Four kicking the tyres at Bitbuzz wi-fi

Bitbuzz, the fast growing wi-fi company headed by Shane Deasy, is understood to have been approached by four separate investors about a potential sale. It is understood that two UK, one Irish and one US group have all contacted the firm recently.

Bitbuzz, which is advised by Grant Thornton and Mason Hayes & Curran, is thought to prefer remaining privately owned at present. The company did not comment. Valuations of the company are likely to be well below €10m.

The company is on a major expansion drive. A key part of its business is in supplying wi-fi to the hotel sector in Ireland and the UK. Wi-fi has become a "must-have" service for hotels, with higher speeds and access now sought by clients. The Dublin-headquartered firm has signed up 75 hotels and is targeting a further 100.

While the hotel wi-fi business is generating about €2m per year, a new strategy which may provide wi-fi to mobile operators may be highly attractive for potential acquirors.

Bitbuzz is developing technology that may enable mobile phone customers to switch seamlessly between 3G or 4G services and its wi-fi broadband product.

This will see far, far cheaper data charges for customers, while the mobile operators will also be able to save money by investing less in infrastructure and carrying less data on their networks.

Telecoms observers believe that wi-fi will play a key role in the consumer product offerings of the big operators in coming years.

source: http://www.independent.ie/business/irish/four-kicking-the-tyres-at-bitbuzz-wifi-29798367.html

The best public broadband network: BT, O2 or The Cloud

We took to the streets to find out just how useful is public Wi-Fi. We paired up with our friends at Broadband Genie and signed up to the three major public Wi-Fi networks: BT Wi-fi, O2 and The Cloud. Armed only with a laptop, we sent five testers on to the streets of London, setting them a series of timed web-based challenges, each to be completed at the same time in the same place. For the full story read: How good is public Wi-Fi? We test The Cloud, BT and O2 to find out if you really need 3G or 4G connectivity.

The five contenders included three testers who were allowed only to use their chosen public Wi-Fi network, BT Wi-fi, O2 or The Cloud. We also had a wildcard tester who was signed up to no accounts, but able to use any public Wi-Fi network that didn’t require direct payment. As a control we had one tester using 3G, with a dongle from Three.

This was not a scientific test. To an extent it required ingenuity and flexibility on the part of the individual tester. Consider this more of an anecdotal piece: in part we wanted to test just how much thought was required to find a usable connection. The user experience is an important part of all consumer tech, after all.

Our nine tests took us all over London, and involved tasks as varied as streaming video, finding turn-by-turn navigation and download image files. So how did we get on?

How good is BT public Wi-Fi

In general our BT tester thought connectivity was okay, but the user experience wasn't great.

We weren’t impressed with the apps – the hotspot map wasn’t very good, for instance. And, on a laptop, it seemed as though you couldn’t go back to BT page if you’d already been there but failed to login. It would open the first time you opened the browser, but if you didn’t sign in and restarted the browser it disappeared.

Our BT tester found he had to log in too many times, and there were too many different networks to choose from. He thought it should be much simpler. But crucially he could get online almost every time.

How good it O2 public Wi-Fi

O2 Wi-Fi was generally good. Setup online was easy, but adding a laptop as a second device proved a pain. From then on, when in range both our tester's smartphone and laptop connected to networks and the performance was great, just like being at home.

Coverage was consistently good in London, although when you’re not near a hotspot the smartphone app and mobile data is required to find one.

How good  is The Cloud public Wi-Fi

Since The Cloud boasts of thousands of hotspots around the country. Frequently, though, it seemed that major areas were bereft of connectivity, even when other networks were available.

The Cloud generally was nearby, but this almost always involved walking to a café or restaurant. That’s fine if it’s not raining and you can stand outside, or get away with sitting in there while checking your email, but not many restaurants will let you take up a seat without paying for something.

The Cloud smartphone app proved useful for quickly locating hotspots and seemed generally accurate. One oddity of The Cloud network highlighted by the app is the clustering of the connections – you can walk for ages and not find anything, then there will be three or four in a very small area, often in adjoining coffee shops. It would be more useful if they were spread out, although it does mean that if the place you’re in is very busy you can try next door’s connection.

All devices should be registered with The Cloud ahead of time as this part of the process can be painful on a busy connection. The device-management screen can take a little while to load up and behaved strangely when the link was slow. Once that was done, though, both smartphone and laptop instantly latched on to the hotspots instantly without any further fuss. See also: The UK's best mobile networks revealed: mobile broadband group test.

source: http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/videos/3490222/whats-the-best-public-broadband-network-bt-o2-or-the-cloud/

Simultaneous Operation of LTE and WCDMA on a Single Base Station Processor demonstrated by Freescale

Demonstrating the multimode capabilities of Freescale’s QorIQ Qonverge portfolio, Freescale Semiconductor announced today that integrated VortiQa Layer 1 (L1) software simultaneously supporting WCDMA and LTE is up and running on the QorIQ Qonverge BSC9132 SoC for small cell base station solutions.

According to analyst firm GSMA Intelligence, there are more than 1.5 billion WCDMA connections worldwide and LTE deployments are growing quickly, presenting challenges with frequency bands and getting infrastructure in place. Wireless network operators want multimode small cells that combine 3G, 4G/LTE and Wi-Fi into one small cell base station with the goal of increasing capacity in highly trafficked areas. Equipment manufacturers have struggled to provide solutions that meet those requirements.

Freescale is one of the first companies to bring both multimode-capable hardware and software to market. In production today, the QorIQ Qonverge BSC9132 SoC is a highly integrated device that targets evolving microcell/metrocell, outdoor picocell, enterprise picocell and femtocell base station applications. Availability of the BSC9132 multimode LTE and WCDMA L1 software enables small cell manufacturers to more quickly provide multimode solutions to wireless network operators, speeding industry small cell deployment.

The QorIQ Qonverge BSC9132 SoC integrates two e500 cores, built on Power Architecture® technology, and two StarCore SC3850 cores with the MAPLE-B2P baseband acceleration engine. The processor is a highly programmable device supporting a 20 MHz single sector LTE-FDD/TDD with 150 Mbps downlink and 75 Mbps uplink rates, and HSPA+ with 42 Mbps downlink and 11.5 Mbps uplink rates. The processor supports a range of air interfaces, including LTE (FDD/TDD), WCDMA (HSPA+ and UMTS) and WiMAX, and incorporates glueless RFIC communication and antennae interfaces, eliminating the need for additional chips and ultimately reducing board space and cost.

QorIQ Qonverge base station-on-chip products are based on a common architecture and integrate communications processing, digital signal processing and wireless acceleration technologies into a single system-on-chip in various configurations optimized for next-generation femtocell, picocell, metrocell and macrocell base stations. Advanced process technology and exceptional integration allow the convergence on a single device of multiple functions traditionally performed on separate FPGAs, ASICs, DSPs and processors. This integration reduces the part count, power consumption, cost and footprint for base stations. Having a common, scalable architecture spanning from femtocells to macrocells enables optimized R&D investments and software reuse.

Cisco acquires Ubiquisys and transforms the small cells market

Industry analysts have been quick to describe Cisco’s acquisition of Ubiquisys as an important milestone in the emerging small cells market. That’s not surprising – Ubiquisys pioneered much of the intelligent technology that is making mass-scale deployments of small cells a commercial imperative. Autonomous, cognitive operation, automatic SON formation and cloud-based lifecycle management are just a few examples. When combined with Cisco’s comprehensive mobility portfolio and Wi-Fi expertise, they add-up to much more than the sum of their parts, forming a distinctive new small cell solution that complements macro networks and enables service providers to transition to next generation radio access networks.
Service providers around the world are multiplying data capacity to better serve the rapidly growing population of smartphone and tablet users. Small cells are the only solution that can combine massive capacity and maximum spectrum re-use with reduced operational costs. But realising these benefits demands a solution with intelligence – cells that can dynamically adapt to their environment to allow dense deployment; cells that work together without requiring expert planning and intensive operational management; cells which can operate autonomously from policies defined by central “hetnet” coordination systems. Most of the early small cells market has been focused on miniaturising base stations. Both Ubiquisys and Cisco have already taken it much further, building the intelligent systems that will simplify and densify small cell network deployments.

Many of the areas where small cells can make the biggest difference are indoor spaces, such as hotspots, enterprises, venues and concourses. These are environments where Wi-Fi already provides mobile internet services and where Cisco is a market and innovation leader. Multi-service small cells, intelligently combining 4G/3G and Wi-Fi, enable service providers to harmonise the capabilities of licensed and unlicensed technologies in a controlled manner, improving user experience. This is yet another example of the importance of intelligence in small cells and of the natural alignment between Cisco and Ubiquisys.

source: http://ubiquisys.com/small-cells-blog/cisco-acquires-ubiquisys-and-transforms-the-small-cells-market/