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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: AlcaLu Booth Tour

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BARCELONA -- Mobile World Congress 2011 -- Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE: ALU) is experiencing something of a resurgence currently as its corporate health improves and the company shows signs of innovation and confidence. (See AlcaLu Ends 2010 on a High, AlcaLu's IP Router Sales Soar, AlcaLu: We're Killing the Base Station and AlcaLu Takes On Acme With SBC Launch.)

But once Mobile World Congress arrived and its giant Hall 6 space attracted thousands of visitors, how confident would its team be when it came to picking out three key products to show off to the wireless community?

AlcaLu 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.

A year ago, the company scored a respectable B+ -- could it improve this year? (See Booth Photo Tour Report Card and MWC 2010 Photos: AlcaLu Booth Tour.)

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

Click thumbnails for full-size image.

Figure 1: Build It & They Will Come...
Alcatel-Lucent decided it was time to break away from the very busy but quite crowded Hall 8 to its own, expansive space. The company's events marketing accounts team may not have seen so many zeros since Geneva 1999...
Figure 2: The Color Purple
Once inside the hall it was clear there was no getting away from the purple haze, though it was pleasant rather than garish. Expect to see it in every photo in this series.
Figure 3: Fee? What Fee??
AlcaLu's media relations manager, Peter Benedict (left), surprises Light Reading's international editor (with a low caffeine level and accompanying lack of humor) with demands for a Hall 6 entry fee. The vendor's Bill Goers (senior director, solutions technology introduction, second from the left) gets the joke, but the vendor's Wireless Division President Wim Sweldens immediately reaches for his wallet to help out. Nice touch...
Figure 4: Starting With Some SPIT
With the clock ticking, Wireless Division President Wim Sweldens opens ALcaLu's gambit with a Service Provider IT (SPIT) product, the 9900 Wireless Network Guardian (WNG), which provides a real-time view of subscribers and applications, according to the vendor. That's critical for mobile operators these days, of course, as more and more data traffic and new applications run across their networks.
Figure 5: Light Reading Checks Out lightRadio
Now we're starting to wonder where the ideas for that name came from... Sweldens moves on to the product that so many people in Barcelona were talking about -- the lightRadio, or "the future of the mobile network," as the AlcaLu team is presenting it. The idea is that the essential elements of traditional mobile base stations and antennas are shrunk so they can be distributed across the network, with the radio access elements (antenna and processing) housed in a tiny cube. Sweldens says commercial availability is set for 2012, but that an alpha version will be available for trials this year.
Figure 6: Mobile Network Bling
It's so... so shiny! The lightRadio has an aura about it. Whether it will work in a production mobile network is another matter, of course.
Figure 7: Is It Edible?
With afternoon tea time approaching, Light Reading's international editor wonders what kind of sauce might go best with a plate of lightRadios. AlcaLu's Peter Benedict had some genuine suggestions.
Figure 8: Radio Network Planning? Or Cocktail Hour?
With no actual cocktail shakers to hand, the AlcaLu team explains how the lightRadio cube can be stacked as more access capacity is required.
Figure 9: Making a Policy Point
With the 10 minutes nearly up, it was time for Bill Goers to present product number three, which was the 5780 Dynamic Services Controller, AlcaLu's policy server, or Policy and Charging Rules Function (PCRF). Goers stressed the ability of the product to better enable the delivery of high capacity data services, working in tandem with the 9900 Wireless Network Guardian shown earlier, and so increase the value of each packet running across a mobile operator's network. The AlcaLu man added, just before the clock ran down, that the 5780 is unusual among its PCRF peers in that it has interfaces to the network and to off-network partners, allowing an operator to open up the platform's capabilities to third-party applications developers.
Figure 10: Table Stakes
With the 10 minutes up, we took a quick wander around, and found, among the home networking gadgets on show in ALcaLu's hall, a touch-screen tabletop designed for gaming and social networking. One for wealthy youngsters, then.
Figure 11: Another Dimension
It was time to head out, with just a quick peek at some 3-D displays, which were also purple. With the tour over, we assessed what we had seen and heard. The products were relevant, were well presented, and showed an interesting mix of technologies for now and the near future. This was AlcaLu's best effort to date, and gets the company an A- grade.

All photos by Siqui Sánchez/Getty Images. He can't be held responsible for the captions, though.

— Ray Le Maistre, International Managing Editor, Light Reading
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umutaltun
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Thursday March 10, 2011 9:27:15 AM
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I see Cisco now has a serious competition. Goog to see that juice back...

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Official Mobile World Congress Site: www.mobileworldcongress.com