo handle its personal and application-related text messaging needs and implement new SMS services.
