Hong Kong: Ericsson has been selected as sole supplier for mutimedia service network upgrades by SmarTone-Vodafone. Ericsson will supply a HSPA-enabled radio access network, including MBMS, and a fully IP-based core network (including IMS). The deal will also include all related Professional Services (PS) work.
Ericsson is already the sole supplier of SmarTone-Vodafone’s core and radio networks, including GPRS and WCDMA, so this is in effect a build-out of existing relations.
What I find interesting here is that in this deal, SmarTone-VF are effectively throwing the dice as to how for example they want to deliver Mobile TV. I was lucky enough to be sat in an MBMS-like presentation by a company the other day, and I think IP-broadcast of TV has some serious benefits.
HSPA is a bit of an implicit buzzword now, what with the massive surge in use of 3G USB Modems (finally 3G fast-data networks found their killer “app”!) – deploying it arguably kills WiFi and potentially even WiMAX stone-dead. True 4G networks need to be substantially faster than HSPA services, so SmarTone’s choice of rolling out infrastructure to support key IP services looks be a really “SmarT-one” (if you’ll pardon the pun!)
[Via: WebWire]