Telematics Weekly

industry insight, news and interviews paid sponsor: Sancomm, Inc. Free Subscription March 10, 2010

The GSMA announced that mobile oper­a­tors around the world will invest up to $72 bil­lion in Mobile Broad­band* tech­nolo­gies in 2010. The new oper­a­tor CAPEX invest­ment data, com­piled by global invest­ment firm Deutsche Bank, reflects the con­tin­ued con­sumer and enter­prise demand for Mobile Broad­band ser­vices and the need for under­ly­ing infra­struc­ture, and comes as global HSPA con­nec­tions reach the 200 mil­lion mile­stone. Asia Pacific will see the great­est invest­ment in Mobile Broad­band with pre­dicted cap­i­tal expen­di­ture of up to $34 bil­lion. North Amer­ica fol­lows with up to $19 bil­lion, with Europe expected to invest up to $14 bil­lion. Mobile Broad­band is set to account for 52 per cent of all oper­a­tor invest­ment in mobile infra­struc­ture glob­ally. Of all the regions, North Amer­ica will spend the great­est per­cent­age — 80 per cent — of its total mobile CAPEX invest­ment on Mobile Broadband. 

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Glob­al­star, Inc announce that it has signed a joint ven­ture agree­ment with Arion Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Co., Ltd., a lead­ing provider of mobile satel­lite voice and data prod­ucts and ser­vices to mar­itime cus­tomers in Korea. The new joint ven­ture com­pany known as Glob­al­star Asia Pacific will oper­ate the Glob­al­star gate­way ground sta­tion in Korea and pro­vide Sim­plex and duplex mobile satel­lite voice and data ser­vices includ­ing SPOT Satel­lite GPS Mes­sen­ger™ prod­ucts and ser­vices to cus­tomers in Korea and the sur­round­ing mar­itime region. 

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Motorola casts doubt on Iridium’s future

One-​​time par­ent com­pany Motorola, which spun out Irid­ium in 1998, is suing the com­pany for “at least $24.68m”, related to old loan agree­ments between the two com­pa­nies. More wor­ry­ingly, Motorola could ter­mi­nate cru­cial intel­lec­tual prop­erty licences for Irid­ium, which would make it impos­si­ble for the com­pany to oper­ate its satel­lite sys­tem. With­out usable IP, there will not be much point in build­ing or launch­ing the satel­lites, even if the money can be raised. Irid­ium says it is still in talks with Motorola to resolve the issue, but the case could well end up in court.

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AT&T says it has picked Alcatel-​​Lucent and Eric­s­son to sup­ply the equip­ment for its next wire­less net­work, which will pro­vide faster data speeds start­ing next year. The ven­dors will sup­ply cell-​​tower equip­ment for a tech­nol­ogy called LTE, or Long Term Evo­lu­tion. It will pro­vide speeds that are at least ten times faster than today’s wire­less broadband.

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A con­stel­la­tion of satel­lites that gaze down on Earth will be the cen­tre­piece of Britain’s space mis­sion if plans being put before min­is­ters today are adopted. The pro­pos­als from the government-​​appointed “Space Inno­va­tion and Growth Team” lay out a 20-​​year strat­egy that aims to expand Britain’s space indus­try six­fold into a £40bn a year busi­ness and cre­ate 100,000 new jobs by 2030. It urges the gov­ern­ment to dou­ble its spend­ing on space projects to £550m a year by 2020, a move that would lift Britain into the top 10 space-​​funding nations in the world. Today, the UK ranks 21st glob­ally in terms of gov­ern­ment sup­port for space missions.

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Fiat is intro­duc­ing a fleet ver­sion of eco:Drive, its data-​​collection and trans­mis­sion sys­tem designed to gather vehi­cle effi­ciency data and ana­lyze car per­for­mance and dri­ver style. Eco:Drive receives para­me­ters related to fuel con­sump­tion from the engine con­trol unit through Microsoft’s Blue&Me. The data recorded can be trans­ferred onto PCs via a USB key, and processed by the appro­pri­ate soft­ware, in order to ana­lyze motorists’ behav­ior and to help them to opti­mise fuel con­sump­tion and emissions. 

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Google invades Social Networking market with ‘Buzz’

Google Inc. launched a new ser­vice to bring social updates such as pho­tos and Web links into Gmail and some Google mobile prod­ucts, in a chal­lenge to Face­book Inc. and other social media sites where peo­ple go to check up on their friends. Dubbed Google Buzz, the ser­vice allows users to post and browse con­tent from peo­ple they reg­u­larly com­mu­ni­cate with over Gmail in a new stream-​​like inter­face. Begin­ning soon, they will also be able to post and view updates from Google’s mobile Web site or Buzz mobile soft­ware application.

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Micron Tech­nol­ogy Inc., the biggest U.S. pro­ducer of com­puter mem­ory, agreed to buy Numonyx Hold­ings BV for about $1.27 bil­lion, bol­ster­ing its flash-​​chip busi­ness. Micron will issue 140 mil­lion shares to Numonyx’s investors — Intel Corp., STMi­cro­elec­tron­ics NV and Fran­cisco Part­ners — accord­ing to a state­ment today. Boise, Idaho-​​based Micron also will pay as many as 10 mil­lion addi­tional shares to Numonyx share­hold­ers depend­ing on its stock price. The deal gives Micron access to Numonyx’s Nor-​​type flash chips, which go into mobile phones.

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U.S. physi­cians are using telemed­i­cine to improve pub­lic health in Haiti after last month’s earth­quake, the New York Times reports. Soon, the Uni­ver­sity of Miami’s 240-​​bed tent hos­pi­tal near the air­port in Port-​​au-​​Prince, Haiti, will use telemed­i­cine tech­nol­ogy to let doc­tors con­sult via satel­lite with spe­cial­ists at the Uni­ver­sity of Miami and other med­ical cen­ters, accord­ing to Scott Sim­mons, direc­tor of tele­health at the Uni­ver­sity of Miami Miller School of Medicine.

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AEMP’s Telem­at­ics Data Stan­dard is essen­tially com­plete, pend­ing rat­i­fi­ca­tion by the par­tic­i­pat­ing man­u­fac­tur­ers and telem­at­ics providers. Vol­un­teer devel­op­ers from McFadyen & Asso­ciates, Cater­pil­lar, John Deere Con­struc­tion & Forestry, Volvo Con­struc­tion Equip­ment, Komatsu Amer­i­cas, and the Caterpillar/​Trimble joint ven­ture, Vir­tual Site Solu­tions, antic­i­pate an Oct. 1, 2010, launch date for sup­port of the data trans­fer standard.

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