Mika Vehvilainen is under no illusions about the challenges facing infrastructure vendors in today’s telecommunications market. “This is a very tough industry to be in,” he says. “The growth outlook is not great.”

Between them, Andy Zimmerman and members of his team from Accenture’s Global Communications division had 275 meetings at February’s Mobile World Congress. With clients from all areas of the industry – mobile operators, infrastructure vendors, content and media players, service providers – Zimmerman was exposed to the full breadth of opinion on how the mobile industry will evolve. The fears and aspirations of all players are clear, he says, speaking to telecoms.com just days after the event’s conclusion.

With 3G wireless broadband subscriptions forecast to exceed global DSL connections by as early as 2010, mobile carriers are slowly coming round to the realisation that the finite resources of the wireless last mile could pose some serious problems going forward.

Next generation wifi standard 802.11n is beginning to hit the mainstream, with a steady flow of early adopters announcing plans to roll out the technology over the past couple of months.

Arguably the most advanced mobile market in the world, South Korea is set for more groundbreaking changes in 2008.

State-owned Indian operator Bharat Sanchar Nigam, Ltd (BSNL) said Friday it has tapped US WiMAX kit vendor Soma Networks to deploy what it claims is the largest WiMAX network in India. The 802.16e-2005 mobile WiMAX network will be rolled out across three circles, Gujarat, Maharashtra and Goa, and Andhra Pradesh and will provide broadband data [...]

Networking giant Cisco said Wednesday that it has made an investment in femtocell shop ip.access, giving it a stronger foothold in the mobile space. The company’s main source of revenue comes form its 2G picocell business at present, but ip.access has secured new funding from supporters for its Oyster 3G femtocell, which is currently in [...]