Editor’s Foreword By Adlane Fellah, CEO

This week most editors are experiencing an avalanche of press releases and announcements coming from the Mobile World Congress. One can debate whether one’s voice is simply lost as it screams out alongside everyone else’s. As you may have noticed, Maravedis’ newsletter is now published weekly in order to keep up with all the commentary and articles needed to cover developments in this increasingly fast-paced industry, where yesterday’s news is already old.

There has been a persistent rumor that Harris is to acquire Telsima. That rumor seems to soon become a reality according to sources close to the deal. Harris Stratex Networks, Inc., a specialist in backhaul solutions for mobility and broadband networks is in final discussions for acquiring a majority stake in Bangalore based Telsima, a developer of BWA / WiMAX equipment and mobility solutions for emerging markets. The transaction is waiting for Telsima’s shareholder approval. Telsima and Harris have been working together for some time in Africa where Telsima was a provider of WIMAX equipment for Harris projects. Telsima has a software development center and manufacturing facilities in Bangalore and a corporate team out of Gurgaon near Delhi in India. Telsima started off with a range of voice compression solutions / digital cross-connects and other core transmission product gear for service provider markets before embarking on BWA / WiMAX development. The company has had high profile investors such as Vinod Dham and Siilcon Valley investment houses such as New Path Ventures, NEA, Intel Capital and JAFCO Asia. Telsima has been a key supplier to some of the early WiMAX deployments in India from Tata Communications and Reliance Communications. Harris Stratex is a major supplier of microwave radio equipment and quite likely finds strategic interest in Telsima's product line.  This is an interesting development years after Harris developed its own BWA product line, only to abandon it  later. I was a marketing manager at Harris myself in a past life. Harris seems  to believe that WiMAX has good prospects in developing countries.

Enjoy!
Adlane Fellah
Maravedis CEO & Founder

The WiMAX Open Patent Alliance Pursues Critical Mass By: Robert Syputa, Senior Analyst & Partner

The WiMAX Open Patent Alliance (OPA) patent pool has come a long way toward developing a critical mass of patents used in the standard. This sets a high bar for legal assaults as it is well on the way to setting customary practice for all royalties used in equipment and devices. We believe more companies will soon join, leaving outliers in a position to either join or face prospects for hard fought litigation, with chances for lower than anticipated royalty rewards. Although outliers will likely remain, their overall impact may be predictably muted. This is not to say that all roads to IPR development are built equal, or that litigation will not remain a gambit with some chance of relative success. IPR is too unpredictable to call at this early stage… but our early forecasts have so far borne out...

Maravedis In the News

• Maravedis contributes a chapter to the ITU’s latest report, “Confronting the Crisis: Its Impact on the ICT Industry,” CLICK HERE to view
• Maravedis quoted in TelephonyOnline article on Motorola’s WiMAX Efforts, CLICK HERE to view
• Maravedis quoted in Digital Communities: International Beat on the effects of the global economic crisis on WiMAX growth in emerging markets, CLICK HERE to view

WiMAXCounts Quarterly Report, 6th Issue

The WiMAXCounts Quarterly Report provides an executive summary of key information gathered and analyzed by Maravedis' WiMAXCounts team. It contains meaningful and accurate information on applications, service offerings, ARPU, pricing and target markets. It also presents statistics and graphics of recent service provider deployments, industry trends and investments among other items.

VoIP over 4G (Vo4G): Opportunities, Challenges and Deployment Trends (January 2009)

VoIP over 4G (Vo4G): Opportunities, Challenges and Deployment Trends is the first study from Maravedis examining the main trends in this market and offering an in-depth discussion of the ecosystem and value chain. It includes detailed descriptions of the main players, drivers and barriers.

WiMAX/LTE 4G Intellectual Property Rights & Market Impact - 2nd Edition

The second edition of the exclusive IPR database and analysis for WiMAX/LTE 4G! An exhaustive analysis of real-world IPR and patent data complemented by a comprehensive worldwide patent database. The report covers IPR policies, regulations, climate, and forecasts, revealing several important IPR trends that indicate the role major players could have in the emerging WiMAX/4G markets.

Ups: Sequans – This week chipmaker Sequans Communications, the world’s leading WiMAX announced that ZyXEL, a world leading supplier of broadband Internet connectivity products, is using the company’s new generation 65 nm Mobile WiMAX chip to build Mobile WiMAX end user devices. Sequans’ new chip, the SQN1210, integrates baseband and triple band RF in a single 65nm die, leading to unprecedented achievements in size, cost, and performance. The first device ZyXEL is bringing to market is a tiny USB device that will provide mobile laptop users with WiMAX connectivity. Based on state-of-the-art 65nm technology and four years of Sequans proven field experience, the SQN1210 delivers the highest level of integration yet achieved in a 10X10 package, resulting in dramatically reduced cost, power consumption, and size. The SQN1210 does not require external DRAM memory, and delivers maximum throughput of greater than 40 Mbps with extremely low power consumption of less than 350 mW in active mode and less than 0.5 mW in standby. The integrated RF covers all three global WiMAX bands, 2.3, 2.5, and 3.5 GHz and supports both TDD and H-FDD. The SQN1210 also supports 2 Tx and uplink MIMO, a feature unique to Sequans that can nearly double cell coverage. The USB device ZyXEL has developed is a tiny and stylish USB dongle. It supports user-friendly installation and clear LED Indicators to let users surf the Internet easily. It is the first of several Mobile WiMAX devices ZyXEL will bring to market using Sequans’ SQN1210. This new collaboration between Sequans and ZyXEL follows their highly successful collaboration on ZyXEL’s WiMAX Indoor Gateway MAX-206M2, for Sprint’s (now Clearwire) Xohm™ network, announced last fall

Downs: Nokia – Nokia, the world’s largest handset maker, said it will cut at least 320 jobs in at its Jyväskylä production facility in Finland, and temporarily lay off some other employees, in reaction to slowing sales and weak global economy. The company will focus on mobile device R&D at other existing sites in Finland. Nokia also said it would be scaling down production at Salo as well. The company will lay off workers on a rotational basis, with operations continuing during the layoffs. About 500 to 750 of the 2,500 workers at the site will be laid off at a time. The layoffs come amid an uncertain climate for Nokia, which saw its sales drop in the fourth quarter and its net profit drop 69%. The company shipped 113.1 million units in the quarter, down 15% from the 133.5 million shipped in the fourth quarter last year, and down from the 117.8 million it shipped in the third quarter of 2008.

According to WiMAXCounts.com, the number of worldwide residential BWA/WiMAX subscribers in Q3 2008 reached over 1.72 million – an increase of 153,218 subscribers over the previous quarter. Find out more in the latest edition of WiMAXCounts’ Quarterly Report, or by visiting www.wimaxcounts.com!

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