The LTE Awards 2012 are taking place on May 23rd, at the El Xalet, Montjuic, Barcelona.

Now in its third year, the annual LTE Awards, in associated with Telecoms.com, are now established as the leading event of its kind. The LTE Awards are designed to recognise, celebrate and reward the great innovations that are being made in the industry, and this year are co-located with the LTE World Summit 2012, taking place on the evening of the 23rd, at the El Xalet, Montjuic, Barcelona. The event is sure to be a glamorous and entertaining evening for all participants.

The winners, from a varied selection of 10 categories and 48 shortlisted companies, will be picked by an independent panel of judges, consisting of leading industry experts, during a two week assessment process.

To whet your appetite for the event here is a preview of Category 8: Best Contribution to R&D for LTE

This award recognises the contribution towards the research and development of LTE and are judged on the nature of the investments made into R&D and research projects undertaken and how the R&D activities have had a positive impact on making LTE commercially successful.

Gemalto

Gemalto’s R&D has sought to find ways for operators to montise their subscribers.  Its research has looked into protecting Mobile TV content, balancing roaming traffic over 3G, LTE and wifi, managing Mobile NFC transactions and M2M, specifically by putting LTE modules in cars, mobile health and other verticals. Gemalto has helped CDMA operators extend their networks to LTE by providing 4G SIM cards and subscription management servers (Advanced OTA platform), and by adapting to legacy activation and IT systems. Gemalto R&D also works closely with the whole ecosystem to ensure interoperability.

Huawei Technologies

Huawei’s industry-leading position for LTE is the result of continuous investment in innovation. It has 5,200 engineers dedicated to LTE with eight R&D centres and 12 joint innovation centres dedicated to LTE. Huawei’s labs have produced end-to-end solutions for LTE eNodeB, EPC, OSS, terminals, and chipsets and along with its SingleRAN platform it has the industry’s only LTE TDD/FDD co-platform. It is at the forefront of industry activity in standard developments for ITU, 3GPP, 3GPP2, OMA, ETSI, IETF, and NGMN. According to the GSA, Huawei has ranked first among wireless infrastructure vendors in terms of LTE contributions since 2010. Success has then followed and out of 57 commercial LTE networks launched globally, 28 of them were deployed by Huawei. Of the 27 operators launching LTE commercial services in Europe Huawei built 15, more than any other company.

The LTE World Summit is taking place on the 23-24 May 2012 CCIB, Barcelona, Spain. Click here to register your http://ws.lteconference.com/interest.

The LTE Awards 2012 are taking place on May 23rd, at the El Xalet, Montjuic, Barcelona.

Now in its third year, the annual LTE Awards, in association with Telecoms.com, are now established as the leading event of its kind. The LTE Awards are designed to recognise, celebrate and reward the great innovations that are being made in the industry, and this year are co-located with the LTE World Summit 2012, taking place on the evening of the 23rd, at the El Xalet, Montjuic, Barcelona. The event is sure to be a glamorous and entertaining evening for all participants.

The winners, from a varied selection of 10 categories and 48 shortlisted companies, will be picked by an independent panel of judges, consisting of leading industry experts, during a two week assessment process.

To whet your appetite for the event here is a preview of Category 7: Best LTE RAN Product.

This award recognises Radio Access Network elements that are exceptional in their area. The judges look at how the product contributes to making LTE more attractive for operators to deploy and how it contributed to the success of a commercial LTE deployment.

Alcatel-Lucent: LightRadio Metro Cell

LightRadio cube-based Metro Cells solve the fundamental problem of cost-effectively satisfying users’ demand for more capacity and a better quality of experience, while ensuring community acceptance of new equipment. The LightRadio Metro Cell is a small cube that weighs about 300g and has a very low power draw. The LightRadio Metro Cells uses a unique frequency selective scheduler and a Bell Labs innovative enhanced inter-cell interference coordination (eICIC) to effectively manage interference. As a result, LTE Metro Cells may be successfully deployed using either dedicated or shared carriers. It’s also one of the first cellular network solutions to minimise environmental impact in terms of both carbon footprint reduction and aesthetic acceptance. LightRadio Metro Cells are in trials with many operators today, most notably with Telefonica as announced in February.

CellMax Technologies: Antennas

CellMax range of ‘next generation’  high-efficiency antennas for base stations use patented technology that eliminates energy losses in the internal feed network inside the antenna, increasing energy efficiency to 96 per cent compared to the 25-60 per cent energy heat losses of traditional antennas. Results from live LTE networks (2600MHz) show a data throughput increase of +25-100 per cent bit rate just by replacing standard LTE antennas with high efficiency LTE antennas from CellMax. Results also show up to 30 per cent increase in geographical coverage, a 10-20 per cent increase in net traffic, and a 20 per cent reduction in costs per call for the same amount of power consumed. CellMax antennas are used today by many operators including T-Mobile, Huawei, Hutchison, Ericsson, NSN, and ZTE. The LTE product line was launched in 2010.

Huawei Technologies: GigaSite

Huawei’s GigaSite solution is designed for operators to build the next generation of mobile broadband. It includes the ARU (Adaptive Radio Unit) and the AtomCell. The total size of its integrated antenna and radio unit is comparable to a standalone antenna, and its modular design can be easily configured. It can simultaneously support three separate bands over three different modes (typically for LTE, including GSM and UMTS), and supports cell splitting to improve overall cell capacity by up to 80 per cent. The ARU features the world’s highest single-unit throughput with 1.6Gbps on the Downlink. The ARU is specifically designed to meet the challenges of ever increasing upload with its 4-way receiver technology, which is capable of boosting gain by up to 40 per cent to help uplink throughput reach 850Mbps. The Huawei ARU was deployed by UK operators at the end of 2011 on commercial networks.

Nokia Siemens Networks: Flexi Multiradio 10 base station

The Flexi Multiradio 10 base station is the evolution of the Flexi Multiradio base station, the first LTE-ready Single RAN base station in the market. It provides for ten times higher baseband capacity and reduces power consumption by 30 per cent. It offers the industry’s highest integration density for achieving maximum throughputs in a minimum amount of space. For example, just one Flexi Multiradio System Module has been used to perform the world’s first LTE-Advanced demonstration with throughputs exceeding 1.4Gbps over 100MHz of aggregated spectrum. Site capacity can be scaled to beyond 10Gbps by pooling of system modules.

Samsung Electronics: Smart LTE Networks

Smart LTE Networks is a RAN solution for LTE that utilises an advanced radio resource management technology to significantly reduce the interference between sectors and cells. It uses a virtual server connected to a large number of base stations through Ethernet. Working in real-time environment, the virtual server receives LTE radio channel information (from all connected base stations simultaneously and sends back most optimal radio resource allocation pattern. Thus all BTS in the LTE network work in coordination to provide best QoS for every user. It boasts up to double the number of users than conventional LTE networks, and based on figures from Korea Telecom Samsung claims OPEX and CAPEX reductions of up to 26 per cent. Deutsche Telekom also successfully conducted a Smart LTE Networks trial in Q4 of 2011.

ZTE Corporation: is ZXSDR R8884 RAN

ZTE’s ZXSDR R8884 RAN product was launched in September 2011 and is designed to help operators solve issues around scare spectrum resources, which often means using frequency blocks that are less than optimal. The ZXSDR R8884 RAN can accommodate carrier aggregation, continuous or non-continuous, both in intra-band and inter-band. For example if an operator owns 10MHz frequency band in 1.8GHz and another 10MHz in 2.6GHz, but needs wider band for building LTE network, then ZXSDR R8884 can help to get 20MHz band in total through inter-band carrier aggregation. Thus, more throughput is obtained and less RRU’s are used. ZXSDR R8884 is the only RRU in the industry that can support inter-band carrier aggregation. ZTE is currently working with several operators including Hong Kong CSL, an operator in Russia, China Telecom and China Unicom.

The LTE World Summit is taking place on the 23-24 May 2012 CCIB, Barcelona, Spain. Click here to register your http://ws.lteconference.com/interest.

The LTE Awards 2012 are taking place on May 23rd, at the El Xalet, Montjuic, Barcelona.

Now in its third year, the annual LTE Awards, in association with Telecoms.com, are established as the leading event of its kind. The LTE Awards are designed to recognise, celebrate and reward the great innovations that are being made in the industry, and this year are co-located with the LTE World Summit 2012, taking place on the evening of the 23rd, at the El Xalet, Montjuic, Barcelona. The event is sure to be a glamorous and entertaining evening for all participants.

The winners, from a varied selection of 10 categories and 48 shortlisted companies, will be picked by an independent panel of judges, consisting of leading industry experts, during a two week assessment process.

To whet your appetite for the event here is a preview of Category 6: Best LTE Core Network Element.

This award recognises core network elements that are exceptional in their area. The judges will ascertain how they contribute to making LTE more attractive for operators to deploy and the part they played in the success of a commercial LTE deployment.

Alcatel-Lucent: 4G Consumer Communications Solution

Alcatel-Lucent is looking to provide the first comprehensive communications solution for the industry that combines voice, messaging and video across a combination of device, screen and network. The idea behind the converged communications solution is to make using video as easy for consumers as voice in now. It looks to combine all forms of communications, whether they use telecoms or web based networks. Alcatel-Lucent’s Advanced Communication Platform tightly links service control with network access and includes a Converged Telephony Server, which combines a voice and video across fixed and mobile, a Media Resource Function that enables HD video conferencing and a Services Continuity Gateway to transfer calls between 2G/3G and LTE networks. Four operators have so far contracted Alcatel-Lucent and there are 13 trials around the world.

Huawei Technologies

Huawei’s SingleEPC (Evolved Packet Core) suite is a unified packet core network that supports all 3GPP and Non-3GPP access technologies. It was released to the market in December 2009, when it was deployed on the world’s first LTE/EPC commercial network. Among its technical highlights Huwawei’s SingleEPC can handle 64 times the average signalling traffic, supporting operators in building robust LTE/EPC networks. It supports Precise Paging to save 60 per cent paging load for LTE and Policy Paging to improve QoE of time-sensitive services. The node virtualization feature of SingleEPC enables maximum network resource utilization and is an important step toward future Cloud-based EPC network evolution. By the end of 2011, Huawei’s SingleEPC suite has been deployed on more than 110 commercial and trial EPC networks run by the world’s leading operators.

Mavenir Systems

The Mavenir Convergence Telephone Application Server was launched in May 2011 and runs on Mavenir’s mOne Convergence Platform. C-TAS is a key core network element to help operators introduce VoLTE, which is set to usher in a new era of communications comprising of rich, real-time voice and video services, across any access generation and any device.  The C-TAS is an integrated multi-functional network element designed to support MMtel-based VoLTE, FMC services such as wifi calling, and Femto- based services.  Mavenir C-TAS is based on COTS and ATCA hardware, and also supports the Rich Messaging Server, key components for LTE Messaging, RCS-e and upcoming RCS v5 services. Mavenir C-TAS has been used by T-Mobile USA, delivering the first live mobile wifi calling service based on IMS. MetroPCS is poised to become one of the first VoLTE service providers in the world, while Vodafone Germany is using Mavenir C-TAS for CSFB-based LTE Voice.

Symmetricom

Symmetricom’s TimeProvider Master Clock has been on the market for two months. It is the first solution of its kind supporting legacy networks that will enable service providers to deploy the necessary synchronisation protocols to support next generation services. A Grandmaster or master clock is required in all communication networks to provide a source of time for all network services and manage bulling/logging. Without precise timing and synchronisation in a communications network, call hand-off from site to site will be negatively impacted, and network bandwidth will degrade and affect video quality. As 4G/LTE networks will be all-IP, it’s important to have a timing solution that supports multiple synchronization protocols to protect the network. The TimeProvider 5000 Master Clock is the industry’s first solution to deliver multi-sync capabilities with massive scale on a single platform to support the sync requirements of next generation networks. China Mobile was the first carrier to deploy the TimeProvider 5000 Master Clock to support their packet transfer network (PTN) deployment.

Tekelec

Tekelec’s Diameter Signaling Router (DSR) gives carriers the ability to manage the “signalling storm”of overloaded networks. Diameter is the LTE signalling protocol that carries policy, charging, mobility management, and authentication, authorisation and accounting (AAA) traffic. The DSR acts as the central nervous system of the network, providing a single hub for all Diameter traffic. It reduces the complexity of connecting, provisioning and interoperating essential Diameter-based equipment from multiple vendors. By providing a single connection point for all Diameter traffic, the DSR centralizes Diameter routing, signalling traffic management and load-balancing tasks. Nine global service providers have selected 13 DSR systems, including US providers Verizon Wireless and MetroPCS.

ZTE Corporation

ZTE core network product is called the ISGW (Integration Service Gateway) and it has been on the market for one year. The idea behind the ISGW is that users can get more bandwidth in areas where LTE and wifi overlap. The ISGW is an integrated service gateway that ISGW allow users with dedicated devices to access LTE and wifi networks at the same time and aggregate the two bandwidth of each. It maintains the wifi and LTE connections but associate one IP session to the device. It also offers unified charging for the wifi and LTE session. The ISGW has been deployed by CSL in Hong Kong to supply the LTE service for all of smart phone users with wifi hotspot access.

The LTE World Summit is taking place on the 23-24 May 2012 CCIB, Barcelona, Spain. Click here to register your http://ws.lteconference.com/interest.

The LTE Awards 2012 are taking place on May 23rd, at the El Xalet, Montjuic, Barcelona.

Now in its third year, the annual LTE Awards, in associated with Telecoms.com, are now established as the leading event of its kind. The LTE Awards are designed to recognise, celebrate and reward the great innovations that are being made in the industry, and this year are co-located with the LTE World Summit 2012, taking place on the evening of the 23rd, at the El Xalet, Montjuic, Barcelona. The event is sure to be a glamorous and entertaining evening for all participants.

The winners, from a varied selection of ten categories and 48 shortlisted companies, will be picked by an independent panel of judges, consisting of leading industry experts, during a two week assessment process.

To whet your appetite for the event here is a preview of Category 5: Most Innovative LTE Commercial Launch.

This award recognises the most innovative LTE commercial launch. The judges take into account the success of a network launch and what makes it stand out from others.

Huawei Technologies

In August 2011, Huawei and Wireless City Planning (WCP), a SoftBank group company, commenced deployment of the largest commercial LTE TDD network in the world – the first time LTE TDD has been adopted for a large scale commercial network deployment. The deployment uses technology such as SFN (Single Frequency Networking), 4x4MIMO, and the world’s smallest and lightest broadband RRU (Radio Remote Unit). This supports 40MHz bandwidth, offers downlink data speeds of over 400Mbps and increased site capacity by up to 1.2Gb/s. Each cell site can support 2,000 camping subscribers, 1,000 of which can be active at the same time. Further commercial launches are planned for parts of Tokyo and Osaka in November 2012. By March 2013, the deployment will provide 99 per cent of the population in Japan’s cities (an estimated 114 million people) with ultra broadband services made using Huawei’s LTE TDD solutions.

Nokia Siemens Networks

Nokia Siemens Networks and SKY, the largest cable and satellite TV operator in Brazil, launched an TD-LTE network using the 2.6GHz frequency on the 13 December, 2011. It is a unique 4G TD-LTE deployment with wifi an integral part of the solution. It includes one of the industry first TD-LTE based wifi wireless routers for consumers. The NSN technology includes its FlexiPacket Microwave transport platform and Evolved Packet Core (EPC), part of its Liquid Core architecture. In addition, NSN has provided its CPEi-lte 7212 wireless router. Nokia Siemens Networks has also provided its NetAct network management system to provide consolidated configuration, monitoring and network optimization. SKY plans to roll out services to new customers in other cities of Brazil, and other countries in Latin America, in the future.

Samsung Electronics

Samsung launched a network in with a major South Korean operator in January 2012. The network was located in the capital city of Seoul. As of March 2012 it cover 26 cities in Korea with about 28,000 cell sites and the ultimate goal in 84 cities covering 90 per cent of the country’s population. The Samsung network uses its SmartCloud technology and is the first LTE network that uses cloud computing. There are two key differences over other networks: centralizing hundreds of base station sites into one BTS site, and network-wide optimisation by connecting virtual server to all the radio units. SmartCloud is designed to create a flexible and high-capacity network for serving dense urban areas efficiently. A virtual server communicates simultaneously with all RRUs to mitigate interference across entire network, and help provide a better quality of experience to user irrespective of location to the cell edge or cell centre. It uses air resource management technology, to mitigate interference among cells. SmartCloud reduced CAPEX by 26 per cent and cut OPEX for the launch operator by 37 per cent by eliminating the need to operate hundreds of DU sites.

ZTE Corporation

ZTE launched a CS Fallback solution together with CSL in Hong Kong in February 2012.  The solution brings high quality voice services for LTE users, reduces the pressure on the 3G data network and; enhances the operator’s reputation in a very competitive market. It mitigates the need to migrate CS service to IMS for voice, maximising the existing 3G investment and smoothing evolution to CSFB service thanks to a lower TCO. The launch used a unique “Proxy MSC” solution preventing the need to upgrade all the MSCs in the CS network. ZTE and CSL will optimise the network in the coming 12 months. The LTE network will be inter-connected with other vendors to support CSFB roaming. In the future, the user experience will be enhanced to absorb more and more smartphones onto the LTE network.

The LTE World Summit is taking place on the 23-24 May 2012 CCIB, Barcelona, Spain. Click here to register your http://ws.lteconference.com/interest.

The deals marks Huawei's first such UK deal

Chinese equipment vendor Huawei said Monday that it has won a five-year agreement from Telefónica’s UK operation, O2, to manage the operator’s multi vendor core transmission and mobile access network.

Under the deal Huawei will be responsible for planning and managing the core transmission, mobile access and core network build, marking the first major managed services deal for the Chinese firm in the UK.

Huawei already works with Telefónica in a number of markets and this latest deal extends the companies’ relationship in the UK. The deal may come as a disappointment to Ericsson, which has a long-standing agreement with Telefónica to supply field maintenance services, but had also undertaken a core network modernisation initiative on some parts of O2’s UK network last year. As a result, Huawei will likely be managing a lot of Ericsson kit.

The agreement will see 56 permanent roles transfer from Telefónica UK to work for Huawei’s managed services business.  A further 62 contractor roles will also be transferring alongside the permanent employees.

Huawei is Platinum Sponsor at the 2012 Managed Services World Congress, taking place in Berlin on the 18-19th September 2012. http://www.managedservices-world.com/home/home

Aussie PM Julia Gillard, commented this week the Government is obliged to “do its utmost to protect [the NBN’s] integrity and that of the information carried on it.” This includes barring Huawei from any participation.

Gillard isn’t the only one who has doubt over Huawei’s restraint when it comes to sensitive national information. Last year, the Chinese firm was locked out of the tender process for the US nationwide emergency communications network, and banned from acquiring server firm 3Leaf. Its joint venture with Symantec was dissolved last November because the US company feared losing out on information from the US government, according to the New York Times.

There have been similar situations in Taiwan and India, and Huawei’s offer to supply the infrastructure for cellular coverage in London’s underground rail network was also dismissed.

Of course, these countries could just be plain paranoid. Or maybe people just don’t understand China, which is the view of Huawei’s Australian spokesman, Jeremy Mitchell.

“If we were found to do one thing wrong, to have one back door in any of our equipment, our company would fold overnight. There’s no way in the world that we would ever risk that… I think anyone who would argue that the Chinese government would ask us to do that shows a…lack of understanding of modern China,” he told ABC’s daily current affairs radio show AM.

Informa analyst Tony Brown wrote in a comment that is well worth reading that Huawei’s treatment stemmed from the Australian government’s desire to be closely aligned with its US counterpart. But Brown pointed out that Huawei has plenty of other business in Australia, making this latest decision inconsistent at least, and that the anti-China stance over the NBN could have repercussions down the line for Chinese-Australian trade.

Here in the UK, operators have been hitting out at regulator Ofcom’s proposals to allow Everything Everywhere to use its existing 1800MHz spectrum to offer LTE services ahead of its competitors. O2, Vodafone and 3UK are not happy that they will likely have to wait until 2013 before they can deploy LTE services, while, under the proposal, Everything Everywhere will be able to do it this year.

O2 makes one interesting argument; that once Everything Everywhere is in a position to offer LTE services, it could attempt to delay the 4G auction, while it has a monopoly position for LTE in the UK. Vodafone UK CEO Guy Laurence, meanwhile, accused Ofcom of “taking leave of its senses”, by accepting the application from Everything Everywhere.

Meanwhile, the European Commission continued its war on prices for roaming across the EU. The European Parliament and Danish Presidency of the Council of Ministers provisionally agreed a deal to revamp the market, forcing operators in Europe to lower costs when their customers use their devices abroad.

The plans, which will be voted on in the European Parliament in May, could see roaming prices lowered to 29 Cents per minute for calls and 70 Cents per MB for internet access in July 2012, if approved. They will then decrease further to 19 Cents per minute for calls and 20 Cents per MB for internet access by 2014. The European Parliament aims to bring roaming tariffs into line with domestic prices by 2015.

And smartphone bedfellows Microsoft and Nokia have pledged to each invest up to €9m in a development program to drive training, support and startup business opportunities through the AppCampus program at Aalto University, Finland.

The AppCampus program will cater to the Windows Phone ecosystem, as well as Nokia’s legacy platforms, including Symbian and Series 40, “to create a new generation of self-sustaining mobile startups.”

From May, AppCampus intends to attract thousands of application proposals from students and entrepreneurs from all over the world and will supply support, training in mobile technology, design and usability, and funding to create innovative new mobile apps and services.

With mobile money a hot topic in the industry right now, UK payment provider Monitise has got a lot of tongues wagging with its attempt to create the “world’s largest pure-play mobile money company”. The firm will pay $173m to acquire its US counterpart Clairmail, conditional upon US regulatory and shareholder approvals.

“The future of payments, the internet, retail and social networking is all mobile,” said Alastair Lukies, group chief executive at Monitise, whilst rubbing his hands, presumably.

Should the carriers be in charge though? Especially when they have squandered more than $58bn due to inadequate billing systems. The accusation came from Juniper Research, which warned that the figure, which represents over six per cent of operators’ global revenues, is only going to grow, unless carriers address the issue.

The report suggests that under a ‘nightmare scenario’ whereby operators fail to implement any remedial measures over the next five years, the scale of losses could rise five-fold by 2016.

“Despite their initial costs, revenue assurance and fraud management systems demonstrate a strong case for return on investment,” said Windsor Holden, the Juniper report’s author.

Talking of nightmare scenarios, RIM’s new CEO Thorsten Heins has said that the Canadian firm will conduct a strategic overhaul aimed at refocusing the company on its enterprise service roots.

He said that he had spent the last ten weeks conducting a “personal reality check” on the business, concluding that “substantial change is what RIM needs”. But Heins conceded simultaneously that many of the firm’s traditional strengths are no longer valued as highly as they once were by its customer base. This represents rather a serious issue, doesn’t it?

A rush of stories appeared online claiming that RIM was planning to ditch the consumer business altogether, despite Heins saying that he intended to redouble the firm’s efforts in the high end consumer space. But the firm’s decision to refrain from offering any quantitative guidance from here on in does not exactly smack of confidence.

And that about wraps it up for the week.

Take care,

The Informer

Rumours had swirled for months that Huawei would be blocked from the NBN on the back of security concerns and this was finally confirmed on March 25 in the local press – although the government itself did not issue a definitive confirmation of the decision in its own statement.

Although Huawei had been privately aware that it had been blocked from the NBN since late last year, with its local management being advised of the fact by key officials in Canberra, the breaking of the news still caused a massive stir in the Australian market, with the development being reported even on mainstream TV news programs.

Following Uncle Sam
Given the fact that no Australian government ever wants to have more than a cigarette paper of distance between its own trade and foreign policies and those of its big brother in Washington DC, the NBN block on Huawei was inevitable given the company’s still parlous position in the US market.

For a variety of security and trade related reasons the US government – across both administrative and legislative branches – continues to have major concerns about Huawei and has blocked the company from competing for many projects in the country.

As a result, it would have been hugely embarrassing for the Americans if Australia – its staunchest international ally – had allowed Huawei to bid on a state sponsored project like the NBN because it would have significantly advanced Huawei’s international credibility and left the US as something of an outlier in its continued opposition to the company.

Indeed, news reports have made it quite clear that the US political and intelligence forces have lobbied Canberra hard to block Huawei from the NBN project and the Australian government, faced with choosing between its long running US alliance and its burgeoning partnership with China, plumped for the former over the latter.

The real questions now are these; how big a price will Australia pay in terms of trade implications with China for so publicly humiliating Huawei and, more importantly, where does Huawei go from here?

Will revenge be a dish best served cold?
From the perspective of trade implications there is little doubt that the Chinese will be furious at this public humiliation of one of their flagship technology companies – one which is already doing business in well over 100 countries around the world.

China is one of Australia’s biggest trading partners, with the middle kingdom importing tens of billions of dollars worth of Australian minerals every year to fuel its staggering growth – and those in the Australian minerals export industry are certainly unimpressed with this latest turn of events.

Local mining investors, including the increasingly eccentric but nonetheless hugely successful Clive Palmer, have long urged the Australian government to be more welcoming of Chinese investment in the local market and there has already been some serious disquiet over the implications of blocking Huawei from the NBN.

Of course, the Chinese are not going to suddenly stop buying Australian coal, bauxite and whatever else it is that Rio Tinto et al dig out of the ground – their need for these resources is too great – but they might easily decide to become less welcoming of Australian investment in other areas of the Chinese market.

After all, it could hardly be an unfair position for the Chinese government to say to Australia, “If you don’t allow Huawei to bid for NBN contracts then why should we allow your educational institutions to expand into our market and teach our students?”

A question of influence
Huawei Australia has already brought some significant political muscle to the table in its bid to be fully accepted into the Australian market, most notably with the addition of former Foreign Minister Alexander Downer – a genuine local blue blood – as well as former Premier of Victoria John Brumby to their local board.

At this stage though it is doubtful whether Huawei Australia could have swayed the government even if their local board contained former Prime Minister’s Kevin Rudd, John Howard, Paul Keating and Bob Hawke with cricketing legend Shane Warne operating as PR adviser and pop singer Kylie Minogue providing backing vocals – the die is seemingly cast against the company for geo-political reasons.

Therefore, it seems fruitless at this point for Huawei to bring more political patronage to the table – it has already embarked on heavy lobbying of both government and opposition members of parliament – the firm will need to take an entirely different tactic and one which the Chinese are traditionally strong; displaying patience and taking a longer term view.

The firm will simply have to keep on working with its key clients in the Anglo-sphere such a BT in the UK, Chorus in New Zealand, Bell Canada in Canada as well as SingTel Optus in Australia and hope for a gradual change in the positioning of the Australian government.

This is obviously a far from satisfactory prospect but probably the best on offer right now for the company given the seeming futility of hoping for a successful inter-governmental level intervention from the Chinese government.

The ludicrous spy myth
As I have argued for several years now – and Alexander Downer himself has stated in recent weeks – the argument that Huawei is some sort of quasi-intelligence gathering arm of the Beijing government is so ludicrous that it should scarcely be tolerated in serious company.

As anyone in the global telecoms industry appreciates it would only take one instance of the firm being found to have somehow compromised the security integrity of a foreign customer – and Lord knows there sure are already plenty of people out there looking for evidence of such an instance – and Huawei would be instantly dead in the water.

Would Huawei, a company already generating billions of dollars from international clients and whose future can only be secured via a huge international presence, seriously put all that at risk for the sake of helping out the Beijing intelligence services? One strike and they would be out of the game forever.

Moreover, with the Beijing government acutely aware that the future of the country as a global technology player relies heavily on ensuring that the likes of Huawei and ZTE become established and well trusted forces in the international market – it is hard to imagine that they would be willing to put that at risk by asking the firms to betray their foreign customers.

Perhaps what sticks in the craw so badly about the current imbroglio is hearing the US security establishment disparage Huawei as being effectively a tool of the Beijing government when it is less than a decade since the US government forced its own telecoms industry, in the form of local carriers, to release highly sensitive customer information in its post-9/11 security crackdown.

Don’t think for a second that the Chinese don’t appreciate the irony of that.

Huawei's involvement in the NBN project has been blocked

Chinese infrastructure vendor Huawei was told not to bid for any contracts relating to the Australian National Broadband Network (NBN) project, it has emerged. Local news agencies have reported that Huawei learned before Christmas last year that any efforts it made to win NBN contracts would be unsuccessful. The reports suggest that government concerns over security lie at the heart of the decision.

Answering questions on the topic while at an unrelated event in Seoul, Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard, said that the decision to exclude Huawei was “prudent”. While she didn’t refer to the Chinese vendor by name, she said that the Government was obliged to “do our utmost to protect [the NBN’s] integrity and that of the information carried on it.”

She continued: “The National Broadband Network is a huge infrastructure project and you would expect that as a government we would make all of the prudent decisions to make sure that that infrastructure project does what we want it to do, and we’ve taken one of those decisions.”

Huawei appeared sanguine, saying that it hoped to prove its suitability as a supplier to the project in future. In a statement, the firm’s local spokesman, Jeremy Mitchell said Huawei would strive to prove itself a reliable partner.

“As the world’s leading NBN provider Huawei remains hopeful of playing a role in Australia’s NBN, but ultimately that is a decision for the Australian Government and NBNCo,” he said. “While we’re obviously disappointed by the decision, Huawei will continue to be open and transparent and work to find ways of providing assurance around the security of our technology.”

Mitchell was slightly more outspoken in a radio interview on Monday morning, suggesting that anyone who believed Huawei a threat to security did not understand modern China.

Speaking on ABC’s daily current affairs radio show AM, he said: “If we were found to do one thing wrong, to have one back door in any of our equipment, our company would fold over night. There’s no way in the world that we would ever risk that… I think anyone who would argue that the Chinese government would ask us to do that shows a…lack of understanding of modern China.”

This is not the first time Huawei has found its path blocked by foreign governments with security concerns. Last year the firm was locked out of the tender process for the US nationwide emergency communications network, and banned from acquiring server firm 3Leaf. There have been similar situations in Taiwan and India, and Huawei’s offer to supply the infrastructure for cellular coverage in London’s underground rail network was also dismissed.

The deployment is a world first in the 3.5GHz band

UK LTE licensee UK Broadband (UKB), a wholly owned subsidiary of Hong Kong’s PCCW, has said it aims to offer commercial services from May after building out the first TD-LTE network in the country.

According to Chinese equipment vendor Huawei, which revealed details of the deployment at MWC in Barcelona last week, the rollout is the first LTE TDD 3.5GHz deployment in the world. The network will use UKB’s 124MHz of spectrum in the 3.5GHz and 3.6GHz bands, with 6 x 20MHz wide channels.

UKB said it went with LTE TDD because in typical scenarios, significantly more data is downloaded than uploaded and the technology allows UKB to dynamically manage the network to maximise the download capacity at all times. However, the characteristics of the available spectrum also likely had something to do with this move.

Just as US player LightSquared intended, UKB will operate a wholesale model, selling capacity on its network to partners. Unlike the US firm, UKB looks like it will go into commercial operation in May, offering coverage to the Southbank and Borough areas of Southwark, London.

The first devices, jointly developed by UKB and Huawei, include multi-mode mobile devices supporting LTE TDD/FDD and will be available from September.

The deal will bring fibre to Christchurch

Chinese vendor Huawei has been awarded a contract to supply fibre equipment for the Ultra-Fast Broadband (UFB) network being built in the city of Christchurch, New Zealand.

The multi-million contact was awarded by Enable Networks and involves the provision of all network equipment for the project, including fibre ducting, fibre optic cables and open access layer two network solutions.

It also involves the provision of service expertise required for the 3,500 kilometre UFB network that will extend across Christchurch and into growing centres in Waimakariri and Selwyn Districts.

This is the second major order Huawei has won for New Zealand’s UFB project, the first being awarded late last year and involving equipment for the network in the Waikato, Bay of Plenty, Taranaki and Wanganui regions.

Other vendors which have won a role in the UFB project include Alcatel-Lucent, which is providing its IP/MPLS (Multi Protocol Label Switching) solution for the areas of Hawke’s Bay, Rotorua and Taupo; and Ericsson, which has been selected to provide Gigabit Passive Optical Networking (GPON) technology for the Northpower Fibre Network being built in Whangarei in the far north of the North Island.

The UFB initiative has been set up as a public-private partnership, with the state-owned Crown Fibre Holdings representing the government and forming alliances with local partners, including Northpower, UltraFast Fibre (which awarded the contract to Huawei), Enable Networks and Chorus.

The New Zealand government has allocated public funds of NZD 1.5bn ($1.2bn) for the project, which aims to connect 75 per cent of the country’s population by 2019 and deliver speeds of 100 Mbps initially, with speed increases of up to 10 Gbps anticipated further down the line.