Viewers in Singapore and South East Asia will soon be able to watch their favourite You Tube, MySpace and other streaming web videos directly on their TV, with Netgem's Netboxes hybrid television technology announced in Singapore on 21st July, 2010.

Netboxes enables a new TV viewing experience which seamlessly blends broadcast and broadband content including, for the first time, including You Tube videos and dedicated TV service, enabling operators to provide innovative and new connected home experiences, as Netgem’s award-winning middleware, NetgemTV and Netbox device collection, seamlessly combine broadcast and broadband delivered content and services into one, enabling video service providers to provide viewers with a seamless branded experience.

The NetgemTV middleware operates on open web technologies and comprises client/server middleware and a set of applications including a TV guide, a personal video recorder, video-on-demand and over-the-top services, such as You Tube and games.

Appealing to a wide range of operator needs, the Netgem set-top box collection ranges from an internet adaptor for Over-The-Top (OTT) TV delivered services, to a hybrid broadband and broadcast device and a powerful media centre. OTT TV is the direct delivery of streaming video directly to users' Internet-connected devices.

Mr Christophe Aulnette, Managing Director, Netgem, said “Our Asia Pacific office based in Singapore was instrumental in securing a deal with one of Australia’s largest operators.”

“After a recent launch in Australia where our technology was adopted by Telstra Communications, we have now focused our attention on the South East Asia market, with Singapore our strategic base in this key growth region.

“Netgem will focus on offering this cutting edge technology to Singapore operators to enhance the entertainment experience of their customers, before we roll out the technology in the region.  Singapore and our Asia Pacific regional office here is a critical component in our overall global business strategy.

“As operators work to understand how to best utilise the full potential of broadband services, the Netbox is a great illustration of how highly popular broadband Internet video services, such as You Tube™ and other internet applications can be optimised for TV viewing and delivered alongside high quality broadcast content within one, seamless and branded consumer experience,” he added.

By Derek Manky

Are mobile phones and other wireless devices the new weakest link in securing information outside of corporate networks? We all know that “bad” guys take notice of new tech and gadgets and create attacks based on the latest trends---how are enterprises keeping up? With mobile usage of Facebook and Twitter rising users can affect enterprise networks easily without knowing it. What are some best practices and concerns to avoid horrible issues? What should wireless gurus know about unforeseen security issues created through wireless devices?

While malicious activities on handheld devices like smart phones have been relatively low, there are several indicators to suggest that things are about to change. Enterprises will need to start thinking seriously about a mobile threat prevention strategy to ensure that their networks are not vulnerable to the new threats that will abound with the increasing mobile activities of their users.

The growing prevalence of 3G networks is enabling broader bandwidth for mobile devices, which means more of the bad content is getting in with the good. 3G also enables network operators to offer a wider range of more advanced mobile services, such as real-time access to high-quality audio/video transmission. For example, with its application portal, Apple, which has a small percentage of the handset market, has already changed the way many people interact with their smart phones, while Microsoft and Nokia are also talking up their own similar portals. The level of personalization and customization possible with these portals will mean new uses, both good and bad, will be found. This presents a big concern for corporate network managers as users are no longer bound by factory-installed applications. With this greater usability, consumers are now adopting smart phones in greater numbers for business and for personal use. iSuppli Corp. predicted in a March 2009 report that the number of smart phone shipments is expected to grow to as high as 192.3 million units this year, up 11.1 percent from 2008.

No doubt, the smart phone is becoming much more personal and indispensable to consumers, and where consumers go, money goes, and crime will soon to follow. This adds up to increased opportunities for virus infections and attacks that will require a focused approach to secure the millions of handheld mobile devices in operation today, especially for enterprises. Smart phones pose an even greater security risk to corporations as they have become the mobile office for their ability to access corporate networks in real time, much in the way that laptops have been able to do. This presents cybercriminals with the opportunity to use smart phones as the launch pad for penetrating and accessing sensitive corporate data. Fortinet believes the increased usability of smart phones and other wireless devices and the new business models they enable will become the biggest threat to corporate security in the near future.

The mobile market presents a unique position in terms of malware as compared to the traditional PC market. The platforms available for attack on PC platforms are limited – Windows, MacIntosh and Linux – while the number of mobile platforms continues to grow: Google Android, Apple mobile OS, SymbianOS, Windows Mobile, Palm. For example, we are just seeing the tip of the iceberg with Google’s Android OS vulnerability discovered late last year. And just last month, discovery of the new SymbOS/Yxes.A!worm (AKA “Sexy View”) mobile worm gives strong indication that we may be on the edge of a mobile botnet. This sophisticated SMS-propagation strategy, which hosts the worm on malicious servers, allows cybercriminals to effectively mutate the worm by adding or removing functionality.

A managed client capable of detecting software installations and monitoring file access in addition to encrypting data and reporting status to a central server is the answer for network managers grappling with an active mobile work force. Network managers will want to look for solutions that provide multi-layered protection for blended threats and that protects across all device interfaces. The ideal mobile client solution would be part of an integrated, end-to-end network security platform that offers accelerated hardware and impinges minimum performance impact on user device and services. In addition, the network security platform should offer configuration management and control with reporting, and flexibly-defined profiles and policies for granular network segmentation capabilities.

For the end-user, both corporate and private, here are some tips to follow for the safe usage of their mobile device:

1) Similar to patch management on PC platforms, apply any updates to mobile platforms as soon as they become available. For example, Google quickly issued a fixed when the vulnerability in its open source Android OS was discovered in late 2008. Be educated and aware of threats that bridge to the Internet.

2) Phishing scams looking for bank account information or corporate credentials are very real to hit users on mobile devices, just as they are with PCs. Just like social networks, mobile networks through voice contacts are highly trusted. Attempt to verify the identity of any incoming messages that are suspicious. Reply with something simple like “What is this?” to ensure you are able to confirm that the source of the message is trusted.

3) Be aware of what you install. For example, the worm SymbOS/BeSeLo used social engineering over MMS to install itself. It prompted the user to install an application which had a file extension .mp3 or .jpg; users should be aware of this and not install anything that haven’t confirmed as being from a trusted source. Many users have “jailbroken” phones, such as the iPhone, which means that uncontrolled (unsigned) code can be run. This is a very big security risk, and users should be aware of the risks they take when they unlock phone functionality.

4) Disable communication channels such as Bluetooth by default, only enabling them on a per-session requirement. This removes an attack avenue. By taking simple precautionary measures, it effectively helps to harden your smart device.

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Mr Derek Manky, Fortinet Inc’s Project Manager for Cyber Security and Threat Research. Fortinet is a leading provider of network security appliances and the market leader in Unified Threat Management or UTM. Fortinet integrates multiple levels of security protection (such as firewall, antivirus, intrusion prevention, VPN, spyware prevention and antispam) to help customers protect against network and content level threats.

Advanced Fuel Cell offer quick and simple solution to reduce cost and carbon footprint.

Telecommunications operators today face two major challenges – to reduce overall operating expenses and to deploy more environmentally technologies. Anil Trehan, Chief Technical Officer for Carrier Solutions at Andrew Solutions, explains how Advanced Fuel Cell Solutions can help operators reduce costs and benefit the environment at the same time.

Operating costs have always been a concern for operators with energy bills contributing to more than half of their operating expenditure and many have been exploring solar arrays, wind turbines and fuel cells as alternative energy solutions. These green solutions have high initial costs but offer long-term savings through lower operating and maintenance costs that enable operators to run a sustainable and profitable business. Moreover, their contributions towards the carbon footprint are significantly lower.

Advanced fuel cell (AFC) solutions are designed to overcome the current issues of high maintenance and operational costs of batteries and diesel generators used in backup power solutions.

Field trials conducted around the world in differing climate conditions and power grids of varied quality showed that AFC solutions offer extremely high levels of operational reliability and durability Some test sites faced numerous power outages each day requiring the fuel cell to provide power every day and in such situations, the fuel cells operated with 100 percent availability and provided the requisite power needed to keep the network fully operational. These test sites included ambient temperatures of up to 45 degrees Celcius.

A typical advanced fuel cell solution would comprise of two 8kW fuel cell modules housed in a 63”H x 45”W x 52”D cabinet, which is Telcordia GR-487 compliant. The cabinet contains all necessary power conditioning equipment required to provide regulated DC Voltage to match site requirements, typically at battery float voltage.  The system provides instantaneous power upon loss of AC or DC power utilizing either a small stack of batteries or ultra-capacitors as bridging power. The cabinet is capable of providing 4kW of power up to the total of 16kW in 4kW increments and scalability can be achieved through a series of field retrofit kits.

Hydrogen to the fuel cell cabinet is provided by hydrogen cylinders stored in a Hydrogen Storage Cabinet which has the capacity to store up to 16 standard cylinders.

Microwave networks are quicker to install, secure and best of all, able to sustain high capacity services. John Cole, Product Line Director for Microwave Systems at Andrew Solutions explores how the total cost of ownership, backhaul performance, subscriber experience and in turn the subscriber churn is affected when equipment purchase for the network are determined by price instead of quality.

Microwave backhaul solutions have been known to offer operators multiple benefits. Initial set-up costs aside, microwave backhaul solutions are more cost-effective and economically viable to operate on a long-term basis. However, not all microwave solutions are equal. One must consider the stability of the product and how the antenna patterns will change over time. As such, having the right tools to simulate network situation along with antenna performance will take the guess-work out of the deployment and ultimately, saves money. With these in mind, the quality of the antenna is critical.
Equipment Consideration

Deciding on the type of equipment to make up the network requires the consideration of several factors. Choosing the right site to deploy the network is just the first step. Backhaul engineers should ideally be involved in the early stages of planning to ensure the likelihood of securing a backhaul friendly site. Factors such as the customer base and available capital also play a part in deciding the type of equipment to be purchased but ultimately the type of microwave radio equipment chosen will also be dependent on the type of service provided.

When choosing antennas, operators should consider opting for the more superior and spectrum efficient models. Less expensive models pose several issues – they impact both the amount of time dedicated to the network design and the costs associated with acquiring additional spectrum. In the long run, spectrum inefficiency will naturally impede the future growth of any network. For networks that operate on higher frequencies, the reduction of the fade margin due to threshold degradation means that potential link lengths will be reduced in order to meet network objectives.

Higher quality antennas generally offer greater spectrum efficiency, longer link lengths and even smaller footprint, if required. Optimising the spectrum used to deploy a backhaul network impacts cost in a big way especially when considering the investment required when needed to add more capacity in future to support LTE/4G networks. Longer link lengths help to reduce the amount of backhaul equipment required. The size of an antenna affects overall expenditure dramatically. Smaller but highly efficient antennas enable operators to reduce freight costs, the space required on a tower and warehouse space.

It is critical then, to consider the performance requirements of you network and choosing a lower cost antenna solution may be costly in the long run. For example, if nearly 30% of the network does not meet the objectives with the inefficient antennas, the cost of replacing the antennas can drive cost up by as much as 32%. This means that if you spend US$50m on antennas then you are overspending by approximately US$16m.

John Cole will be one of the speakers at this year’s CommunicAsia 2010 and he will be touching on how antenna performance in the short and long term can help to maximize spectrum allocation. He will be using a real microwave backhaul network to demonstrate the implications of antenna and planning tool choices on overall revenue.

Mobile network operators constantly seek to find new and innovative ways to differentiate themselves from their competition and to increase profit margins. Martin Dawson, Director of the GeoLENs Location Server Business Unit at Andrew Solutions explains how the new generation of IP location service protocols can benefit operators, users, device makers and application providers alike.

Cellular networks have long been enabled to locate devices wherever they are attached to allow end users to obtain location information on emergency services and value-added applications. However the technical architecture and business models applied to mobile networks have been slanted toward supporting operator-controlled applications alone as opposed to the model of user-controlled applications that have emerged as a result of mobile computing platforms like the iPhone, iPad and other Android equipped devices.

Many devices come equipped with Global Positioning System (GPS) services. However, GPS is often slow and unreliable. Cell towers and WiFi access points tend to provide stronger signals that do not suffer from the same occlusion that troubles low power GPS signals. Often a survey that records accurate ground-truth locations that help to administer base map data and point-of-interest data such as restaurants, banks and nightclubs, is conducted to create a database that maps location to visible radio signal sources. Most Android devices have an operating system that provides an Application Programming Interface (API) which allows the device’s network adapters to scan for cell towers and WiFi sources and reaches out through the internet to Google’s “world in a database” (WiDB) system as a substitute for GPS. Companies like

Skyhook Wireless and Google have been forerunners in bridging the gap that opened up when older cellular location service models were unable to support the demands of end-device controlled services. However, this is set to change with the new generation of HTTP Enabled Location Delivery (HELD) protocols that allow any device to query networks for its location. HELD is an IP standard that will enable any networkable computing device, wired or mobile to query the network for a location regardless of the nature of the network – broadband DSL, enterprise LAN or mobile 3G.

With the new HELD protocols, the network operator’s coverage is by definition wherever the user is able to attach to the network; the operator can then ensure that the location service is available everywhere the network is, thus allowing network operators to provide more than just emergency calling services. The new generation of internet location-service architectures and protocols essentially puts network operators back into location based services value chain that they have long been cut out of.

Martin Dawson will be speaking at CommunicAsia 2010 on how the new generation of IP location service protocols fit into the new paradigm of location services and how they affect the business model for telecommunication network operators.

Jalur Lebar Nasional (JALENAS) Sdn Bhd of Malaysia and Maipu Communication Technology Co. Ltd. (MAIPU) of Sichuan province, China jointly announced a strategic partnership on 26 April in Kuala Lumpur.

This deal follows the signing of a Joint Action Plan on Malaysia-China Strategic Cooperation between the China and Malaysia governments, following Malaysia's Prime Minister, Dato' Seri Najib Tun Razak's visit to China some months ago.

The signing of this partnership agreement was witnessed by Dato’ Sri Adnan Hj. Yaakob, Chief Minister of Pahang State, Malaysia and  Mr. Jian Jufeng ,Governor of Sichuan Province, China.

MAIPU is a professional supplier of IP network equipment and application solutions. Its products comprise a full range of routers, switches, VoIP communications, security and integrated access equipment, all of which are used in over 30 countries. It's a main network equipment supplier of telecoms operators, financial institutions, and government departments in China.

MAIPU's engineers will help accelerate deployment of  JALENAS' open-access fibre broadband network, in Kuantan, Pahang state, which is due for completion by the end of the year. Following that,  it will participate in the deployment of the JALENAS city network in Johor Bahru, Johor state.

BUKIT JALIL, 23 Feb: Some local authorities are a hindrance to broadband rollout, Minister of Information, Communications and Culture. Dato' Seri Utama Dr. Rais Yatim told the media, whilst officiating at the amax City launch at Technology Park Malaysia here today.

“The procedures involved in operators installing a base station include rental of the land, submitting their plans for approval, meeting additional conditions and receiving the permit and whilst this normally takes between four to six months, a local authority has been known to have dragged this process out for four years, and investigations have found instance of hanky panky in some cases,” said Dr. Rais.

“Most local authorities create issues in urban areas,” he added.

On the relatively high broadband costs in Malaysia compared to neighbouring countries, Dr. Rais said that the the regulator, the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (SKMM) could look into equipment and other broadband costs, while based on information from the advanced countries, the more players there are, the better is the broadband quality.

“The cost of broadband must vary from community to community, with lower rates in rural areas, and higher rates elsewhere, Said Dr. Rais.

Speaking as one of the players, Asiaspace chairman Datuk Ghani Abdullah said that his company pays Telekom Malaysia RM200,000 for a backhaul link from its base stations within the Klang Valley plus RM50,000 per month for access to the international gateway. Asiaspace owns and operates the amax WiMAX wireless broadband service and currently has 60 base stations within the Klang Valley and 70 towers in the rest of the country.

BUKIT JALIL, 23 Feb: Malaysia's first amax City was launched in Technology Park Malaysia today, providing the around 5,000 occupants within 700 hectares of the park with unlimited access to online services and facilities via wireless broadband.

This project came about following complaints of slow broadband connectivity by many of the park's tenants, most of whom are high-technology startups.

It's implemented by Asiaspace WiMAX Sdn Bhd, employing the WiWi (WiMAX-WiFi)  hybrid customer premises equipment (CPE) developed by MIMOS Bhd and commercialised by Pernec Integrated Network Systems.

The WiWi CPE connects to the base station via WiMAX wireless broadband and provides WiFi coverage of the local area, thus enabling users with already abundant WiFi-enabled equipment such as notebook PCs, netbook PCs, WiFi-PCI cards, WiFi-USB dongles, PDAs, smartphones, printers and so on with Internet access.

There are three amax WiMAX base station in the area – namely one in Technology Park, one in Pintasan Puchong and one in Sri Petaling, each with a range of 1.5km radius. Backhaul connectivity from the base stations to the network core is provided by Telekom Malaysia.

The National Advanced IPv6 Centre (NAv6) is participatiing in  the Asia Pacific regional Conference on Operational Technologies (APRICOT) 2010, now taking place at the KL Convention Centre from 23 February to 5 March.

NAv6 director, Prof. Dr. Sureswaran Ramdass will be speaking on IPv6 at APRICOT at 2.00pm on 3rd March.

Formerly known as the Network Research Group at the School of Computer Sciences, Universiti Sains Malaysia, NAv6 is now in the forefront of the government's push for IPv6 (Internet Protocol version 6) adoption and implementation in Malaysia and to be the national centre for research into the next-generation Internet.

It's already well known that the current 32-bits IPv4 Internet addresses are running out, so the 128-bits IPv6 addressing scheme will, in theory, enable each person and almost every thing on Earth to have an IP address.

Meanwhile, NAv6 has developed an embedded software based, high-definition (HD) video conferencing solution - the world's first to be IPv6-based.

“Our software based engine is currently in prototype stage now and when market ready in November, will enable OEM equipment manufacturers and developers who want to develop it further to produce affordable, high-definition video conferencing systems,” said Sureswaran.

“Our solution is designed to fill the void between software-based video conferencing services such as Skype, Yahoo! Messenger and others with their free one-to-one communications and high-end, hardware-based, point-to multi-point video conferencing systems such as those by Tandberg, Polycom and others,” he added.

It's designed to be available in three ranges – ie. a low-definition system with text and simple presentations, a medium-definition system with a mixture of text and video and a high-definition system with HD-video, graphics and text.

NAv6 will localise its HD- video conferencing system for several installations across Asia. Its system costs up to about half that of the hardware-based systems and requires the addition of a HD-cameras and echo-cancellation microphones.

It works with regular 1 to 2 Mb/s ADSL connections, a projector, multiple display screens with a whiteboard, with optional addition of file-sharing, real-time editing and collaboration software or solutions.