CTIA 2010: Camiant Lands LTE Gig at Verizon

Camiant Inc. has bagged one of the most prestigious deals in the small, but still important, policy management sector by landing a role in Verizon Wireless 's Long Term Evolution (LTE) rollout plans. (See Verizon Uses Camiant for LTE and Camiant Sprinkles In LTE.)

Camiant, which has been boasting about a major LTE deal in the past few weeks, is supplying its Policy and Charging Rules Function (PCRF) server -- the Multimedia Policy Engine (MPE) -- to help Verizon Wireless instigate rules and controls around its LTE customers' consumption of multimedia data traffic. It will also be used to manage some 3G data traffic. (See Camiant Touts Success, LTE Deal.)

No commercial terms were announced.

Verizon Wireless's LTE roadmap has been one of the main topics of discussion in Las Vegas this week. The operator plans to launch commercial LTE services in up to 30 markets before the end of 2010, and has been talking about its pre-launch test plans at the CTIA show. (See Ike Tests Verizon's LTE, CTIA Update: Opening Day at CTIA, LTE Watch: More Verizon Speed Tidbits, AT&T, Verizon Undecided on LTE Pricing, Report: Verizon Plans LTE Phone by Mid-2011, and LTE Watch: Verizon Promises Big Footprint.)

Policy control capabilities are key to mobile operators' data traffic management strategies and an increasingly important weapon in their Service Provider Information Technology (SPIT) armories. (See Policy Matters to Mobile Broadband Operators and The SPIT Manifesto.)

And it's a hot topic in Las Vegas this week. (See CTIA 2010: Telcordia Gets Personal With Policy.)

Camiant's news will come as a blow to its rival, Bridgewater Systems Corp. (Toronto: BWC), which is the incumbent policy management systems supplier at Verizon Wireless and which unveiled its LTE product suite last September. (See Bridgewater Wins at Verizon and Bridgewater Debuts LTE Suite.)

— Ray Le Maistre, International Managing Editor, Light Reading