The DECT Forum, the international association of the wireless home and enterprise communication industry, is pleased to announce the availability of CAT-iq White Papers. The White Papers – part 1 “voice” and part 2 “data” – outline the current status and the future profile descriptions of CAT-iq – the technology of choice for voice and data applications.

CAT-iq stands for Cordless Advanced Technology, Internet and Quality, and is the global technology initiative from the DECT Forum, designed for IP-voice services in the next generation networks. CAT-iq focuses on high quality wideband Audio VoIP as well as low bit-rate data applications. The CAT-iq profiles are split between voice and data services, with CAT-iq 1.0 and CAT-iq 2.0 providing features to support key voice enhancements, and CAT-iq 3.0 and CAT-iq 4.0 providing features to support data.

CAT-iq is firmly positioned as a key broadband access technology. CAT-iq has the unique opportunity to continue cordless telephony’s conquest of huge segments of the world’s population, and introduce data services into homes complementing those offered by WLAN and Bluetooth. When reach, standby and talk time, cost and of course voice quality are paramount, CAT-iq is the technology of choice. The Certification process for CAT-iq 2.0 will start in September 2010, enabling market deployment of a new generation of products of various manufacturers before the end of this year.

“The White Papers – part 1 “Voice” and part 2 “data” – provide a comprehensive and detailed portray of the CAT-iq technology and its profiles. With first CAT-iq 2.0 products being available still in 2010, the White Papers will feed the growing interest in CAT-iq as a leading global wireless technology”, says Daniel Hartnett, Chairman of the CAT-iq Working Group within the DECT Forum.

The White Papers are publicly available on the DECT Forum’s CAT-iq website

Google is reportedly prepping an audio ad platform that will be integrated into its upcoming streaming music service. That’s according to MediaPost, which reports that the 10, 15 and 30 second audio ads will support the music service.

That service, reportedly coming as soon as November, will sell music online and notably stream purchased music — and music stored on home computers — to Android mobile devices. That makes it a competitor not only to iTunes but also to streaming services like Pandora. Google’s music service will be linked with its search platform and may even include YouTube.

The inclusion of audio ads in such a service isn’t surprising, as MediaPost points out. Back in February 2009, Google dropped its broadcast radio ad program to focus on streaming audio ads.

The quest for connectivity continues to drive Consumer Electronics (CE) manufacturers to enable their products with Wi-Fi technology. The next 5 years will see an increase in the number of Wi-Fi-enabled devices, from over 500 million in 2009 to nearly 2 billion in 2014, according to In-Stat. Devices leading the pace of adoption include Blu-ray players/recorders, e-readers, and digital televisions.
 
Some of the research findings include:

• Mobile devices with Wi-Fi will still dominate shipments.  In 2013, shipments of mobile phones with embedded Wi-Fi are projected to exceed ¾ of a billion units.
• E-readers Wi-Fi attach rates will increase from 3% in 2009 to 88% by 2014. 
• 29 million digital picture frames will be shipped in 2014; 53% will be Wi-Fi-enabled.

Specifically, this research provides a five-year forecast for Wi-Fi CE devices, and CE device shipments and Wi-Fi attach rates, segmented for: 
Gaming Consoles 
DTVs
Set-Top Boxes
Personal Video Recorders
DVD and Blu-ray Players 
Media Adapters 
Printers 
Multifunction Peripherals 
Handheld Games 
PMPs
Digital Cameras 
Portable Camcorders and IP Network Cameras
PDAs
Mobile PCs 
Portable CE Devices 
Cellular Handsets 
Routers, Residential Gateways, and Standalone Access Points

Despite all the hype around mobile apps, only a minority of consumers download them on a monthly basis. Research released this week based on a survey of more than 25,000 European adults shows that only 4 per cent of all mobile users and 15 per cent of smartphone users download apps at least once per month.

According to Forrester, the researcher which carried out the survey, the fact that 21 per cent of all European mobile users consider apps to be an important feature when choosing a new mobile handset highlights a large gap between the limited actual usage of apps and consumer awareness.

This limited usage is primarily due to the combination of two factors: identified as the small number of exhaustive offerings available, and the fact that only recently shipped smartphones come with native application stores embedded.

The exception to this rule, unsurprisingly, is Apple, with 64 per cent of European iPhone users downloading apps on a monthly basis. But while the numbers look impressive — more than five billion downloads and $1bn paid to developers in the two years since the launch of the Apple App Store – Forrester analyst Thomas Husson expects that the limited number of paid apps means it is likely that a significant number of independent developers have not recouped their investments.

Husson notes that the recent launch of Apple’s iAd platform is a way for Apple to maintain attractiveness, allowing third parties that provide free apps to develop sustainable business models. But he also notes that in the longer run – with around 80 would-be application stores available worldwide as of June 2010 – few players will be able to address the key factors that will make them a success.

In this respect, Husson argued that the market opportunity for app stores is somewhat overhyped, and said players should be looking at sources of inspiration other than Apple to provide a unique user experience. “Expect successful players to look at Amazon.com and Facebook, which provide open platforms with unique social, personalization, and recommendation features, rather than to copy and paste Apple’s model,” Husson said. Indeed, we can expect the concept of app stores to expand to other connected devices and platforms.

Successful market players will be those capable of creating a viable business model for third parties and developers; providing third parties with marketing and merchandizing tools; and those offering a wide choice of payment and pricing options along the lines of in-application billing, operator billing, and subscription models.

According to a new research report from the analyst firm Berg Insight, the installed base of smart electricity meters in Europe will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 17.9 percent between 2009 and 2015 to reach 111.4 million at the end of the period. Providing consumers with detailed information about their electricity consumption the new generation of meters give customers control over energy costs and create financial incentives for energy savings. Moreover smart meters constitute the core building blocks in future smart grids that will incorporate a wide range of technologies related to renewable generation, distribution network optimisation and energy conservation.

The report identifies France, Spain and the UK as the next countries in Europe where smart metering will become introduced, following major rollouts in Italy and the Nordic region. “In the past year, EDF, Endesa and Iberdrola – three of the absolutely largest electricity network operators in Europe – have launched large-scale pilots in France and Spain, respectively. Next year, these deployments will evolve into nationwide rollouts in these countries”, said Tobias Ryberg, Senior Analyst, Berg Insight. “On top of that, the UK’s largest electricity and gas retailer British Gas has launched the first major smart metering project for residential customers in the country. These developments in combination with rollouts in several other European countries will drive strong market growth over the next five years.”

Mark Mulligan, Vice President, Research Director at Forrester Research had posted in interesting posting about a research done by Forrester about the digital music services industry.
Here starts his blog.

I’ve been covering the digital music space for over a decade now and in that time I’ve seen a lot of services and devices come and go. I’ve also seen a lot of lessons learned and there is clearly more choice of high-quality music services and products now than at any stage before. And yet there is one major Achilles' heel which continues to cripple the market: poor service-to-device journeys. We have great services and we have great devices. But we have very few great service and device combinations. Pitifully few companies put anything like enough focus on the service-to-device journey (or if they do, they execute poorly). Just as much effort needs to be invested in ensuring services are fully integrated and optimized for supported devices as in building the services and devices themselves. Otherwise: great device + great service = poor experience.

So, in the Consumer Product Strategy team at Forrester, we decided to do something about this problem and created a new methodology that will help product strategists build winning service/device combinations.  We call it the Convenience Quotient of Music Experience. For those not familiar with Forrester’s Convenience Quotient, it is based on a very simple equation:

Convenience = benefits – barriers.

We’ve launched the methodology in a new report entitled ‘Which Device Offers The Best Music Experience?’ (And I’ll answer that question in just a moment).

In total, we applied 35 scores across a series of barriers and benefits, all of which were designed to assess the quality of the music experience across the service and device. Our benefits ranged from a good out-of-the-box experience, through music access, to device functionality. Barriers captured issues such as intrusive rights protection, interruptions to service availability, and technology challenges.

Read the complete blog.

Albis Technologies  announced that it has signed a deal to supply its new SceneGate set-top box to 022 Télégenève SA - naxoo .

The new hybrid (IP/DVB-C) and multimedia SceneGate set-top box will allow naxoo to bring full modularity to market with features such as an external hard drive for PVR, multi-rooming capabilities with UPnP network connection and Wi-Fi/Bluetooth dongle for wireless functionalities. In addition, with 3D capabilities and high quality HD the SceneGate set-top box is one of the most advanced available today.

Albis Technologies has integrated technology from Zappware, its software partner, into the SceneGate set-top box providing enhanced functionality through the iView Flux solution.

BT on Monday announced a partnership through which it plans to bid for the communications network element of the U.K. government's proposed smart metering project, simultaneously hitting out at its main rivals to secure the deal: the country's mobile operators.

The U.K. incumbent telecoms operator has teamed up with infrastructure provider Arqiva and consultancy Detica to build a long-range radio communications network for a smart metering initiative that the government is required to undertake to stay within EU guidelines. The government will publish a prospectus containing details of the project and outlining possible commercial opportunities later this month.

The partners will be supported by U.S.-based utility infrastructure specialist Sensus, which will provide its FlexNet long-range radio technology.

The telco noted that "unlike mobile, [long-range radio] can provide truly nationwide coverage and dependable reception indoors". It also said it has spent 18 months analysing the various communications network options before reaching that conclusion.

But U.K. mobile operators are likely to prove BT's top competitors when the time comes to bid for the communications network portion of the project.

Indeed, early smart metering initiatives in the U.K. have been led by the mobile players.

In March Vodafone signed a "multi-million-pound" contract with British Gas to provide close to 1 million GRPS connections for smart meters, while Orange is working with National Grid to trial smart meters in a number of U.K. households (see the May issue of Total Telecom Plus for more on smart metering and telecoms operators' diversification strategies).

The government's proposed smart metering project will cover 28 million homes and small businesses in the U.K. by or before 2020. The multi-billion-pound project will include a communications network deal estimated at hundreds of millions of pounds.

The EU has set 2020 as the deadline date for the deployment of smart energy meters to the majority of homes and small businesses.

The sample comprised RAJAR respondents drawn from the main RAJAR survey who had claimed to listen to the radio via the internet, or downloaded podcasts, or listened to the radio via their mobile phone. The survey findings are based on 1,083 respondents.

The survey found that:

• 31% of adults claim to have ever listened to the radio via the internet, including 29% who have listened live (up from 27% in November 2009) and 25% who have used time-shifted listening (using Listen Again services, up from 23%).

• 71% of those Listen Again listeners said the service has no impact on the amount of live radio to which they listen; while half said they are now listening to radio programmes to which they did not listen previously. The average user of Listen Again services listened to just under 2 programmes in this way in the previous week.

• Awareness of Personalised Online Radio (POR) increased from 14% of Adults 15+ to 17% while the number of users of such services has increased from 8% to 11%. 6% claim to use POR at least once a week.

• 15% have heard of WiFi radio (a standalone radio set that connects wirelessly to the internet and is able to play any internet radio service) but only 2% claimed to own one.

• 13%* of adults 15+ have ever listened to the radio via mobile phone. Of those, 54% select the station using specific FM preset and 14% run an app for a specific 20% of smartphone owners on the Midas survey (or 1.4 million) have downloaded a radio app and, of those, over half (53%) use their radio apps at least once a week.

About RAJAR
RAJAR stands for Radio Joint Audience Research and is the official body in charge of measuring radio audiences in the UK. It is jointly owned by the BBC and the RadioCentre on behalf of the commercial sector.

Telefonica has announced the rollout of a mobile VoIP international call service in Europe based on Jajah, the VoIP start-up it acquired six months ago. The service will begin at Telefonica’s German subsidiary (O2 Germany) with a product called ‘O2 Global Friends,’ which will give customers in Germany the ability to make international calls by dialling a local number. O2 customers can choose five friends who are abroad and O2 Global Friends will assign a local number for each of them, which they can call anytime. Further Jajah-powered services will be launched across the Telefonica Europe businesses in the coming months, and will be supported by a major mainstream marketing and advertising campaign, claimed to be the first of its kind for an IP calling solution anywhere in the world. The operator has 54 million mobile customers in Europe in total.

"The power of an innovative Silicon Valley start-up joining forces with a major telecommunications company highlights the benefits of combining innovation with scale,” said Jajah CEO Trevor Healy. “Telefónica's global reach, huge customer base and marketing muscle will bring once-niche services to millions of mainstream customers, taking Jajah-powered services to a whole new level.” Meanwhile, Gartner analyst Charlotte Patrick noted that "the introduction of an IP-based calling service by a mainstream carrier shows the maturity of this market and we can expect other telcos to follow with similar services." Telefonica’s tie up with Jajah is further evidence that major operators that had previously seen mobile VoIP as a threat to their voice revenues are beginning to embrace the technology. A similar deal was struck in February between US operator Verizon Wireless and Skype.