TriQuint Semiconductor has introduced TQBiHEMT, its latest foundry process for wireless/RF design engineers. This new manufacturing capability combines two of TriQuint's previous processes, offering designers one technology to integrate previously incompatible functional blocks onto a single die, reducing part count, saving board space and improving overall system costs.

TQBiHEMT is well suited for highly integrated front end radio modules typically found in wireless applications with high data rates and frequencies. These types of applications require a semiconductor process which allows front end functional blocks to be optimized individually. TQBiHEMT enables the optimal integration of high power amplifiers in HBT on the same die as pHEMT low noise amplifiers and pHEMT switches, while remaining a cost effective design solution.

"GaAs is a key technology for infrastructure markets requiring high frequency and/or high power performance, and the TQBiHEMT process represents an evolutionary step-up from earlier BiFET technologies by offering increased functionality," notes Asif Anwar, Strategy Analytics.

"The GaAs industry is dispelling the myth that integration is an advantage offered by silicon processes alone and continues to increase the value-add to customers."

"The demand for 3G, 4G wireless and other high frequency wireless applications is growing and our customers look to us to help them tap into this burgeoning market," said Glen Riley, Vice President and General Manager for TriQuint Commercial Foundry.

"The introduction of the TQBiHEMT process demonstrates TriQuint's commitment to our customer success through the delivery of innovative technology at a competitive price point relative to discrete solutions."

TriQuint uses its high volume InGaP HBT process, TQHBT3 — designed for high power, high efficiency and linear power amplifiers — in its own handset products used in the world's most popular mobile phones. Likewise, the company's InGaAs E/D pHEMT process, TQPED, is utilized to make high isolation switches and low noise amplifiers for the handset and wireless data markets. The TQBiHEMT process, an innovative combination of these two processes, enables the creation of single chip products, incorporating the best possible power amplifiers and switch low noise amplifier components.

Mike Peters, Director of Marketing for TriQuint's Commercial Foundry noted, "TQBiHEMT provides wireless communications system designers the circuit component and 3-layer interconnect technology required to optimize performance goals for next generation RFICs."

"Together with our proven manufacturing capabilities, reputation for quality and reliability and excellent design tools, engineers can be confident the new TQBiHEMT process will help them successfully create highly integrated wireless front ends."

The TQBiHEMT process incorporates three transistor types: A highly reliable InGaP HBT transistor, a depletion mode pHEMT transistor and an enhancement mode pHEMT transistor. These three active device types are complimented by high-Q passive circuit elements: precision thin film, nichrome resistors, high value bulk epi resistors and high value/small area capacitors. Three interconnecting metal layers (2 global, one local) and an optional backside grounding via technology complete the circuit component suite available to designers. The process is fabricated on 150-mm (6-inch) wafers.

France Telecom launched its New Experience in Telecom services (NExT) transformation initiative in the summer of 2005. That fall, NetCracker Technologies won the bid to provide resource management and other software solutions. However, that doesn’t mean they won the business. Only recently did NetCracker become certified as the de facto standard for all of France Telecom’s 136 properties and 145 million customers.

The difference between being awarded the bid and becoming certified in France Telecom’s network is the difference between getting to Tour de France and actually winning it. France Telecom has become NetCracker’s largest deployment—rivaled potentially by the deal NetCracker signed this week with Mobil'nye TeleSistemy, the largest mobile operator in Russia.

France Telecom didn’t formally announce NetCracker as a software supplier at the time, but now, the international carrier has certified the company as the Next Generation Inventory (NGI) Group Core Component (GCC) standard for its NExT program. That makes NetCracker the provider of inventory solutions across the entire France Telecom group of 136 companies.

NetCracker also announced it has successfully implemented its Wi-Fi hot-spots inventory, FTTH inventory, and VoIP services inventory for Orange in France, as well as transmission network inventory and an ADSL inventory solution in emerging market affiliates of France Telecom group.

“This was different from your traditional vendor selection; it was very comprehensive,” said Sanjay Mewada, vice president of strategy for NetCracker. “It wasn’t like a typical vendor selection for a single carrier. They were looking to select a platform that could be applicable across all their properties. And those are all kinds of providers like mobile, converged, traditional, big and small. The solutions had to scale both ways.”

During the selection process, vendors had to apply their solutions to 478 test cases and scenarios across fixed, mobile, core, IT and radio technologies for variously sized operating companies. Having done that and been selected in November 2006 as the official NGI supplier for France Telecom’s NExT program, NetCracker had to prove itself in the field before being certified for other properties.

The selection process had been determined by performance in France Telecom’s lab. “The second part was implementing the platform across a number of different properties, and it came down to if, indeed, what held up in the lab held up in real life, then we would get that certification as the default platform across all 136 properties,” Mewada said.

NetCracker has so far been implemented in about one dozen France Telecom properties in Western and Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Africa, the Caribbean and Latin America.

This week, NetCracker became certified for all France Telecom properties for its NetCracker Framework (which includes a unified data model with template libraries, a process automation and workflow engine, a unified security system, a reporting environment, advanced administration and management tools, and a configurable, web-based user interface), physical and logical resource inventory, service inventory and discovery and reconciliation modules.

For operating companies under the France Telecom umbrella requiring solutions for outside plant, asset management and telecom cost management, the operator certified NetCracker’s solutions as optional.

The MTS deployment has been completed in Moscow and the Central Russian Region. There NetCracker will optimize infrastructure and inventory management processes and establish a central information source for the planning, design and management of the MTS network. MTS will use NetCracker’s Resource Inventory, Outside Plant, Service Provisioning, and Discovery & Reconciliation product modules. MTS is planning to complete the rollout of the NetCracker solution to the rest of the regions inside Russia by the end of the second quarter in 2008.

Wateen turns up Motorola gear in 22 cities in Pakistan, using it initially for fixed access

Motorola’s first commercial WiMAX network went live today in 22 cities in Pakistan, making it the first of its three high-profile nationwide network contracts to launch.

In a message to employees and customers posted on the company’s Website, Wateen Telecom Chief Executive Officer Tariq Malik revealed the official launch of the broadband access network throughout the country of 175 million people. “We are proud to be the largest and the first in the world to roll out a WiMAX 802.16e network nationwide in 22 cities,” Malik said in the message. “The launch of Wateen's Broadband Internet, Data, Telephony and a fantastic range of value-added services is geared to completely revolutionize the way you communicate from now on.”

Wateen is using Motorola’s WiMAX kit as a broadband access alternative to homes and businesses in its major metropolitan centers, using home gateways and external antenna masts as a fixed-wireless solution in a country which has less than 200,000 DSL lines. Unlike many WiMAX deployments, which target rural or small markets with few broadband resources, Wateen is focusing on the major metro areas—capital Islamabad and urban centers Karachi, Lahore and Peshawar are all on the initial launch list. Though Wateen and Motorola have not revealed the exact scale of the rollout in those markets, the buildouts are likely significant, accounting for the majority of Motorola’s base station and customer premise equipment shipments to date.

Moto has now shipped 2000 base stations and tens of thousands of customer premises equipment units and PC wireless cards, said senior vice president of home and networks mobility Fred Wright. Some of those are going to the 44 active trials Motorola is engaged in worldwide, Wright said, but the majority of that gear is going to commercial deployments, of which Wateen is by far the largest to date.

Motorola’s other two high-profile WiMAX contracts, with Sprint and Clearwire, have garnered most of the headlines, but Motorola is still several months to a year away from a large-scale rollout with either operator. Sprint last week turned up Motorola and Samsung’s first Mobile WiMAX networks in Chicago and Washington D.C./Baltimore, respectively, but the launches were limited to Sprint employees and covered only the downtown cores of each city. Sprint, however, plans to expand the Chicago footprint quickly, moving outward from downtown in the first quarter and launching new networks with Motorola gear in Indianapolis, Detroit, Minneapolis, Kansas City and Grand Rapids, Mich., in 2008.

Meanwhile Clearwire has launched a Mobile WiMAX trial in Portland, Ore, which Wright said covers 40 access point sites today. Clearwire, too, is expected to begin commercial rollouts of WiMAX in 2008, but currently its nationwide broadband wireless networks use proprietary radio technology originally developed by Clearwire subsidiary NextNet and now built by Motorola. Clearwire today reached its own milestone, announcing it has commercially launched its 50^th market, Rochester, N.Y. Clearwire now has 46 markets in the U.S. and four markets in Europe online using the NextNet fixed wireless gear.

Sprint and Clearwire originally planned to combine assets to launch a nationwide WiMAX network, with Sprint focusing on major metro markets and Clearwire on smaller cities, but the deal fell through as Sprint’s financial troubles began to mount (See Sprint CEO resigns and Sprint bleeding customers). The partnership’s dissolving sent off warning bells throughout the industry, and Sprint said it would re-evaluate its highly touted WiMAX plans in the beginning of 2008. Motorola’s Wright, however, said too much has been made of the failed partnership. Both Sprint and Clearwire have committed to their own separate rollout plans, Wright said—the difference is now they will do them separately rather than as a joint venture.

“The result of that announcement is we just go back to the status quo,” Wright said.

Wright added that Motorola is now upping its investment in WiMAX’s competing technology, Long Term Evolution (LTE), which Verizon Communications and partner Vodafone committed to trial in 2008. Motorola was named as one of the trial vendors for LTE, but its public commitment to LTE development and research hasn’t been as pronounced as its competitors, primarily due to its lead in WiMAX. But Wright said that Motorola was only waiting for the market to embrace LTE before its ramped up its R&D—VZW’s commitment was just that sign.

“The LTE standards are not defined, so it would be premature” for Motorola to develop products, Wright said. “Our LTE spend today is what our WiMAX spend was two years ago.” As the 3GPP finalizes the LTE specification and carriers name it as a technology choice, Motorola will have infrastructure and handsets ready just like its competitors, Wright said.

In other WiMAX news, NEC announced last week the name and commercial availability of its global WiMAX platform, Pasowings. NEC started work on the base station and CPE line more than two years ago, signaling its intention to break into the U.S. access equipment market with WiMAX at CTIA in 2006. The Japanese vendor, however, stayed mum for more than a year, saying this month that it would ship commercial equipment by the end of the year.

Also Beceem Communications announced last week it had completed interoperability testing between its Wave 2 Mobile WiMAX chipset and the base stations of Sprint’s infrastructure vendors Samsung, Motorola and Nokia Siemens Networks. The Beceem radio chip is making its way into several of the major vendors CPE solutions, including Motorola and Samsung’s wireless gateways. While Intel is expected to dominate the chipset market for devices, Beceem and competitor Sequans have been gaining more traction among major vendors as Intel has delayed the release of its Wave 2 chip, which will fully support the smart antenna solution being deployed by Sprint. For instance, Motorola tapped Intel silicon to power its first home WiMAX router for Wave 1 deployments, but a Beceem Wave 2 chip powers Moto’s latest CPE unit

The European Recycling Platform (ERP) recycled more than 10,000tonnes of waste electrical goods in the UK during the first three months of the WEEE regime.
Scott Butler, ERP’s UK general manager, said: “I’m delighted by these figures, but I’m not surprised. ERP UK has always been confident that our experience in WEEE management, gained through our operations throughout Europe and combined with our open and pragmatic approach to partnerships with local authorities, would pay dividends.”
Founded by Braun, Electrolux, HP and Sony, ERP now has more than 1050 member companies across Europe and has recycled more than 200,000tonnes of WEEE.
ERP UK has collection contracts covering more than 300 designated collection facilities in the UK, but Butler says size is not ERP’s objective. “We don’t need ERP to be the UK’s biggest compliance scheme; rather, we aim to be the size that delivers the best possible value for our members. That means keeping a balance between our members’ obligations and our collection contracts – and so far, we’re doing just that.”

The Federal Communications Commission said it received 266 applications for the 700 MHz auction, with small and rural telephone companies dominating a field that also includes leading mobile-phone operators, Google Inc., EchoStar Satellite L.L.C., and some surprises.

Nearly two-thirds of the applications were deemed incomplete and must be resubmitted with corrections by the new upfront payment deadline of Jan. 4. The auction, which is predicted to pull in as much as $15 billion for the U.S. Treasury, is set to begin Jan. 24.

AT&T Mobility and Verizon Wireless, the nation’s largest cellular carriers, plan to compete for licenses, while the other two national carriers, Sprint Nextel Corp. and T-Mobile USA Inc., apparently will sit it out. Leading regional carriers Alltel Corp., Leap Wireless International L.L.C. and MetroPCS Communications Inc. are in the mix. So is CDMA technology king Qualcomm Inc. Another 700 MHz applicant, Silicon Valley-backed startup Frontline Wireless L.L.C., plans to bid on the national commercial/public-safety license.

The cable TV and broadcasting (terrestrial and satellite) sectors are represented as well by Bright House Networks, Cox Communications Inc., Cablevision Systems Corp., EchoStar, Public Broadcasting Service and Catholic Church Brooklyn (as Trans Video Communications Inc.) Joining Internet search giant Google, which is expected to bid on the open-access 22 megahertz C Block, is Microsoft Corp. co-founder Paul Allen, who filed as Vulcan Spectrum L.L.C.