CDG awards industry innovations: RCR Wireless News partners on enterprise award

SAN DIEGO – The CDMA Development Group handed out their 2009 CDMA Industry Achievement Awards at this year’s 3G CDMA Americas Regional Conference in San Diego, Calif., this week. Winners were selected by industry ballots and included companies and individuals leading the deployment of products and services using the CDMA family of technologies.
In partnership with RCR Wireless News, the CDG presented its award for “Innovation in Wireless Enterprise Solutions Development” to Airwalk Communications for its EdgePoint PRO Enterprise Femtocell. The device is targeted at the enterprise market allowing businesses to increase wireless signal penetration within buildings.
RCR Wireless News also partnered with the CDG to award the “Innovation in Wireless Social and Economic Solutions Development” to India’s Reliance Communications for its work with Reliance Energy in deploying CDMA2000-enabled Automated Meter Reading modems across Mumbai to automatically and remotely read electrical power meters from a central location. The in-house developed modems are installed at the customers’ premises and then verified through remote software to check the connectivity with the remote server. A forward and backward integration of the AMR server with existing platforms was developed to provide an end-to-end solution for billing, analyzing the load on the grid, logging critical parameters and checking for meter tampering. Reliance claims the solution has “resulted in reducing billing and accounting errors, leading to consumer satisfaction in this challenging emerging market.”
Other winners this year included:
–The “Industry Leadership” award was presented to Fran O’Brien, technology director of wireless standards development and industry relations at Alcatel-Lucent. The CDG noted O’Brien received this award “for his significant contributions to the CDMA industry while leading Alcatel-Lucent’s standards engineering efforts, global spectrum policy development and industry relations for the past 15 years.”
–The “Operator Leadership” award was presented to China Telecom and Verizon Wireless.
The CDG noted of China Telecom that since launching its CDMA2000 1x EV-DO Revision A mobile broadband services at the beginning of 2009, the carrier has extended the network to more than 500 cities nationwide. “China Telecom is now serving more than 48 million CDMA2000 subscribers, an increase of 20 million new users within the past 9 months.”
For Verizon Wireless, the CDG noted the carrier’s “contributions to industry-wide device efforts have had a positive impact on all operators and vendors worldwide. Most notably, Verizon’s Open Development Initiative (ODI) has encouraged innovators and developers from around the world to design, produce and market new products and services that leverage the ‘open’ interaction between the device radio and Verizon Wireless’ network. This strategically important initiative has led to a large selection of CDMA2000 devices.”
–The “Subscriber Technology Innovation” award was presented to Airvana for its HubBub CDMA2000 femtocell that allows enterprises and consumers to consolidate their office and home telephony and broadband Internet access services with a single preferred mobile service provider.
–The “Network Technology Innovation” award was presented to Alcatel Lucent for its lead role in the standardization of enhanced High-Rate Packet Data (eHRPD), known commercially as the enhanced EV-DO core and radio network. The CDG noted that “by March 2009, all 3GPP2 eHRPD standards were essentially completed, 15 months from when the proposed standard was introduced to 3GPP2. This aggressive timeline was accomplished largely due to the technological expertise and effective shepherding conducted by Alcatel-Lucent.”
–The “Innovation in Consumer Entertainment Services” award was presented to Japan’s KDDI Corp. for its au Smart Sports application that combines 3-axis motion sensor and GPS-enabled geopositioning, and enhanced server capabilities, including healthcare-relevant applications and customer record storage. The service allows users to measure the number of steps made while exercising, estimate calorie consumption and record their heart rate with data wirelessly uploaded to a storage server and shared through PC access.
–The “Innovation in Consumer Entertainment Services Development” award was presented to IREX Technologies for its Digital Reader DR800SG device that features an 8.1-inch stylus touchscreen and high-speed access and access to digital books and other titles from Barnes & Noble’s ebook store via Verizon Wireless’ EV-DO network. The device has 2 gigabytes of memory to store up to 1,500 books, which can be purchased over-the-air along with newspapers and magazines from a wide variety of sources. The IREX also supports multiple formats, including the industry standard ePub display format and multiple digital rights management solutions.