1st Emergency Service Based on EGNOS

On Friday in Lisbon, Portugal, Alcatel Alenia Space demonstrated the first emergency service based on EGNOS, a precursor of Galileo. The integrated end-to-end Location-Based Solution (LBS), designed under the coordination of Alcatel Alenia Space, enables the civil security forces and fire brigades to locate emergency calls from mobile phones and efficiently guide the intervention team. Using EGNOS-enhanced accurate positioning integrated with the telecom network and the emergency control center application, the service improves the speed and efficiency of the rescue, increases the team safety and optimizes the resources needed for overall incident management.

This emergency management solution has been developed in the scope of the European research and development project SCORE (Service of Coordinated Operational Emergency & Rescue) using EGNOS. As prime contractor of SCORE, Alcatel Alenia Space is leading a consortium of eight European companies dedicated to establish solutions for emergency call positioning (E112) and rescue force guidance during accidents or natural disasters.

This public emergency service demonstration, which took place with the Portuguese National Service for Fire and Civil Protection (SNBPC), demonstrated the fast and accurate location identification of people in distress as well as that of intervention vehicles and personnel. It provides an integrated solution with the coordination of fire brigade vehicles, resources and individual firefighters during difficult interventions.

“Within the next three years, up to 50 percent of mobile phone users in western Europe are anticipated to use a handset with highly accurate positioning features. This radical new scenario will bring new opportunities to more efficiently coordinate emergency services. This solution, based on EGNOS and later on Galileo, is faster and more robust than stand-alone GPS solutions and more efficient than GSM-based positioning,” said Nicolas de-Ledinghen, VP of Alcatel Alenia Space’s navigation activities.

HP Separates Business Units

HP has announced that its handheld business will be a separate unit within the company’s Personal Systems Group (PSG), enabling the company to provide greater focus and oversight to the multibillion-dollar converged handheld marketplace. The handheld business was previously combined with notebooks as part of the Mobility Business Unit.

Following the move, PSG’s business organization comprises four main product business units: Notebook Computing, Desktops, Workstations and Handhelds. Dave Rothschild has been appointed vice president of the handheld unit. The Notebook Computing Business Unit will continue to be led by Ted Clark, senior vice president and general manager.

“The converged device market is growing at more than 60 percent a year,” said Todd Bradley, executive vice president for PSG. “This realignment positions the handheld team to more clearly focus on navigating this fast-paced market while PSG continues to accelerate its trend of profitable growth.”

Customers Benefit From IBM Tech

The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has released its annual list of the top patentees. With 2,941 granted patents in total, IBM earned more patents than any other company for the 13th consecutive year, breaking the record for the number of patents granted in a single year.

“Once more, IBM has maintained its leadership position by focusing on creation, innovation and valuable commitment,” said Takreem El-Tohamy, GM, IBM Middle East, Egypt and Pakistan. “Investing heavily in research and development, we constantly provide advanced value-added IT solutions to our customers’ businesses worldwide. We have seen how our customers in the Middle East are successfully implementing new technologies and IT services as a result of IBM’s IT solutions derived from these patents.”

IBM also announced an initiative it is undertaking with the USPTO, Open Source Development Labs (OSDL), members of the open source software community and academia that is focused on improving US patent quality. The goal of improving patent quality is to help accelerate innovation worldwide. The initiative has three elements:

• Open Patent Review: A program that seeks to establish an open, collaborative community review within the patenting process to improve the quality of patent examination.

• Open Source Software as Prior Art: A project that will establish open source software — with its millions of lines of publicly available computer source code contributed by thousands of programmers — as potential prior art against patent applications.

• Patent Quality Index: An initiative that will create a unified, numeric index to assess the quality of patents and patent applications.

Efforts devoted to improving patent quality will decrease potential legal threats to open source developers and businesses. IBM believes that patents should be granted only for ideas that embody genuine scientific progress and technological innovations.

Push-to-Talk Comes to Yemen

Motorola has signed a contract with Public Telecommunications Corporation (PTC), a public sector telecoms company in Yemen, for the supply and installation of Motorola’s end-to-end Push-to-Talk over Cellular (POC) solution. As part of the agreement, Motorola will supply infrastructure, servers and mobile devices. Motorola’s POC technology will enable PTC subscribers to engage in walkie-talkie style conversations on their mobile devices. With the push of a button, callers can connect to a list of contacts and initiate a one-to-one or group call.

“Having acquired more than a million subscribers, PTC hopes Motorola’s technology will further increase its share of Yemen’s mobile phone market as well as increase revenue per subscriber,” said Kamal Hussein Al-Jebry, DG at Yemen PTC. “We want to build a technological platform that is scalable, affordable and compatible with existing technologies. Motorola’s POC solution enables PTC to achieve these core objectives.”

This contract with PTC builds on Motorola’s global leadership in the POC market. To date, Motorola has delivered its IMS-based POC solution to 45 separate wireless carriers in 34 countries and territories.

Technology Distributors Association Launched

The region’s first Technology Distributors Association (TDA) has been formed as a platform to represent technology distributors throughout the Middle East, Turkey and Africa regions. TDA’s initial Executive Committee includes some of the region’s most established distributors representing an estimated 25 percent of the MEA’s IT spend. Dr. Ali Baghdadi, CEO of Aptec, was elected its first president.

Speaking at the initial meeting of the Executive Committee, Baghdadi said: “We feel that the region’s (technology distribution) industry has matured to the point where it is necessary to introduce a platform to assure its long-term sustainability by achieving consistent customer satisfaction through promoting a code of professional conduct. As an association, we are absolutely committed to bringing value to our members by speaking as one voice and promoting best practices throughout the region.”

TDA plans to work with its members to look at issues affecting all and to bring benefits to all the stakeholders within the value chain. These issues include vendor and reseller relations, the value the channel brings, credit and insurance, financing matters, legislative matters surrounding IT in the region and promoting ethical business throughout the technology channel.

The executive committee consists of Adnan Al-Falah, GM, Tech Data, ME; Ali Baghdadi, CEO, Aptec, ME; Paul Conradie, CEO Comztek, South Africa; Anthony Fitzhenry, CEO, Axyz, South Africa; John Hurrell, CEO, Westcon, South Africa; Izi Kohen, CEO, Arena, Turkey; Frank Sheu, CEO, Almasa, Middle East; Guy Whitcroft, Tarsus, South Africa; Jacque Chammas, Mindware, Middle East; Raj Shankar, Redington, Middle East; and Mark Lu, Rectron, South Africa.

In addition to the members representing the distribution community, Farouk Hemraj, CEO, Distree Events, and Bob Snyder, CEO, The Distribution Channel, have also been appointed as members of the Executive Committee. Michael Kaack, former VP Europe at Ingram Micro, was appointed an honorary Executive Committee member.

Membership of the association is open to technology distributors operating in the Middle East, Turkey and Africa region, subject to meeting certain entry-level criteria and committing to a code of conduct mutually agreed by TDA’s executive committee. According to Baghdadi, the region’s distributors are encouraged to actively contribute by sending suggestions and comments to the committee on [email protected]. A website for the association will be available shortly.