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22

Feb

Tektronix Communications: It’s Make or Break Time for 4G Operators

Media Alert

Mobile Data Means Business

End-to-End network monitoring & traffic management key to supporting mobile broadband business model

Last week Analysys Mason reported that global mobile data traffic is growing at a rate of 67 percent a year. Conversely revenue per gigabyte is estimated to fall 82 percent by 2015. Lyn Cantor, president of Tektronix Communications, believes that the huge surge in data traffic has meant that operators face a double headed challenge in both optimizing, and monetizing this traffic.

Operators are now transitioning to deploy networks that service the growing demand for mobile broadband. Today, carriers have deployed diverse technologies in their networks to serve the delivery of voice and data. Operators began with 2.5G, then moved to EDGE, 3G, HSPA and are now focusing on LTE. With the network efficiencies that LTE provides, operators can reduce the delivery costs of mobile data and launch personalized services, and applications. Carriers are now shifting their focus to see quality from the customer's perspective first, then from the services point of view and then, ultimately, the network; in an end-to-end manner. In order to achieve this, carriers require integrated solutions that have the ability to analyse customer usage and quality within, and between, each technology domain.

Lyn Cantor, president, Tektronix Communications, explained: "Network monitoring, assurance and optimization tools have always helped operators to manage their networks cost-effectively. However, a new generation of traffic management tools now exist that enable operators to better leverage the data from their network, which directly ties back to customer usage and preferences. This high value data allows operators to develop new, revenue generating value propositions that target individual users; or groups of users.

"As LTE will remarkably drive down the cost of delivery of mobile broadband; the ability to monetize all that new traffic is what will make, or break, an operator's 4G business model. Operators that are able to collect and correlate high-value, and cross-domain, data will have the ability to see real-time quality and usage KPI's, and statistics, at the end-user level. Moreover, data collected from across the network will help operators to perform predictive analytics to identify prospective churners proactively; or detect other usage patterns that may impact the bottom-line. Using this focused data, operators can develop new services and strategies that are perfectly targeted at the end-user."

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16

Feb

Tekelec and Tecnotree Integrate Independent Policy and Charging Systems

MORRISVILLE, N.C. and ESPOO, FINLAND — February 16, 2012 — Mobile broadband solutions company Tekelec and telecoms IT solutions provider Tecnotree Corporation today announced successful interoperability testing between Tekelec's Policy Server (PCRF) and Tecnotree's Real-Time Convergent Charging system. This is the first announced integration between independent policy and charging vendors over the proposed Sy interface. This gives mobile service providers the scalability and Diameter signaling efficiency required to grow their mobile data networks and deliver personalized data plans.

The 3GPP and member organizations - including Tekelec and Tecnotree – are developing the Sy interface to improve Diameter-based communications between the PCRF and online charging systems (OCS). The new standard interface is being introduced this year.

"As our customers expand their policy and charging systems to support new services such as shared data plans and over-the-top services, they are requesting a standards-based approach to ensure scalability and signaling efficiency," said Doug Suriano, Tekelec's chief technology officer. "Our close work with the 3GPP and Tecnotree gives service providers a head start on integrating best-of-breed policy and charging products."

The new Sy standard provides several advantages to service providers compared with proprietary, pre-integrated approaches:

• Improved scalability. Policy and charging systems can scale independently using Diameter signaling routing. This allows service providers to manage the signaling load needed to support service plans based on real-time factors such as time of day, application usage, speed, and network congestion.

• Signaling efficiency. The new Sy interface reduces the back-and-forth messages between policy and charging systems required to count service quotas and balance customer accounts.

• Flexible usage tracking through better sharing of information between the policy and charging systems and expanded usage thresholds based on volume, application, speed, or time.

• Reduced costs by eliminating complex, proprietary, and costly pre-integration between the policy server and the online charging system (OCS).

"The majority of tier one service providers seek interoperability and integration of policy with independent charging systems," said Graham Finnie, chief analyst at Heavy Reading and author of the report Policy, Charging & Billing: What Tier 1 Operators Want. "They also desire standardized 3GPP interfaces wherever possible. So interoperability across the new Sy interface is an important milestone for vendors to reach."

"Policy and charging best serve operators when each vendor has a dedicated product – not when one product is sold to subsidize the other," said Timo Ahomäki, vice president, product management of Tecnotree. "Interoperability with Tekelec over Sy reduces network complexity and opens the doors to more revenue-generating policy and charging use cases."

About Tekelec

Tekelec's intelligent mobile broadband solutions enable service providers to manage and monetize mobile data and evolve to LTE and IMS. We are the architects of the new Diameter network, the foundation for session, policy and subscriber data management. More than 300 service providers use our market-leading solutions to deliver cloud, machine-to-machine and personalized services to consumers and enterprises. For more information visit www.tekelec.com.

About Tecnotree

Tecnotree is a global provider of a broad range of telecom IT solutions focused on charging, billing, customer care, messaging and content services. Tecnotree empowers communication service providers to create and monetize a broad marketplace of digital services, and augment value across the customer lifecycle. Acknowledged for agility and commitment, Tecnotree has more than 900 employees serving over 100 operators globally. Tecnotree is listed on the main list of NASDAQ OMX Helsinki Ltd. with the trading code TEM1V. For more information on Tecnotree visit www.tecnotree.com

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15

Feb

AinaCom chooses OpenCloud to boost enterprise services portfolio

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08

Feb

MobiTV Appoints Seasoned Industry Executive to Drive Expansion Across EMEA

EMERYVILLE, Calif. -- Feb. 8, 2012 – MobiTV, Inc., a leading provider of managed mobile TV and video solutions, today announced the appointment of Paul Burmester to the role of general manager and senior vice president for EMEA. Burmester's appointment demonstrates MobiTV's commitment to its expansion in the EMEA market.

"Paul brings experience in, and understanding of, the European technology industry, as well as relationships with top-tier mobile operators," said MobiTV CEO Charlie Nooney. "We're confident that he will continue to build the strong commercial relationships necessary for MobiTV to pursue expansion in the international market."

Burmester brings over 30 years of experience in the technology industry, most recently coming from senior positions within companies operating in the mobile sector. Burmester intends to build on MobiTV's proven success in North America, applying his product and business development expertise to define and pursue the company's market expansion strategy.

"MobiTV's success in North America is well established," said Burmester. "I look forward to working with the team at MobiTV to replicate this success in EMEA by offering their services to allow customers to deliver television and video anywhere, anytime on any device to users internationally."

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07

Feb

OpenCloud reveals operators prioritising service innovation to counter ‘bit pipe’ phobia

Survey of Asia-Pac, Indian and Middle Eastern CSPs shows importance of open development platforms

Cambridge, UK – 7th February 2012 – Communication Service Providers (CSPs) spanning Asia-Pacific, India and the Middle East see the possibility of becoming a 'bit pipe' as the biggest influencer on their operating strategies, according to a survey conducted by Heavy Reading and telecoms software innovator OpenCloud.

The survey, of nearly 100 global CSPs, revealed how operators are adapting to changing market conditions. The majority, 90 per cent, cited that the economic situation and the development of consumer and business markets over the last three years have changed the role of communication service providers, and their position in the value chain. The need to respond to competitive innovation from OTT players was cited as a top three issue of importance to CSPs. However, the response to this market development differs from region to region.

More than 50 per cent of operators in Asia Pacific, the Middle-East and India view the risk of becoming a connectivity and bandwidth 'bit pipe' is of greater concern than competition from OTT players – contrasting with fewer than 40 per cent elsewhere. CSPs from these regions also rank customer demand for new services and service personalisation as the 2nd and 3rd most important issues influencing innovation strategies.

Sixty two per cent of CSPs in these regions cited a lack of an innovation culture as a critical barrier to innovation; while around half of the operator respondents also viewed dependence on vendors to deliver service changes as a consistent obstacle to innovation. To drive service innovation, Asian, Indian and Middle Eastern CSPs are keen to migrate to open-standards based platforms to promote independent development; with 73 per cent seeing migration to these platforms a critical, or significant, target when improving service innovation.

"The survey seems to indicate that rather than being driven reactively by the fear of competition, CSPs in Asia, the Middle East and India appear to be proactively focussed on how to make their service offering more relevant to the market," said Mark Windle, OpenCloud's Head of Marketing. "These CSPs were very vocal in their backing of an open development ecosystem. Compared with their Western counterparts, approximately twice as many Asian, Middle Eastern and Indian CSPs are planning to provide trusted third parties with access to a rich set of network APIs; allowing them to lead development efforts."

About OpenCloud (www.opencloud.com)

OpenCloud delivers open, standards-based network transformation solutions to the telecommunications industry. OpenCloud Next Generation Service Layer products enable the agile delivery of classic and telco2.0 telecommunication services at a dramatically lower price-point across next generation IP and legacy networks. OpenCloud provides Rhino, a JAIN SLEE-based Telecom Application Server, together with a portfolio of hundreds of telecom applications, a Telecom Service Broker, and a real-time charging session control point for data, voice and messaging services. OpenCloud Service Layer products use commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) hardware and software to deliver service layer agility to networks at a radically lower price-point than traditional solutions from network equipment providers.

OpenCloud is headquartered in Cambridge, UK with R&D, Engineering and Support in New Zealand and Spain and branch offices in the Singapore and Jakarta.

Visit http://developer.opencloud.com to join OpenCloud's growing developer community.

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01

Feb

MetroPCS Selects TrueCall for LTE Network Visualization and Optimization

Understanding Subscriber Experience Critical For New Deployment

Berkeley, California – February 1, 2012 – Newfield Wireless® announced today that MetroPCS Communications, Inc. has acquired a nationwide license for the use of TrueCall® network visualization and optimization software for its LTE network. This announcement builds on a long relationship between the two companies related to TrueCall on the MetroPCS CDMA network as well as for model calibration services.

"MetroPCS understands the power of visualizing customer experience and optimizing our network in real time," said Ed Chao, senior vice president corporate engineering and network operations for MetroPCS. "This becomes even more important when rolling out a new technology, new devices and as we evolve our network. We rely on the visibility TrueCall provides us – whether it's a traffic snapshot of an entire market or the experience of a single LTE subscriber."

TrueCall's ability to deliver real-time status of LTE sessions provides operators with a window into their 4G network to measure network/device performance and overall subscriber experience. It delivers an end-to-end network view (RAN and core) in real-time based on individual sessions. With an intuitive user-friendly interface, TrueCall is capable of drilling down to each individual LTE session. The application is vendor agnostic and scalable to an operator's network size and associated budget.

"We're pleased to be supporting the MetroPCS network evolution to LTE," said Marc Bensadoun, chief executive officer, Newfield Wireless. "The ability to visualize – and optimize – subscriber experience is a powerful advantage in the quest to retain existing customers and grow market share during the transition to LTE."

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About Newfield Wireless

Newfield Wireless delivers network visualization and optimization software, as well as specialized engineering services to mobile network operators. As a trusted strategic partner we develop technically advanced and vendor-independent solutions so our customers can discover their end-to-end subscriber experience. Our products and services enable operators to optimize their network and minimize infrastructure expenditure. Newfield Wireless is a privately-held corporation that has been serving customers around the world through its global headquarters in Berkeley, California since 1995. www.newfieldwireless.com

About MetroPCS Communications, Inc.

Dallas-based MetroPCS Communications, Inc. is a provider of no annual contract, unlimited wireless communications service for a flat-rate. MetroPCS is the fifth largest facilities-based wireless carrier in the United States based on number of subscribers served. With Metro USA(SM), MetroPCS customers can use their service in areas throughout the United States covering a population of over 280 million people. As of December 31, 2011, MetroPCS had over 9.3 million subscribers. For more information please visit www.metropcs.com.