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Mobile World Congress Videos

Light Reading's Show Site: Barcelona, Spain  |  February 27 - March 1

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MWC 2011 Photos: NSN Booth Tour

BARCELONA -- Mobile World Congress 2011 -- As ever, NSN was a major presence at this year's wireless jamboree in Barcelona, occupying its usual Hall 8 corner spot where it's able to host customers and partners and keep a keen eye on who is gaining access to its displays and conversations. (See MWC 2011: NSN Chases 'Spy' off Stand and MWC 2011: NSN Talks Up LTE, Hints at M&A.)

But what were, in its view, the three key products it wanted to show off at this year's MWC? And what could it communicate about them in just 10 minutes with a telephoto lens poking in its virtual face?

NSN was one of seven vendors we visited this year with our resident photographer. We gave them all just 10 minutes to talk about, and show off, the three products they felt were the most important/cutting-edge/game-changing, etc.

So with NEC Corp. (Tokyo: 6701) already visited -- see MWC 2011 Photos: NEC Booth Tour -- we ventured into NSN's village to find out if NSN could perform as well as it did last year, when it achieved the equal-highest grade. (See MWC 2010 Photos: Nokia Siemens Booth Tour and Booth Photo Tour Report Card.)

Check out the pictures below, with accompanying text, and find out how we (totally subjectively) graded NSN's overall effort by reading the final picture caption.

Click thumbnails for full-size image.

Figure 1: Hard to Get a Parking Space
We pulled up at the entrance to NSN's "experience center" (known as "the NSN village") to begin the 10-minute session. Parking was free. And the tour began outside the security cordon, just the other side of the car.
Figure 2: You Have Two Minutes...
Actually that should be "Yuave" two minutes, because Michael Angelov had about 120 seconds to tell me about Yuave, a cloud-based messaging platform that enables individuals and companies to customize the way they interact with friends, contacts and customers, whether using interactive voice response (IVR) tools, messaging or social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter.
Figure 3: More on Yuave
NSN's Angelov added that three service providers currently have pilot services using Yuave, one of which is Cubio, a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) in Finland. When it announced how it was using the platform -- find out more at this link -- it didn't have the Yuave name, though.
Figure 4: Into the Village We RAN
We ventured into the village, where the crowds parted before our telescopic lens. Then we ran to the, er, RAN (radio access network) hardware section...
Figure 5: Access Advances
Next up was NSN's Single RAN advanced system that is targeted at mobile operators looking to make use of their 1800MHz spectrum for LTE. NSN believes there is growing interest in the use of that channel for LTE and that devices are already on their way to support any such deployments.
Figure 6: RAN Bam Thank You Mam!
Head of Mobile Broadband Marketing Kai Sahala whipped out his best pointy finger and told us that the Single RAN Advanced is capable of simultaneously supporting GSM and LTE in the same 1800MHz band. A few years ago people would have called that the devil's work...
Figure 7: On the Piste
Completing the round was Jane Rygaard, head of OSS Marketing and Communications, who looked like she was ready to hit the ski slopes as she delivered the details of product number three.
Figure 8: Virtual OSS
NSN has developed a virtual version of its NetAct OSS platform that can be used by operators and systems integrators as an on-demand test bed, enabling new network platforms (especially IP systems that often don't come with their own OSS) to be made ready for deployment much quicker. NSN's Rygaard says the system is in pilot with a few key customers and is set to become commercially available in the second quarter.
Figure 9: The Connected Car
With the 10-minute tour complete we took a quick wander around and found a toy car fitted with webcams that were projecting a 3-D image onto a screen via an LTE connection as it was driven around its tiny circuit. We crashed the car in about 3 seconds...
Figure 10: Always Watch the Road
Just because you're wearing 3-D glasses, it doesn't mean you don't have to watch where your radio-controlled toy car is going. No wonder there was an accident.
Figure 11: Back to the Wheels
So that was it for another year at the NSN village, which should include Motorola technology next year too. As usual the team was well prepared, rehearsed and had a set of presentations that were relevant to today's market, where applications delivery, network integration and management, and state-of-the-art radio access developments are all high on the mobile service provider's agenda. For those reasons, NSN gets an A-- grade.

All photos by Siqui Sánchez/Getty Images. The captions are not his fault, though.

— Ray Le Maistre, International Managing Editor, Light Reading
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Official Mobile World Congress Site: www.mobileworldcongress.com