Bangladeshi mobile operator Robi Axiata has chosen Comptel Provisioning & Activation and Comptel Catalog to replace its existing post-paid, pre-paid and VAS provisioning systems with Comptel’s solutions. The changeover is expected to help the operator improve time-to-market and ensure low service-deployment error rates.

Robi Axiata is a joint venture company between Axiata Group, Malaysia and NTT DoCoMo, Japan. The operator believes the solutions will help control costs, reduce manual errors and deliver services to customers without delay.

Comptel claims its Dynamic OSS solutions are aimed at enabling telecom service providers to deliver services flexibly.

In a Finnish 4G frequency auction, Sonera was awarded frequencies with which it can build a next generation ‘super-fast mobile broadband network’ in Finland.

Teliasonera has informed that the company will start building the network immediately, and aims to open the network for the first pilot customer during the first quarter of 2010.

The company also informed that the frequencies now received will enable Sonera to build a mobile network that is expected to be more than 10 times faster than current networks.

The licence is valid for 20 years. The price for five 2 x 5 MHz frequency band pairs in the 2.6 GHz band is E819,000, the company added.

Vocaltec Communications, a provider of multimedia and voice-over-IP solutions for communication service providers, has acquired substantially all of the assets of Outsmart, a provider of telecommunications convergence solutions.

The Outsmart assets acquired by Vocaltec includes Outsmart’s technology and intellectual property, as well as its primary customer and partner contracts.

Vocaltec plans to engage certain Outsmart personnel in a bid to enable the development and support and an uninterrupted transition to all Outsmart customers and partners.

The company believes the combined portfolio will position Vocaltec as a provider of VoIP solution and applications to both fixed line and mobile service providers.

Alcatel-Lucent has announced that Bouygues Telecom has selected its end-to-end Long Term Evolution (LTE) solution for a trial of mobile broadband services. The trial is intended to evaluate the performance of LTE services in the 1800 MHz spectrum band.

Alca-Lu will serve as the sole supplier and network integrator for Bouygues Telecom’s field trials program, which is scheduled to begin in 2010 at a number of sites in the western France. The company believes the LTE trials programme will enable Bouygues Telecom to evaluate opportunities to introduce a variety of new multimedia applications and services.

For the deployment Alca-Lu will supply its end-to-end LTE solution, which comprises base stations (eNodeBs), Evolved Packet Core (EPC) and its associated management system. The company will also provide Bouygues Telecom with a full range of professional services including project management and planning, as well as installation, commissioning, integration and test plan execution services.

TeliaSonera and Altimo have agreed to combine their ownership interests by contributing their respective direct and indirect interests in Turkcell and Megafon, into a new company. The new company will be established in a western jurisdiction and listed on the New York Stock Exchange.

Together the companies hope to create an international operator, with over 90 million subscribers in Russia, Turkey and the CIS countries, and with well functioning corporate governance. The new company will focus on developing the operations of Turkcell and MegaFon as well as expanding into new emerging markets.

Once established, the new company will own a majority of the shares in both Turkcell and Megafon. AF Telecom, the third major shareholder in Megafon, is also invited to join the partnership.

Meanwhile, TeliaSonera and Altimo have agreed to collaborate and align their efforts to resolve all ongoing legal disputes between each of them and Cukurova Group to make the establishment of the new company possible.

Motive, a provider of digital life management solutions for fixed and mobile broadband services and an Alcatel-Lucent company, has been selected by STC (Saudi Telecom Company), a telecommunications carrier in Saudi Arabia, to deliver its High Speed Internet ServiceView solution.

The solution offers a unified customer care environment aimed at providing end-to-end visibility and control of broadband services with automated problem analysis and resolution for STC’s network.

Additionally, Alcatel-Lucent will provide STC with a complete set of services encompassing installation, commissioning, project management and software customisation and integration.

Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson, Fujitsu, NEC, Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) and NTT Docomo have announced the joint development and successful testing of common technical specifications for value-added IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) network services.

The technical specifications recently demonstrated by the six companies support deployment of data processing functions, such as image conversion, on the IMS network.

The processing functions will also allow companies to develop a variety of application services.

The companies believe the new specifications will make it easier for telecommunication operators and vendors to develop value-added network functions.

Operators that have adopted IMS can add these functions to their existing network and realise new services where, for example, a user edits a picture on the network and shares it, or converts a Japanese text message to English on the network before delivering it to the receiver.

The six companies have also collaborated to set up a network system based on the new specifications and then successfully completed a demonstration test in August.

Alcatel-Lucent has launched a new IP Transformation Centre (IPTC) in Chennai, India. First centre of its kind in the sub-continent, the IPTC is aimed at developing, integrating and testing end-to-end IP networking solutions for Alcatel-Lucent’s Indian and global customers as they migrate to next generation architectures.

The centre will enable service providers to design, test and integrate their solutions in a ‘risk-free environment’, the company said. It will reportedly help them shorten the IP transformation trajectory and their time to market.

The IPTC is networked with Alcatel-Lucent’s existing IPTCs and network integration centres located in Antwerp, Belgium; Singapore; Murray Hill, Naperville and Plano in the USA, as well as with multiple R&D labs world-wide, including India.

Alcatel-Lucent and Nordics operator Teliasonera have announced the deployment of the first 100Mbps VDSL2-based access network in Finland, enabling the delivery of a full-blown (high-definition) IPTV service offering across the country.

Teliasonera’s fibre-to-the-building (FTTB) architecture makes use of fibre cables that are trenched from the operator’s central offices to the basement of (apartment) buildings.

From there, the end-users are offered ‘very high-speed broadband applications’ over the existing, in-building copper wires. The architecture is based on Alcatel-Lucent’s 7354 ISAM FTTB Remote Unit – which has been designed for cabinet and multiple dwelling unit (MDU) deployments, the company informed.

Alcatel-Lucent also will provide a range of professional services related to the network roll-out project.

Australia Japan Cable (AJC), operator of the AJC cable system between Japan and Australia, and Pacific Crossing (PCL), the operator of the ‘lowest latency network’ across the Pacific, PC-1, have announced the launch of their Gigabit Ethernet Service for carrier, enterprise, and ISP customers looking for scalable, flexible connectivity options between Australia and North America.

Both companies had announced Gigabit Ethernet offerings on their own networks earlier in the year.

Testing of the Gigabit service on the AJC and PC1 networks confirmed transmission performance up to the full rate and for frames up to a jumbo size of 9224 bytes, AJC said.