Chairman and CEO of Softbank, Masayoshi Son, yesterday declared 2008 as the year that the concept of the mobile Internet truly arrives.

“Finally, the handset is now powerful enough to support the mobile Internet,” he said in Wednesday morning’s keynote Congress session. “The internal processor and the screen capabilities have advanced to a level that is acceptable.

More importantly, the data speeds provided by HSDPA have enabled a technology convergence so that the handset can become the Internet machine.

Nortel is talking up the potential of Evolved EDGE technology as an option available to operators considering their migration path beyond 3G.

As a software upgrade for an existing EDGE network, the infrastructure vendor claims that dual-carrier Evolved EDGE technology can more than double spectral efficiency compared to existing EDGE solutions.... read on

Australia’s Telstra has underlined its commitment to future development of its Next G network with news that it is set to become one of the world’s first operators to launch HSPA Evolved technology and anticipates a later move to LTE. The company plans to trial HSPA Evolved – also known as HSPA+ – later this year followed by commercial deployment.

“We have a roadmap that in 2009 we intend to go to 42 Mb/s on our network and within a couple of years of that we expect to be in the 100+ range,” CEO Sol Trujillo revealed in an exclusive interview with the Show Daily prior to his keynote appearance in tomorrow’s Congress.

Trujillo’s comments are one of the strongest public operator commitments to HSPA Evolved to date. According to an announcement from Qualcomm last week, Hutchison 3G, Telecom Italia and Telefonica will also trial HSPA Evolved this year.... read on

PRESS RELEASE - Simdesk Technologies announced it will launch its SimMobileTM next-generation mobile services platform at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, February 11 – 14.

SimMobile stands to dramatically alter the way mobile operators and their hosting providers, broadband service providers and handset manufacturers around the world deliver mobile services to subscribers by making affordable mobile services available across applications, platforms and devices.

The SimMobile launch represents Simdesk’s new strategic focus on the mobile market based on its years of delivering on-demand computing services to SMBs, telcos and governments around the world. SimMobile is specifically designed to help mobile operators generate new services revenue, strengthen subscriber relationships and gain a competitive edge over the ad-based portal solutions.... read on

At the turn of the year, the UMTS Forum confirms that the global 3G mobile industry is on the brink of gaining its first 100 million UMTS/WCDMA customers.

According to data supplied by mobile market information provider Wireless Intelligence, the 100 million subscriber milestone is due to be passed at the start of 2007.

With a further contribution of over 50 million CDMA 2000 1xEV-DO customers, the global 3G cellular subscriber total for all technologies now stands at more than 150 million. Of this total, WCDMA subscriptions now account for two thirds of all 3G cellular connections.... read on

China will "steadily start" the long-awaited third-generation mobile services in 2007 as the conditions for launching the services are "basically ripe," the official Xinhua News Agency reported Thursday, citing a government minister.

Information Technology Minister Wang Xudong said at a national working conference that China should continue the ongoing trials on the application of its homegrown TD-SCDMA technology to ensure a steady start of the 3G services in 2007.

Wang's latest remarks, coming weeks after he was quoted by the China Daily as saying 3G licensing will happen "very soon," appear to signal the ministry's sense of urgency on the matter. But his comments that the conditions exist in China for the development of 3G services repeat what some Ministry of Information Industry officials have already said.... read on

Nokia today announced its latest Digital Video Broadcast-Handheld (DVB-H) broadcast mobile TV pilot with India's national television broadcaster Doordarshan, using Nokia's open standards based DVB-H solution. The Nokia Mobile Broadcast Solution will be delivered to Doordarshan via SHAF Broadcast Pvt Ltd in early 2007.

During this pilot, Doordarshan will test the reception quality of the broadcast coverage, and explore the myriad of options of supporting different service schemes, such as advertising and interactive services. The pilot will also enable Doordarshan to gauge consumer expectations of the service going forward.... read on