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

The DECT Forum, the international association of the wireless home and enterprise communication industry, is pleased to announce that CETECOM ICT Services GmbH (Germany) and Nemko AB (Norway) have been appointed first CAT-iq 2.0 test laboratories.

The CAT-iq 2.0 certification program is on track and will start in September, enabling the market launch of CAT-iq 2.0 products before the end of 2010. The DECT Forum has appointed CETECOM and Nemko as Qualification Laboratories to assess and test products submitted by applicants in accordance with the test plan and the other procedures required by the CAT-iq 2.0 Qualification Program allowing products to be certified according to the specification. In addition to meeting the requirements for CAT-iq certification, both laboratories are accredited by their national accreditation bodies as being compliant with the standard ISO/IEC 17025.

“With the appointment of CETECOM and Nemko as the first test houses for CAT-iq 2.0 certification we are confident that we have selected the most experienced and reliable partners”, says Daniel Hartnett, Chairman of the CAT-iq Working Group within the DECT Forum. “With these appointments, the certification of CAT-iq 2.0 can start in September 2010. I am expecting market launch of certified CAT-iq 2.0 products before the end of this year.”

“We are very pleased to be selected by the DECT Forum as a certified test house for the CAT-iq 2.0 certification”, says Andreas Ehre, Head of Business Development, CETECOM ICT Services Germany. “Our long expertise in global testing and certification services in communication technologies – including our role as qualification test laboratory for CAT-iq 1.0 certification – guarantees that we will be able to meet the strong demands of the DECT Forum and the entire wireless communication industry.”

“Nemko services include full testing and certification of wireless telecommunications products“, says Frode Sveinsen, Chief Engineer, Nemko Norway. “Our laboratories are all highly recognized in their respective markets. We are pleased that Nemko as a test house will be part of the deployment of the CAT-iq technology from the very beginning.“

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

MIPS Technologies, a provider of processor architectures and cores for digital consumer, home networking, wireless, communications and business applications, announced that support for the MIPS® architecture is included in new SkypeKit™ developer tools available now from Skype. Through the SkypeKit closed beta program, MIPS Technologies has developed a Skype reference implementation for the MIPS® architecture—the leading architecture for the digital home.

Skype is software used by individuals and businesses to make video and voice calls, send instant messages and share files with other Skype users. Developers now have the ability to build Skype functionality into MIPS-Based™ devices such as DTVs, set-top boxes and digital media adaptors. 

According to Art Swift, vice president of marketing, MIPS Technologies, “We are pleased to offer our licensees yet another key piece of the picture for next-generation connected devices. By participating in the SkypeKit beta program, our licensees and their customers can now develop Skype solutions to enable Skype users around the globe to communicate through a range of MIPS-Based products. The MIPS architecture offers compelling performance and power consumption advantages. These advantages, together with the work we are doing with platforms such as Skype, Android™, Adobe® Flash® Player 10.1, Yahoo! TV Widgets and others, are enabling our customers to quickly and easily create the next generation of innovative SoCs.”

Although slow progress best describes the fate of wireless HD chip vendors in 2010, the five-year outlook is for a robust triple-digit growth rate of wireless HD video-enabled products through 2014 according to In-Stat.  The number of shipments is projected to rise from the current levels of less than 1 million to nearly 13 million by 2014.


Some of the findings include:

• Alternative video transmission technologies, WHDI, WirelessHD, and WiGig Alliance, are vying for a dominant position.  Among the differentiating factors are whole-home range, price, and performance issues, single source, and time-to-market issues. 
• WHDI and WirelessHD chip ASPs will both fall over 25% annually through 2014. 
• WirelessHD, is championed by chipmaker SiBeam and backed by NEC, Panasonic, Samsung, Sony, Toshiba, and LG.   
• WHDI (backed by AMIMON) and WirelessHD (backed by SiBeam) device shipments will both grow at triple-digit annual percentage rates through 2014.   
• WiGig Alliance members include: Broadcom, Dell, Intel, LG Electronics, Microsoft, NEC, Nokia, NXP, Panasonic, and Samsung. 
• Strong competitive technologies include various flavors of Wi-Fi, Intel’s Wireless Display (WiDi) initiative, and Sony’s TransferJet.

Recent In-Stat research “Wireless HD Video Technology:  WHDI and WirelessHD Establish Market, While WiGig Establishes Specification”, explores the three key wireless HD video transmission technologies of WHDI, WirelessHD, and WiGig Alliance. The report tracks the annual penetration through 2014 of all three technologies into 14 different applications within the following product segments:

• Consumer Electronics
• Personal Computers 
• Mobile Phones 
• Industrial/Medical applications

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.”

China accounted for 37% of all new broadband Internet subscribers added worldwide in the first quarter of 2010, according to new statistics from iSuppli. And with the country's rapid growth set to continue, the analyst firm is urging vendors to work on a long-term China strategy or risk missing out on a highly lucrative market.

The company did not provide full subscriber figures for Q1, but said that China saw sequential growth of 57% during the quarter, making it the fastest growing global market. Based on figures from April and May, the second quarter will likely see "the blistering growth" continue, iSuppli added, predicting that new additions for that quarter will hit 5.5 million.

iSuppli forecasts that China will be home to 183.9 million broadband subscribers by 2014, up from 103.2 million in 2009.

Ratliff pointed out that growth in China is being driven at least in part by a government stimulus plan that will see $22 billion injected into the rollout of fibre access networks in the country by the end of 2011; the project will cover the establishment of over 80 million fibre broadband ports. Naturally, the analyst firm predicts that Chinese vendors such as Huawei, ZTE, Shanghai Bell Alcatel, and others will be the main beneficiaries of the stimulus programme and of broadband growth in China. But there is still an opportunity for foreign players. iSupplis recommends that Western vendors partner with local Chinese companies or deepen their existing ties with the top domestic vendors.

The DECT Forum is pleased to announce that the first IOP Plugtests™ (Interoperability Test) for CAT-iq 2.0 in cooperation with ETSI (European Telecommunications Standards Institute) was successful. With this important milestone CAT-iq 2.0 certification can begin in September 2010.

DECT Forum and ETSI have organized an official Plugtests™ event for CAT-iq 2.0 in Sophia Antipolis (France) in June 2010 where silicon manufacturers, system vendors, OEMs, and carriers have tested the interoperability of their CAT-iq 2.0 implementations against other devices and systems. This successful and well-timed event brought together the following players and suppliers in the CAT-iq space: Cetecom, Dosch&Amand, DSP Group, Lantiq, RTX, Technicolor, and VTech.

With all participants testing against each other, the implementations benefitted from real life test scenarios. The very positive result of the IOP Plugtests™ was that CAT-iq implementations are stable and interoperable. The DECT Forum and ETSI will schedule a second Plugtests™ event in early September.

According to Daniel Hartnett, Chairman of the CAT-iq Working Group within the DECT Forum is this successful Interoperability Test an important milestone for the DECT Forum and the entire value chain of the DECT and CAT-iq industry. This means that the official CAT-iq 2.0 Certification Program can begin in September 2010. The market launch of first CAT-iq devices will happen before the end of 2010.

During the CAT-iq developers conference, October 19/20 2010 Eindhoven, the Netherlands, developers will meet, exchange ideas in order to expand the CAT-iq deployment into teleccom, home automation, smart metering, ultra low power products and service.

About DECT Forum:
The DECT Forum is the international association of the wireless home and enterprise communication industry. With more than 800 million devices sold and growing by more than 80 million devices per year, DECT, DECT 6.0 and CAT-iq are worldwide-adopted technologies with high relevance for wireless voice and broadband home and enterprise communication. The DECT Forum is located in Berne, Switzerland. Full members of the DECT Forum are currently: Ascom, AVM, Binatone, CCT, Cetecom, Deutsche Telekom, DSP Group, Gigaset Communications, GN Netcom, Lantiq, NEC, Nemko, Orange FT, Panasonic, Philips, Plantronics, Polycom, RTX, Sagem, Samsung, SiTel, SGW Electronics, Swissvoice, Technicolor, Unical, Uniden, VTech.

Landis+Gyr and CURRENT’s European entity CURRENT Technologies International GmbH, have signed an agreement to deliver smart, open and interoperable energy management solutions. The agreement is a key ingredient in addressing the challenge to come in implementing smart grid and smart metering technologies in Spain and Portugal.

Landis+Gyr and CURRENT have joined efforts to deliver standards-based smart grid solutions by integrating CURRENT’s PRIME technology into the Landis+Gyr Gridstream advanced product line.

Due to increased pressure on European distribution systems to handle intermittent renewables, increased load, and new forms of electricity generation along with new two-way communications and data management systems, traditional energy infrastructure is shifting to real time smart systems.

As the world’s leading provider of integrated energy management solutions, Landis+Gyr is also a key member of the PRIME Alliance along with CURRENT. For the deployments with CURRENT, Landis+Gyr combines its state-of-art E450 residential smart electricity meter, which implements PRIME power line communication technology, with its Gridstream AIM software solution – both essential ingredients for establishing powerful smart metering infrastructures, a key step towards realizing the smart grid.

Under the terms of the cooperation agreement, Landis+Gyr will now offer CURRENT Smart Grid® products, which provide seamless integrated solutions, making grids more reliable and efficient. The offer includes the full range of CURRENT hardware and software smart grid products. CURRENT hardware includes the meter data concentrator, intelligent sensors and advanced communications equipment. CURRENT’s OpenGridTM software makes advanced metering possible and optimizes the operation of the distribution grid.

This partnership provides customers in Spain and Portugal with an end-to-end solution that is market proven, designed for simple and speedy implementation.

Intrinsyc Software International today announced a license and services agreement with Tattu Mobile for RapidRIL telephony technology.

Tattu Mobile is developing a series of Google Android tablet devices based on ZiiLABS ZMS-05 processors. Licensing RapidRIL enables Tattu to integrate a cellular radio and handle the unique features needed for their platform and targeted carriers. Tattu Mobile’s device is targeted at the rapidly expanding tablet device market and is expected to be available in global markets beginning Q4 2010.

Intrinsyc’s RapidRIL supports several radio baseband solutions, such as Infineon, Sierra Wireless and Novatel Wireless, covering various UMTS and CDMA technologies. These solutions give OEMs and ODMs a head start in producing connected devices.