There was a significant amount of Next Generation Communications news this past week, befitting both the buzz around the annual CES (News - Alert) show in Las Vegas as well as increased momentum in the wireless space. You’ll also notice that because of the way in which the holidays fell, we gave our feature writers a breather this week, but they’ll be back in force next week with items on a variety of subjects ranging from increasing network efficiency via High Leverage Networking, the importance of next-gen communications for the smart grid, to the important area of Diameter signaling and some interesting innovations coming out of CES relating to the cloud.
A good place to start in the review of the news is with the announcement that community host Alcatel-Lucent (News 
- Alert), for the second year in a row, was named a Top 100 Global Innovator. This is a prestigious recognition and shows that despite the company’s challenges, it remains committed to investing innovation, and should be added to using its unique approach to drive faster product realization.
Now for all of the news coming out of the CES show.
- It’s not just service providers thinking about leveraging 4G LTE, as witnessed by the fact that Audi AG will include in the latest Audi A3 4G LTE wireless connectivity, powered by the MDM9215, a second-generation Gobi multi-mode 3G/4G LTE chipset from Qualcomm (News - Alert) Technologies, Inc.
- TCL Communication rolled out two new-to-market mobile devices, including a thinner, sharper and faster modular tablet with an end-user upgradeable 3G/4G module and a mobile Internet Key with Wi-Fi LTE hotspot capabilities.
- Continuing with the LTE theme, Altair Semiconductor and Yota Devices used CES to reveal a new strategic partnership, under which Yota Devices is using Altair's FourGee technology to power the new generation of Yota Devices' USB dongle that will be deployed on Yota Russia's LTE network.
- Finally, Alcatel-Lucent’s ngConnect program was one of the highlights of the CES and Tantalus, a provider of smart grid communications, who chose the venue to announce it had joined program and will be contributing its expertise regarding its IP-enabled smart grid gateway for servicing the company’s TUNet smart meters and devices.
In other industry news, Agilent (News - Alert) Technologies Inc., specialists in chemical analysis, life sciences, diagnostics, electronics and communications, has unveiled a set of LTE-Advanced 8x8 MIMO signal-generation and analysis solutions.
Lastly, there were two reports from research firm ABI of note that should be heartening to the industry. ABI says that following a lackluster performance and negative growth in the first half of 2012, femtocell shipments in the second half more than doubled, and 2013 is looking good.
ABI also shared some insight as to what is going on in the 4G LTE device market, with little surprise that 95 percent went to the North American and Asia-Pacific market.
Features
As noted above, our feature folks got a well-earned break this week, but in case you too were busy last week you may wish to check out last week’s features which included items on: HetNetsVDSL2 vectoring and backhauled 4G LTE. , network management solutions,
Weekend reading
For this weekend’s suggested reading, I would recommend two Alcatel-Lucent TechZine articles:
I also want to continue to recommend the recent webinar, SDN: Let’s Cut The Hype, What is the Reality?Alcatel-Lucent WebRTC dynamic video composition on a web page, and Alcatel-Lucent iCocoon: Immersive Video Conferencing System. Very cool!
This is a very hot topic in the industry, and the webinar is a great way to get your feet wet on the issues. Plus, the community Resource Center has updated whitepapers, videos and case studies. In fact, two video I recommend are:
Want to learn more about the latest in communications and technology? Then be sure to attend ITEXPO Miami 2013, Jan 29- Feb. 1 in Miami, Florida. Stay in touch with everything happening at ITEXPO (News - Alert). Follow us on Twitter.
