Global Connections 09/25/12

Reliance Communications, India’s third-largest broadband and telecom company, has upgraded its Amdocs customer-management solution to provide enhanced customer care to its 150 million subscribers. The new system will include Smart Agent Desktop, a unified desktop for accessing and using multiple, disparate applications and screens…Bazuca, a subsidiary of Chilean cable operator VTR (a Liberty Global company) launched the next version of its over-the-top (OTT) video service with Avail-TVN. Bazuca says it will extend the video offering to include Subscription VOD (SVOD) services for television and studio content, music, children’s programming and events.  Avail-TVN is providing licensing, content preparation, metadata management, content delivery, and marketing and promotional support as well as integrating with Bazuca’s CDN and DRM solutions…DragonWave Inc. wrapped field tests and confirmed the functionality of higher-modulation modes of as much as 2048 QAM on its Horizon packet microwave products. The field tests were conducted in Odessa, Ukraine. Deployments and analysis for the field test were done in coordination with DragonWave’s in-country partner UKRCOM and their customer, wireless provider Intertelecom. With 2048 QAM, “customers can achieve greater than 500 Mbps of transport in a Horizon Compact+ all-outdoor system and up to 1 Gbps when DragonWave’s Bandwidth Accelerator compression technology is included,” says DragonWave. “Horizon Quantum can deliver two carriers per radio, each capable of higher order modulation and compression, delivering up to 2 Gbps in a single radio”…Romanian cableco RCS & RDS deployed 100G channels over its existing network using Israel-based ECI Telecom’s next-gen Optimized Multi-Layer Transport (OMLT) platform Apollo. The 100G DWDM network connects core routers between Oradea and Bucharest over the Apollo transport solution…Chinese fabless semiconductor company Nufront broadened its portfolio of ARM technology with licenses for the ARM Cortex-A15 MPCore Processor and the ARM Mali-T658 Graphics Processing Unit (GPU). Access to ARM’s advanced intellectual property “will enhance the scalability of Nufront’s next-generation application processor designs, delivering powerful 3G-ready solutions to OEMs for smartphones, tablet computers and smart TVs,” Nufront explains, “addressing demand from consumers for smart, connected devices that feature the performance and battery life required for advanced features, such as 3D graphics, visual computing, augmented reality and voice recognition”…Rentrak Corporation inked a TV Essentials contract with Azteca America Inc., which broadcasts content in 75 local markets as well as nationally with cable, satellite and telco providers…Kuwait’s Zain selected AIRCOM International to “provide greater insight, through in-depth profiling, into the performance of its entire network,” it says. AIRCOM delivered a three-phase consultancy project to Zain Kuwait that included comprehensive smartphone-benchmarking, a complete network audit and inter-operator network benchmarking. The smartphone benchmarking element of the project was designed to investigate behavioral analysis of how specific devices were impacting Zain’s network resources along with the quality of the service. The resulting data was used to optimize network resources to accommodate such specific device traits as analysis of call type, time usage, call attempts, and dropped and blocked call rates. In addition, AIRCOM audited Zain Kuwait’s current network, from the process and procedures used in network planning to a full network performance analysis.