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“The right person for the job” takes on new role with full responsibility for Comfone sales worldwide
The Comfone Board of Directors has announced the appointment of the company’s former Senior Vice President EMEA Business Operations, Peter Rippstein, to the post of Comfone's Executive Vice President Global Sales and member of the Comfone Executive Management team.
In his new role, he succeeds Markus Sager, who was appointed CEO at the beginning of 2011. Peter Rippstein takes on this important position following more than 10 distinguished years with Comfone, during which time he has made significant contributions to the company’s successful growth, holding positions such as COO and, most recently, SVP EMEA.
In the latter role, held since the beginning of 2008, Rippstein successfully headed up Comfone's EMEA region and was responsible for all business development and sales-related activities, including the management of the EMEA sales team as well as key customer account management.
His wealth of industry and international business experience results from more than 20 years in the ICT arena, worldwide, with a number of US high-tech companies, including Hewlett-Packard. Prior to joining Comfone, he held management positions at Swisscom Mobile in Bern, as well as at Swisscom joint ventures in India and Malaysia as COO.
Markus Sager, Comfone CEO, said, “I am pleased to have Peter as our new EVP Global Sales. He is seen by the Board of Directors as the right person to steer Comfone sales forward through these changing times and contribute to Comfone’s ever successful future as the mobile industry's leading and most experienced roaming services provider. Peter Rippstein graduated in commercial business and continued studies in IT and telecoms. He is fluent in French, German and English. • 27-7-11
Comfone, provider of roaming services to over 300 operators in over 130 countries worldwide, is known throughout the telecoms industry as an international mobile roaming specialist. The company's industry know-how owes itself to over 10 years of experience in the roaming sector during which it has acquired unsurpassed customer-orientated, in-house expertise. Through its unique portfolio and additional value added services, Comfone fully optimises the setting up of each operator's roaming processes, facilitating the opportunity of reducing overall costs. The portfolio ranges from the complete outsourcing of roaming services, to the provision of individual elements, such as signalling, data, convergence, clearing and WLAN services. Comfone's pioneering hub solutions provide mobile operators with worldwide coverage, interconnection and clearing through only one agreement with Comfone and one connection to Comfone's central platform. From Comfone's headquarters in Switzerland and regional offices covering Northern and Eastern Europe, Latin America, North America, Central Asia and Asia Pacific, Comfone is well placed to support and meet the requirements of its substantial worldwide customer base.
In answering the crucial requirements of modern communication service providers, Comarch has rebuilt the architecture of its flagship product suite - Comarch BSS - to support operators in optimizing IT architectures and cost savings, unlimited innovation, acceleration of business and shortening of time-to-market.
The BSS Suite is designed to support the core B2C business of mobile, fixed and cable operators. However, it also enables entering new markets such as B2B and M2M and allows for increasing the revenue in these areas, which is very important.
Comarch BSS Suite consists of a set of products which support various domains: marketing/sales, product management, billing, supplier/partner management, service control and application integration infrastructure. An important fact is that it has been prepared with integration of OSS in mind. Together with Comarch OSS or an existing OSS system, it can provide for unique BSS/OSS convergence.
Krzysztof Kwiatkowski, BSS Product Manager, at Comarch's Telecommunications Business Unit, said: "From the IT perspective the optimal architecture is very important. And that's why our entire BSS architecture is modular and perfectly integrated. BSS is developed as a consistent product but all its components are open for integration with other systems. For example, the crucial component - Central Product Manager - is an integral part of the architecture.
It enables managing offers, specifications, and product lifecycle in one place and is perfectly integrated with all other BSS modules as well as with the OSS service catalog. However it provides many open interfaces which can be used for integration with legacy systems. It is the same with other components such as Convergent Billing or CRM. This approach allows us to deploy only products which are needed by the customer and integrate them with existing infrastructure, while still keeping the architecture very consistent."
Products within the Comarch BSS Suite have been designed and developed in-house, meaning that CSPs can count on shorter delivery times, as well as better quality and more secure deployment, as compared to suites from large vendors that arose as a result of mergers and acquisitions. All BSS products are based on a unified data model for reference data and product catalog.
This provides a short time to market, while facilitating system management and configuration. Mass and real-time, rule-based data processing is the core of Comarch's competences. This includes service-agnostic and multi-industry rating, charging and billing.
Business process orientation based on TMForum eTOM means that there are no limits to workflows and business processes, as they are delivered out-of-the-box or configured during the implementation process. It is always possible to reconfigure business processes and workflows to suit particular needs of the customer.
Comarch BSS Suite is already implemented at KPN - Netherlands, Auchan SA - France, Bite Latvia and Lithuania, OnePhone - Germany, DTMS - Germany, Belize Telemedia Limited - Belize, Cable Onda - Panama and many others. In 2010 the following operators also decided to use Comarch BSS Suite: GTS Poland, Fring, OXYCOM and five others including Tier-1. • 15-2-11
Commercial femtocell deployments continue to accelerate worldwide using a variety of different business models
According to new research from Informa Telecoms & Media, femtocell technology is continuing to mature with several tier-one operators deploying the technology using a variety of business models.
There are currently 16 service commitments, including 13 confirmed commercial launches and several ongoing trials, while completed trials are now progressing into deployment plans for several mobile operators. This contrasts with eight femtocell service commitments and six commercial launches in November 2009.
In the past quarter alone, Vodafone Spain, AT&T, Softbank and KDDI have commercially launched femtocell services. Vodafone’s decision to rollout femtocells in a second European market illustrates the success of their UK ‘Sure Signal’ service which has been heavily promoted. AT&T became the first US operator to announce a nationwide 3G femtocell rollout and Softbank became the first operator to offer both free femtocells and free DSL backhaul.
Major progress has also been made in the field of femtocell standards with 3GPP2 and WiMAX Forum both announcing specifications. Standardised UMTS femtocell equipment recently underwent interoperability testing in the world’s first femtocell plugfest.
The femtocell market is experiencing maturity with many of the largest operators in Asia, North America and Europe now offering services. Global operator demand for femtocells is undeniable and recent femtocell standards milestones can only enhance this situation further. As mobile data traffic continues to rocket, femtocells look set to become a vital component of next generation mobile broadband deployments and this is reflected in the increasing interest in enterprise, metropolitan and LTE models,” said Dimitris Mavrakis, Senior Analyst at Informa Telecoms & Media.
Informa Telecoms & Media expects the femtocell market to experience significant growth over the next few years, reaching just under 49 million femtocell access points (FAP) in the market by 2014 and 114 million mobile users accessing mobile networks through femtocells during that year. Healthy growth is anticipated throughout the forecast period with femtocell unit sales reaching 25 million in 2014 alone.
The expansion of the femtocell industry is reflected in the growing membership of the Femto Forum, the femtocell industry association, which now includes 67 vendors and 56 mobile operators representing 1.4 billion mobile subscribers worldwide, across multiple wireless technologies (WiMAX, UMTS and CDMA) and accounts for 27% of total mobile subscribers worldwide. • FemtoForum (22-6-10)
New white paper study details how femtocell offload allows operators to cost-effectively manage the rise in mobile data usage while also providing the highest possible quality of service
The Femto Forum, the independent industry association that supports femtocell deployment worldwide, today outlined the case for offload using femtocells in a publicly available white paper. The paper outlines how femtocells significantly increase mobile network capacity and efficiency while also lowering operators’ costs and providing an improved user experience for both indoor and outdoor users.
Data offload has become a key industry issue because the vast majority of rapidly growing data traffic originates indoors where mobile networks are least effective and where it could be offloaded to fixed broadband. Due to the increased penetration of data hungry devices such as smartphones and dongles, mobile data is growing at an annual rate of 108%, according to Cisco.
Informa Telecoms & Media estimates that 81% of this data originates from homes and offices where it could frequently be offloaded on to local broadband connections.
The incentive to offload indoor users is especially great because of the considerable cellular resources that are expended on penetrating buildings. A related Femto Forum study found that one indoor user uses the same capacity as ten outdoor users thereby significantly impacting the number of users that can be supported in a cell.
Femtocells allow the vast, and ever increasing, amount of data being consumed indoors to be offloaded from the macro network. Not only does this significantly improve the femtocell user’s mobile broadband experience, it also improves the experience of outdoor users by freeing capacity in the macro cellular network.
Uniquely, femtocell offload allows users to use all their existing services, whether voice, data or SMS, and all cellular devices including feature phones, smart phones and mobile broadband enabled laptops. Crucially the service is also seamless, requires no set-up and is managed by the operator to guarantee quality of service.
From an operator perspective, femtocells offer a vastly more efficient means of adding capacity to mobile networks and focusing it exactly where it is required. Using the Femtocell Business Case Model developed by the Femto Forum and Signals Research Group, the white paper study reveals that a femtocell can lower the cost per GB of data delivered by 4 times with current technology and significantly more using a forward-looking scenario.
Beyond the economics of data traffic offload of the radio access network (RAN) and the backhaul network, the use of femtocells for offload leads to several other important benefits. First, the cost of data delivery can be further reduced by offloading the growing level of smart phone signalling traffic managed by the radio network controller (RNC).
Second, since the femtocell is an extension of the 3G/4G network, revenue-generating traffic remains on operator network. And third, femtocells allow operators to respond to data usage spikes much more quickly and in a more targeted way than outdoor base stations which can take up to a few years to deploy.
The mobile data boom – and the increased demand on capacity it has led to – is the biggest challenge currently facing mobile networks,” said Simon Saunders, Chairman of the Femto Forum. “Femtocells represent the natural solution for offloading this data.
They allow mobile operators to significantly improve the mobile broadband experience as well as their other services without incurring the costs that macro upgrades would require. The fact that outdoor users also benefit is the icing on the cake.”
The offload briefing paper, which can be viewed on the Femto Forum website here, is part of a series of briefing papers from the Femto Forum. Another new addition to the briefing paper series looks at the issues of synchronisation and location, which are fundamental to the design of Femtocells. • 22-6-10
The scope of this partnership will include Collis and AT4 wireless products for the NFC, Contactless, Payment, transit and ID market segments. This test solutions portfolio will include Collis’ Mobile Payment and NFC related test solutions, such as the Collis SWP-HCI Test Suites, Collis GlobalPlatform UICC Configuration Test Suite and Aspects Spy (end-to-end). The portfolio also includes AT4 wireless’ NFC and RFID conformance and R&D test tools, including the recently approved RIDER test solution for the NFC Forum Certification. Altogether a complete portfolio to ensure the compliance of a handset or SIM according to NFC Forum, GlobalPlatform, ETSI/3GPP, Visa and MasterCard standards.
“We are excited about this partnership” commented Andres Moreno, AT4 wireless Sales and Marketing Manager. "The NFC technology is gaining a lot of momentum and this cooperation between Collis and AT4 wireless will offer an excellent test solutions portfolio to Mobile Network Operators, mobile device vendors and Certification Test Laboratories”. “We recognize Collis´ leadership in Contactless and Payments solutions, where they are an international reference; this alliance is quite powerful and will be very much appreciated by the Industry, as we offer a full solution for their NFC and mobile payment needs.
Berend van Geffen, Collis Chief Commercial Officer. “Collis is very pleased to join forces with AT4 wireless and offer the full suite of NFC & Mobile Payments solutions across multiple markets. AT4 wireless are the leading experts when it comes to Wireless communications and network solutions. Collis’ market leading solutions for NFC/TSM, Mobile Payments and SIM technology is driven by innovation and real domain expertise. Collis is acknowledged by the Payment, Mobile, ID and Transit markets as a leading solution provider in secure applications & transaction technology. The cooperation between Collis and AT4 wireless sees a robust and complete portfolio now available for all players across these domains.” • 16-2-11
Building on the success of the first plugfest the event will focus on femtocell management and is set to take place in Q4 2010
The Femto Forum, the independent industry association that supports femtocell deployment worldwide, today announced its second plugfest interoperability testing event which will focus on the Broadband Forum’s femtocell management standard.
The event, which is to be held before the end of 2010, will be overseen by testing and compliance consultancy TRaC Telecoms & Radio and is part of an ongoing programme aimed at ensuring the femtocell industry is built on fully open and effective standards.
The testing programme will verify how effectively the standard facilitates interoperability between products from different vendors. This ultimately provides operators and consumers with a choice of equipment from multiple vendors while also widening the potential market for vendors themselves.
The event will build on the success of the Femto Forum’s first plugfest event which focused on the 3GPP’s Iuh interface and received widespread vendor support with more than 20 companies participating.
The Broadband Forum’s femtocell management standard (TR-196) was published in April 2009 and is an extension of the TR-069 standard that is widely used in fixed broadband networks and in set-top boxes. The femtocell standard allows mobile operators to simplify deployment and enable automated remote provisioning, diagnostics-checking and software updates.
It is important to remember that industry standards have paved the way for the ever increasing number of femtocell deployments around the world. They provide operators and users with a real choice of devices while also driving economies of scale to bring down the cost of the technology,” said Simon Saunders, Chairman of the Femto Forum. “Following on from the success of our first plugfest, we are excited to be again driving development in a key area.” • FemtoForum (23-6-10)
New standard will allow vendors to start creating compatible equipment for certification in early 2011
WiMAX Forum Global Congress, Amsterdam – The WiMAX Forum and the Femto Forum today announced the publication of the first WiMAX™ femtocell standard allowing vendors to start developing standardized femtocells and associated network equipment based on the IEEE 802.16e radio interface and profiles. The WiMAX Forum aims to start certifying compatible products in early 2011 to guarantee efficient and effective interoperability between different vendors’ access points and core network equipment.
WiMAX femtocells cost-effectively enhance coverage and capacity inside buildings and in small outdoor areas as well as supporting advanced new services. The WiMAX Forum has been working with the Femto Forum since June 2009 to ensure that the entire femtocell and WiMAX ecosystems cooperate to enable the most effective possible standard and release the full potential of both technologies.
The specifications incorporate a security framework that allows WiMAX networks to support a large number of access points via standard commercial IPSec based security gateways. This phase of specifications also contains simple Self Organizing Network (SON) capabilities to allow automatic configuration of large numbers of femtocells. Future revisions will further enhance the SON capabilities to standardize automatic interference management between femtocells and macro base stations.
The standard also incorporates support for three usage models to support different deployment scenarios such as residential, enterprise and outdoor environments. The ‘Open Model’ allows the femtocell to operate like a normal WiMAX base station by allowing anyone to use the service; ‘Closed Subscriber Group (CSG) Closed’ allows a limited number of pre-allocated subscribers to use the femtocell. The ‘Closed Subscriber Group (CSG) Open’ extends the previous model to allow the subscriber to add users themselves.
Standards are central to the success of new mobile technologies so this represents a major milestone for WiMAX femtocells. Femtocells add a powerful tool to the WiMAX arsenal by allowing operators to cost-effectively improve coverage indoors and in rural areas while also adding capacity in urban locations,” said Ron Resnick, president and chairman of the WiMAX Forum. “This standard represents the culmination of a major WiMAX Forum effort and we look forward to moving on to the next phase in early 2011 when certification of compatible equipment can begin.”
Femtocells deliver the best possible WiMAX experience - they provide exceptional indoor coverage and the optimum data experience. This standard is the key to enabling cost effective large scale deployments of WiMAX femtocells,” said Simon Saunders, Chairman of the Femto Forum. “We look forward to continuing our work with the WiMAX Forum in the future to ensure that both the technologies can evolve together.”
The standard will impact all elements of the WiMAX femtocell network including: the MS (Mobile Station), WFAP (WiMAX Femtocell Access Point), Security Gateway, Femto Gateway, SON Server, AAA Server, WFAP Management Server and other Core Service Network (CSN) functions. • 17-6-10
The WiMAX Forum is an industry-led, not-for-profit organization formed to certify and promote the compatibility and interoperability of broadband wireless products based upon the harmonized IEEE 802.16e/ETSI HiperMAN standard. A WiMAX Forum goal is to accelerate the introduction of these systems into the marketplace.
WiMAX Forum Certified products are interoperable and support broadband fixed, nomadic, portable and mobile services. Along these lines, the WiMAX Forum works closely with service providers and regulators to ensure that WiMAX Forum Certified systems meet customer and government requirements. Through the WiMAX Forum Congress Events Series of global trade shows and events, the WiMAX Forum is committed to furthering education, training and collaboration to expand the reach of the WiMAX ecosystem.
Femtocells are low-power wireless access points that operate in licensed spectrum to connect standard mobile devices to a mobile operator’s network using residential DSL or cable broadband connections. The Femto Forum (www.femtoforum.org) has been set up to promote the wide-scale adoption of femtocells.
It has over 120 members including over 55 operators representing 1,4 billion mobile subscribers – 27% of the global total. The Forum supports and drives the adoption of industry wide standards and common architectures to enable the widespread adoption & deployment of femtocells by operators around the world. It also directs and implements a multi-faceted marketing campaign to raise the profile, drives technology development & deployment and promotes the potential of femto solutions among industry stakeholders, journalists, analysts, regulators, special interest groups, standards bodies and consumers.
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