Provigent secures $10 Million in Fifth (!) Round

It seems almost impossible these days, but Provigent have managed to secure a fifth round of investment after receiving a fourth round of $20 Million Dollars earlier this year (2008).

Lightspeed Ventures has joined as a new investor to a very long list of existing investors: Sequoia Capital, Pitango Venture Capital, Globespan Capital Partners, Magma Venture Partners, Ascend Technology Ventures, Delta Ventures, Stata Venture Partners, and Dr. Andrew Viterbi.

Lightspeed recently invested Purewave networks. I guess it means they believe in Wireless communications and WiMA, and that Provigent has real customers and prospects.

This post’s rant (I cannot seem to avoid it these days): Why do Provigent post press releases in Unprotected Word Format? HTML works great, PDF is not a bad option. Word?

Japanese Ministry of Communications report

MIC – Japanese Ministry of Internal affairs and Communications recently issued a Statistics report on Subscribers to Telecommunications Services. The report is interesting, but not very surprising:

The total number of contracts for subscriber telephones (and ISDN) is decreasing, as of the end of Sep. 2008 was 49.539 Million.

Landline phones - Japan

Mobile Phones (and PHS) are on the rise, with 109.420 Million Subscribers. The only PHS provider is Willcom:

Mobile Users Japan

The only part that was a bit surprising is the adoption of IP telephony. In the past I have suggested my wife to use a 050 IP phone for our communication with Japan, and she objected claiming that Japanese do not want to call 050 phones as they are “strange” and “different” than the normal numbering plan. Guess what, she was wrong:

The number of IP phone users as of the end of September 2008 was 19.047 million. This is an 18.2%
increase from the same period of last year, and this increasing trend continues. The increase in the
users of IP phones with the 0AB-J number structure (10 digits, starting with a zero) is especially
remarkable, with a 60.6% year-on-year increase

IP Phones usage - Japan

Adaptix sues Sprint, Clearwire

I can only guess that Adaptix has changed their business plan from selling WiMAX equipment to suing other companies over Patent infrigement.Which means, Adaptix has probably filed law suits against other companies as well.

Sprint, Clearwire sued over WiMAX patents

This is yet another example of Patent abuse, as Adapatix was a WiMAX Forum member, and was totally aware of the IP issues WiMAX faces. In all the companies I have worked for, Patents were considered important, but we knew there is a small chance of actually suing other companies.

WiMAX Forum praises the 3.9G Report published by the Telecommunications Council of Japan MIC

WiMAX Forum PR

Mobile WiMAX is currently available only for TDD, while Release 1.5 will introduce FDD. Most cellular technologies today are FDD based, while LTE is defined for both. (Did I mention LTE and Mobile WiMAX are not that different?)

Rule Number One of Wireless Communications: No Spectrum -> No Business
(Well, except non-licensed band, but let’s keep it for another Post).

This is an important step taken by the Japanese regulator to push IMT-2000 and Advanced forward, and allowing Japanese Mobile operators the room to grow!

Airspan announces 700MHz WiMAX Product Suite

Airspan (NASDAQ: AIRN) just announced 700 MHz WiMAX Product Suite.

700MHz was recently “Hyped” by the media during the 700MHz FCC auction, and possible involvements of Google. But, putting the hype aside, there is a substnatial market for 700MHz products, both in the US and India.

Here is a market analysis for 700MHZ WiMAX.com, and here is a report from the WiMAX Forum about India.

Airspan was always strong in the 700MHz field, where Alvarion was not present. Alvarion did not release publicly any information or plans regarding 700MHz or other “non-standard” frequencies.

Technology aside, I found the press release a bit funny, as it is now “Fashionable” to mention President Elect Obama and his “Change” in many occasions, and Airspan chose to follow.

U.S. President-Elect Obama has been a strong advocate of extending broadband coverage to every U.S. community and has even been quoted as supporting tax and loan incentives to reach rural regions. We share in Obama’s vision and look forward to serving this important market


Blog upgraded to WordPress 2.7

I am now looking for a new theme, as the one I am using is ancient, and has more than a few glitches. It will take a while, as I will need to merge analytics and adsense into the new design.

Docomo produces LTE chipset

This Press Release really is really confusing.

Docomo, as in “Japan Mobile Operator DoCoMo” has developed a MIMO LTE chip. I can understand why LG is doing so, but Docomo?

Do they really plan to sell the chips to Mobile phone manufactures?

I can only think of one reason, which is that Docomo wanted to push the LTE market. Developing a chipset was probably the best solution.

This excerpt is the perfect example of “Too much information”:

In the new chip, which is made with 65-nanometer processing, the circuits have been further optimized, particularly by eliminating redundant circuits for computationally complex processes such as MIMO-signal detection and error-correction decoding

Do I really care about the complexity of the process?

UQ communication to offer WiFi Services

Today’s Press Release (Japanese) expose some new UQ plans:
WiFi services for the N700 Shinkansen service. According to the PR, the N700 train will get a 2Mbps coverage, and following that all 17 stations from Tokyo to Shin-Osaka will be covered as well (54Mbps).

Japan Railywas are one of UQ investors, so it is not surprising to hear that UQ will provide coverage to the train. It is surprising that they chose WiFi Coverage for the stations.

And a question that sprung to my mind: Does it mean that PC Cards/USB Dongles will be Dual mode (WiMAX/WiFi)?

Interesting! let’s wait and see.

N700 photo (taken by my wife):

N700 Logo

Ericsson (NASDAQ: ERIC) downgraded

From Hold to Sell.

I don’t really disagree with the analysis, just found one sentence a bit amusing:

However, the company has not reacted to this and is still planning for a flattish 2009 infrastructure market

So, if Ericsson laid-off 10% of their staff their stock wouldn’t have been downgraded?