Ericsson has been selected to upgrade Bite’s 3G network with HSDPA in Lithuania and to build an HSDPA-enabled WCDMA/UMTS network in Latvia. With the upgrade, Bite has boosted its mobile broadband offering, delivering a download speed of up to 3.6Mbps, further breaking new ground in the Baltic region.

Ericsson is delivering commercial HSDPA hardware, software and implementation services. This upgrade to HSDPA has enabled Bite to introduce its customers to a new generation of mobile services, including mobile broadband, mobile TV and mobile music.

Zilvinas Jurksus, CTO of Bite Group, says: “Our customers are driving the evolution of our networks, demanding more advanced services. Choosing Ericsson as supplier allows us to be among the first in the world to launch HSDPA-enabled services and offer our customers mobile broadband with unrivalled transfer speeds. We will satisfy our customers’ needs in this area not only today, but also in the future.”

Stefan Johansson, President, Ericsson Lithuania and Ericsson Latvia, says: “We look forward to cooperating with Bite as it brings this enriched experience to its customers. HSDPA deployments are taking off around the world and we are extremely pleased to power Bite’s HSDPA network in both Lithuania and Latvia.”

Bite has been running its network with HSDPA up to 3.6Mbps in Lithuania since June 7. The HSDPA launch in Latvia will also deliver download speeds up to 3.6Mbps. With the Ericsson HSDPA solution, users are able to download on average eight times faster than the current 3G connection using existing PC cards, and up to 40 times faster than with a GSM/GPRS connection.

At the end of the year, Ericsson’s HSDPA solution will enable peak download speeds of up to 14Mbps. The advanced technology more than triples system capacity and makes response times for interactive services faster.

Ericsson IPX has launched its cross-operator WAP billing system in the UK which allows big brand content distributors to bill directly on their WAP sites.

While most mobile content is still purchased via operator’s own portals, a number of games publishers and developers would like to promote their own B2C brands �off-portal’.

With Ericsson IPX’s WAP Billing Consumers will be able to browse and buy, using their mobile phones without needing to register for a service, entering a username or password.

“While Bango has proved successful offering its branded service, this is mainly suitable for smaller brands” said Peter Garside, Ericsson IPX’s UK head of sales. “The Ericsson IPX offering is targeted at bigger companies that have a recognisable brand already that gives the consumer confidence. Consumers don’t have to leave the vendor’s site to make payment”.

When using the service, consumers confirm a purchase by clicking on a “confirm purchase” link on their mobile phone. IPX then informs the WAP application of the completed purchase transaction and consumers are redirected to the content they purchased. At the same time a premium rate SMS is sent to the phone giving a click to buy experience.

PayForIt Is Coming

The wap billing today is a precursor of Payforit available from the operators later this year. Payforit will dispense with the need to send the PSMS, although with strict guidelines as to how the payment pages are displayed. “Vodafone want to separate out payment process from content owners” said Garside “and to have just a few intermediaries for billing. So we could say that this is a first stage towards Payforit and lets content partners develop WAP sites with direct payment now.

Country Rollout

It is available to all consumers on all UK operators including the Virgin MVNO except 3 that Garside hopes will be added in Q3 this year. Since Ericsson manages the network for 3 this should be easy to sort except that it is the operator that set’s the project priorities.

“Our existing relationships with operators has helped but the negotiations to launch WAP billing with UK operators has taken time” said Garside.

Already trialing with a few companies such as Mobix Interactive, Pitch, SonyEricsson, Garside is looking for very large media companies in the UK who want their brand on the mobile internet not wanting to go through a mobile portal.

Having first started WAP billing in Singapore and Sweden, Ericsson IPX has now rolled out the service to 11 countries. Vendors can connect once to Ericsson and then to all the other available countries. “Other countries following the UK launch later this year are potentially Spain, Italy and Taiwan” said Garside.

France Telecom and Ericsson (NASDAQ:ERICY), an industry leading vendor, enabling mass market adoption of 3G solutions worldwide, have entered into a patent license agreement under France Telecom’s Turbo Codes Licensing Program. Under terms of the agreement France Telecom has granted Ericsson a worldwide license to France Telecom’s seminal Turbo Codes patents for use in Ericsson’s third generation (3G) mobile communications products encompassing WCDMA to HSDPA.

Invented by Claude Berrou and Alain Glavieux of Ecole Nationale Surperieure des Telecommunications (ENST) in Brittany, France, Turbo Codes have been adopted by the leading third generation (3G) cellular standards, 3GPP (UMTS/W-CDMA) and 3GPP2 (CDMA2000), in order to provide previously unavailable error correction performance at commercially viable costs. According to industry analyst estimates 3G standards are expected to represent at least a third of all cellular users by 2009.

Turbo Codes are an innovative form of forward error correction (FEC), one of the fundamental building blocks of any type of digital communications with increases in network data capacity and power efficiencies close to the theoretical “Shannon limit.” These advantages combined with increasing bandwidth demands and the maturity of Turbo Codes technology have led to their adoption in a wide array of commercially available and successful communications standards including: cellular (UMTS, CDMA2000), satellite (DVB-RCS, CCSD), broadband wireless, and home powerline networking (HomePlugAV). The invention and inventors of Turbo Code have been widely recognized for this achievement with nominations and awards ranging from nominee for European Inventor of the Year 2006, to the award of the 2005 Marconi Prize, and recipients of the 1998 IEEE (Information Theory) Golden Jubilee Award.

“This agreement signifies our continuing progress with the Turbo Code Licensing Program and our efforts to provide this commercially successful and cost effective technology to 3G market leaders,” said Mustapha Tagredj, Patent Licensing Director for France Telecom. “As such, we are pleased to welcome Ericsson, a company shaping the future of mobile and broadband communications as the latest entrant to our Turbo Codes Licensing Program.”

France Telecom is committed to making the benefits of Turbo Codes available to customers implementing a variety of digital communication solutions as well as those customers implementing 3G compliant technology for which France Telecom’s patents are considered essential. In order to facilitate this process France Telecom established the Turbo Codes Licensing Program (TCLP) in late 2001.