U Mobile in Malaysia Has Been Launched!

The 4th company operating GSM/UMTS mobile networks has officially operating and launched its products in Malaysia this year (post paid service per April 15th 2008). This company supports only UMTS (or well known as 3G) network only (of course it is the benefit of newly launched operator, that is not having to support older network - GSM). Unlike its competitors which already have customers that are using older model of mobile phones that only supports older network, new mobile operators have the benefit of skipping the older (and obsolete) technology.

Previously known as MiTV Networks Sdn Bhd, The U Mobile in many ways provide advanced services, such as automatic detection and settings of mobile device. The network MSC is able to detect and cooperate with the device automatic configuration system to successfully.

The 3G and 3.5G (HSDPA) data connections provide customers with live multimedia streaming experience never experienced before. The 3G (termed 3rd generation GSM network) enabled faster data connection, video teleconferencing, video on demand services.

The company's portal, http://u.com.my/ known to be using JEE Portal technology and Java based Enterprise CMS under the hood. It is obvious when you see the URL of the articles contains the jsession=xxxx such as:

http://u.com.my/umobile/cmportal.portal;jsessionid=ySzHL2JQ80TS223GvghvGCTGJ9HthjnGQRvD95lvJX2yTlqVpR1M!1378328549!-1002006469?_nfpb=true&_pageLabel=umobileportal_portal_page_in_the_news

It's good to see a project that you were involved in now goes into production...

Market Still Being Reluctant Towards Migrating to IMS-based Platform

A recent poll by Comptel Corporation (OMX Helsinki: CTL1V), the leading vendor of dynamic Operations Support Software (OSS), found that operators around the globe have still not fully decided on a migration path to IMS. The poll, conducted at Comptel’s annual User Group forum, showed that while a third (32%) of operators worldwide had decided to move towards an IMS architecture within next 2 years, another 32% had made no plans with regards to adoption.

In my opinion,

IMS sounds like the Holy Grail for integrating land line and mobile networks, which everybody already agreed that most likely it will  be based on TCP/IP and UDP/IP stack. The adoption itself is no such an easy task, especially for already operating telecom operator.

My experience working with some telecom operators in Indonesia and Malaysia has shown that it is not that easy to implement a new paradigm in infrastructure for already operating telecom operator. Their main concern normally would be to keep the subscribers services. Migrating the system is not first priority. Maintaining current subscribers are first priority.

For newly launched telecom operators, it would very well make sense to adopt the latest technology straight away because there would be less entry barrier to adopt the new technology.  As it is common in communications, electronics and telecommunications, the latest technology usually is much cheaper than the older ones.