Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Technology Stocks : Qualcomm Moderated Thread - please read rules before posting -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: kech who wrote (24037)	6/22/2002 11:04:08 AM
From: waitwatchwander	Respond to of 197030

Winphoria Networks telecoms-mag.com While other wireless start-ups have focused on the data equation, Tewksbury, Mass.-based Winphoria decided to take the voice route, a market Deutsche Banc Alex Brown predicts will grow from $3 billion in 2001 to $40 billion in 2006. Breaking the bonds of the traditional closed architecture of the incumbent vendors, Winphoria's view of the next-gen wireless core will be a disaggregated network made up of best-of-breed components. With $55 million in funding, Winphoria has about 128 employees in three locations: Massachusetts, India and Spain. The company's founders-Murali Aravamduan and Dr. Shamim Naqvi-were chief architects of the Lucent softswitch. The company also includes other start-up pioneers such as CEO and President Mike Champa, one of the principals at Cascade Communications. Winphoria's WMS-5000 is a next-gen MSC (mobile switching center). Current wireless switches are really retrofitted Class 5 switches that can only handle circuit voice traffic, but the WMS-5000 offers 4x to 5x more capacity than legacy MSCs by separating signaling and control functions from bearer paths with support for mobility. When combined with the vendor's MOBIOS operating system, the WMS-5000 can handle more than 1.2 million busy-hour call attempts with support for multiple protocols in a rack that takes up much less space than a legacy MSC. It can handle any bearer traffic from traditional TDM to packet-switched IP and ATM. "The real bet is to determine how much legacy technology you integrate into your product that nudges you toward that next-gen, while simultaneously supporting the installed base," Champa said. "While our product is IP-based, we also provide a migration from TDM to IP." "What Winphoria is doing does not require forklifting," said Phil Marshall, program manager for wireless mobile technologies at the Yankee Group. "I find it interesting that Winphoria has pulled back elements like call servers and media gateways, which were intended for an all-IP network, to serve the 2.5G world." Winphoria, which is in a number of major operator field trials, recently completed a validation program with Motorola, achieving interoperability compliance based on the Interoperability Specification (IOS) open standard. It also has begun a joint sales effort with Samsung, with whom it demonstrated the delivery of a GSM1x call by integrating the WMS-5000 into Samsung's 3G-based Base Station Subsystem. GSM1x is a new Qualcomm standard that enables carriers to take advantage of CDMA-2000 over their existing GSM network infrastructure. Senior technology editor Sam Masud (smasud @telecommagazine.com) and staff editors Sean Buckley (sbuckley@telecommagazine.com) and Ted McKenna (tmckenna@telecommagazine.com) contributed to this story.

To: kech who wrote (24037)	7/12/2002 12:37:08 PM
From: waitwatchwander	Respond to of 197030

Virgin Mobile Singapore folds after one year itworld.com ITworld.com 7/9/02 David Legard, IDG News Service, Singapore Bureau Proving the difficulty of breaking into a near-saturated market, operator Virgin Mobile Singapore Pte. Ltd. will close its doors in October, after one year's operation, the company said in a statement Tuesday. Virgin Mobile Singapore was the first of what was to have been a pan-Asian mobile rollout for Virgin Group Ltd. and its 50:50 joint venture partner Singapore Telecommunications Ltd. (SingTel). The two companies had earmarked US$100 million to roll out services in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Malaysia, India and China through a company called Virgin Mobile (Asia) Pte. Ltd., which launched Virgin Mobile Singapore. Following the failure of its first attempt to break into the Asian market, that expansion is under threat. "Given the market conditions, it'll now be a cautious approach to regional expansion," SingTel spokesman Ivan Tan said. "The board of directors has representatives from both shareholders and they will evaluate the situation." Virgin Mobile Asia was originally set up with a regional management team based in Singapore tasked with planning the multi-country rollout. That team was dissolved in May, as conditions in the telecommunication industry meant that growth targets and expansion plans began to be scaled back. Virgin Mobile Singapore started operating as an MVNO (Mobile Virtual Network Operator) in October last year, leasing network from SingTel and using SingTel services. These were rebranded in Virgin's youth-oriented style to compete with the entrenched operators. Virgin Mobile Singapore signed up around 30,000 subscribers, the company has said previously, or around 1 percent market share, as Singapore consumers preferred the lower charges of the existing operators over the new features Virgin Mobile introduced. Virgin will migrate its customers over to SingTel between now and October, according to the statement. The company employs just over 100 people in Singapore, including many at a S$1 million customer contact center which opened in March. Singapore has three mobile operators -- SingTel Mobile, Mobile One Asia Pte. Ltd. and StarHub Pte. Ltd., who between them have racked up 3.03 million subscribers, a penetration rate of 73.3 percent, according to Infocomm Development Authority (IDA) of Singapore figures. David Legard is a correspondent for the IDG News Service.