Predictions for UMA 2007

Well, it’s that time of the year, when we take stock of where we have come from and evaluate where we are going. 2006 was very good for UMA technology, four launches by well known operators. But what’s the prognosis for 2007? More of the same?

Handsets models available will more than double

This is an easy one. Today Samsung, Nokia and Motorola each have a UMA device available. But Nokia has already announced a second unit and it’s easy to see new models coming from Samsung and Motorola. Then rumors abound about RIM and Sagem jumping into the market. But the UMAer has some inside information about some early players in the UMA handset market coming back strong in 2007 with new units. Double? Perhaps we should say triple the units in 2007.

Subscriber counts will go through the roof...

Well, that depends on how high the roof is, but if the UMA roof is 1m subscribers in 2007, then rest assured that we’ll see far more than that. Orange quietly predicted 1m subscribers in 2007 in France alone. That’s just under 5% of their total mobile base in France. If France, UK and Spain all get 5% subscriber penetration in 2007, Orange alone will have about 2m subscribers on UMA. T-Mobile in the US, with 25m subscribers, will likely do a similar number depending on how early in the year the service launches. But I happen to believe T-Mobile will have 1m UMA subscribers on net in 2007.

The others: Telecom Italia needs to resolve political issues before any significant traction will start, but indications are that the dust is settling. Telia, with all their excellent work, only has 1.5m mobile subscribers in Denmark. Saunalahti, committed to announcing their service in 2006. But let’s not forget the granddaddy of UMA offer, BT Fusion, which recently added Wi-Fi to the service offer. Subscriber counts are rumored to be anywhere from 30,000 to (a now discredited) 100,000. Unfortunately, at this point it’s clear Fusion isn’t going to be the 1m subscriber service they hoped for.

More operators launch service

UMA service is available in FR, UK, IT, ES, PL, NL, DK and FI. Not bad, but that’s with four service providers. The trend I believe will happen in 2007 is that a second operator in those countries will jump in with a UMA service to responds with a competitive threat. We should see at least four new operator/country launches in 2007.

VCC will actually be understood by the market

2006 was a year of VCC hype. VCC is the great white hope of fixed line operators everywhere to reign in FMS and put mobile calling back on the fixed network. Few of those discussing the “benefits” of VCC actually understand what it can, and far more importantly, what it can NOT do. My prediction is that in 2007 the market will actually understand what VCC can and can’t do.

Soon the market will uncover VCC. The “success” of T-One and other fixed line dual mode services will come to light and it will serve to highlight that UMA is the long term strategy for converging mobile and WiFi technologies.


So, are these really “predictions”? The UMAer has a lot of inside information. Perhaps this is just foreshadowing.

DMH = FMC

Well, now that there is a study, it’s true. When asked what constitutes fixed-mobile convergence service, 75% of the respondents in a recent study proposed by FMC vendor Outsmart said dual mode handsets (DMH).

But FMC can mean many things, others mentioned in the survey include single billing (34%), a home zone rate plan (27%), voice mail convergence (13%) or a “Skype-like” solution (9%).

I think the funniest one in the list is the homezone rate plan, which presumably is the concept of giving consumers lower cost mobile calling when they are in a certain cell zone in their homes. This is, of course, a completely cellular solution with no reliance on the fixed network, ironic in an FMC survey.

We here at UMAToday have discussed the differences of FMC and FMS in the past. The conclusion was that UMA fits into either camp. So if DMH = UMA, and DMH = FMC, then UMA must equal FMC.

Given that FMC is being viewed as the business case driver for IMS, and now we know that DMH = FMC, it’s no wonder why there is so much pressure to get the pending VCC specification completed. VCC is the specification to make DMH work which equals FMC which is the business case driver for IMS.

The math is getting pretty complicated.

For some reason, I thought FMC was about helping operators lower operational costs by bringing disparate fixed and mobile networks together as well as providing a common service architecture. I guess it’s simpler than that, FMC = DMH.

Fixed-Mobile Substitution in Germany

The Wall Street Journal reported today about the continued management shake-up at Deutsche Telekom.

For those following at home, last month Kai-Uwe Ricke who ran all of DT was replaced by Rene Obermann, previously the head of T-Mobile.

In today’s announcement, Hamid Akhavan, formerly the CTO of T-Mobile, will now head the division. Robert Dotson, CEO of T-Mobile US, will now report directly to DT’s executive board, a move designed to raise the visibility of the unit.

And most interesting, Timotheus Hottges, who was the sales and services executive at T-Mobile, succeeds Walter Raizner as the CEO of T-Com, the fixed line unit of DT. Interesting, now DT is lead by mobile-raised executives.



FMC means a lot of things, but one dimension is politically how the fixed unit and mobile units of an integrated operator converge. It seems obvious, but the consumer brands of these company’s is moving from fixed to mobile (witness Orange over France Telecom). DT’s announcements serve to highlight that now, at least in Germany, the future is mobile.

Given that UMA is for mobile operator and the mobile side of an integrated operator, this continues to be good news.

VCC, of course, is fixed-line operator-centric, and continues to face an uphill battle in the continuing FMC debates.

Nokia Turns up the Heat

Today Nokia announced a second UMA-enabled handset to meet demand initially for the Orange unik service roll-outs. The 6086 has a suggested price of just €200 (why do people continue to say these things are expensive?) before any operator subsidies.

Additionally Nokia says the phone has a talk time of (ready for this?) 5 hours on GSM, and 6 hours on WiFi. (http://europe.nokia.com/A4254246)

They qualify it as “pure” GSM or WiFi, meaning without handing the phone between networks. Again, why do people say power management is an issue?

The "problem" with power management comes from the fact that the most of the dual mode devices people can try (HTC, HP, E61) don’t have UMA. Why is that important? Because with UMA, when the phone is on Wi-Fi, the GSM radio goes to sleep, and vice versa, thus leaving a single radio on and conserving power.

But with a non-UMA phone, when the phone is in Wi-Fi, the only way to get a call on the mobile number is to have both the GSM radio on AND the Wi-Fi radio on. As they say in the battery business: not cool.

This latest addition joins the rumored N95 device which is coming soon. Nokia is coming on strong to take a lead in UMA-enabled handsets. Excellent.

Blackberry goes UMA

The rumors are on the websites now, so we might as well post it here as well. Blackberry's new Crimson model is a more consumer friendly unit with a UMA-enabled Wi-Fi. The device has been rumored for a while, and it looks like the plans are firming up. Look for it spring 2007...

UMA Wins!

Last night the Financial Times held a gala dinner in London to hand out the World Communications Awards recognizing leadership and excellences in the telecom market.

UMA was entered in the Technology Innovation category. Up against strong competitors like RIM, Icera and QUALCOMM, UMA prevailed and took top honors.

The market is starting to realize that UMA is for real. All indications are the UMA will be huge in 2007, surpassing expectations. Get ready.

3's bold move

Last week, mobile provider 3 launched a flat rate data plan. Similar to fixed line broadband services today (ie, my DSL line), 3 is offering subscribers unlimited data packet services over its high speed 3G data network, escentially becoming a mobile ISP (yet with real assets like spectrum).

Like it or 3G client for companies developing 3G handsets.

I think we’ll see 3G handsets available in the middle of next year, just about the time 3 realizes that to make the service really work, it needs to lean on the fixed network (and Wi-Fi) to lighten the load.

Feedback on T-Mobile's service

Here is a link to a National Public Radio (NPR) show recorded in Seattle on KUOW.

http://www.kuow.org/defaultProgram.asp?ID=11770


Host John Moe interviews Glenn Fleishman, national technology columnist, editor of Wi-Fi Networking News, and a resident of the Seattle area.

Glenn has signed up for T-Mobile’s HotSpot @Home service and here he comments on his experiences with the service as well as the potential impact in the market.

Not unik any more...

Currently on France Telecom's main home page, front and center, the lead service/advertising message is unik:


As a service, unik is not something hidden on a back page, buried in other calling packages. It's clear that Orange/FT is making a major marketing and sales push around unik and UMA.

FT, one of the 10 largest service providers in the world, has put its weight behind the technology, and frankly the supply chain is listening. There has been a dramatic increase in activity in the handset/device ecosystem around UMA. New platforms and handset manufacturers are jumping in to meet the demand being created by Orange markeking this service to its more than 60m mobile subscribers. Are you ready?

A new UMA phone from Nokia?

We love rumor here at UMAToday.com, and we're always on the look-out for news about new models of UMA devices.

One alert reader pointed us to the Esato blog/message board where a discussion was underway around which model Nokia to buy, the P990i or the new N95. As you can see, the N95 is a dual mode device which is touted as having UMA (as well as a 5 meg pixel camera, ideal for WiFi uploads!)

The poster from Toronto mentions the N95 is a Jan 07 device. We here at UMAToday.com can't wait to see it.

VCC from the inside

From the UMA perspective, VCC or Voice Call Continuity, is an emerging specification designed for a fixed line operator to hold on to a mobile call when the phone is operating over Wi-Fi/IP in the home, then transfer the call to the mobile operator when the subscriber leaves the home.

VCC is also touted at the “alternative” to UMA. VCC proponents are quick to point out that the specification will be finalized “shortly” and devices are “coming soon”. Of course UMA is shipping and deployed today and is already the de-facto standard to which any VCC service must measure up.

However, I wanted to take a moment to comment on a piece that came out in Oct 2006 around the IMS World Forum in San Diego.

The piece was released by the IMS Forum, a recognized industry organization leading the charge to drive standards and lead interoperability testing, and gives a view of the challanges of developing the new specification.

Read it here.


I think the piece is interesting because it’s one of the first honest assessments of the state of VCC from the “inside”. It was developed by an organization ostensible focused on helping VCC come to market.

IMS Forum chairman Michael Khalilian comments: “It is well recognized that the handover is a technical challenge for convergence solutions of two drastically different networks, i.e. Wi-Fi SIP and cellular.”

Finally we get an inkling of the enormous task VCC is out to solve, bridging call control between two completely independent and technically different (packet/SIP vs circuit/GSM).

The article “warns of significant hurdles [that] must first be addressed before the opportunity [of VCC] can be realized.”

Tops on the list:
- Supplementary Services. This means everything your phone can do beyond making a call. It includes SMS, MMS, ringtones, games downloads, as well as telephony services like conference calling and 3 way calling. Yes, none of that is supported in VCC today or tomorrow. It all needs to be defined.

Beyond supplemental service support, the article lists:
- the reliance on CAMEL for handover
- dealing with multimedia session mobility
- setting realistic timeframes for rollouts.

There is some real work to be done to get VCC to the same level as UMA.

And this is just a drop in the bucket. On his blog, industry pundit Dean Bubley wrote about the next hurdle facing the IMS world, asking what exactly is an “IMS handset”? It’s not defined and an industry standard is a very long ways off.

It's easy to believe the hype that VCC will be able to magically maintain service transparency and service quality balancing between two completely different and independent networks. Oh and it will all be buttoned up and deployed in less than a year. A realistic VCC service is much farther off than anyone can predict.

FMC or FMS

Recently Mark Newman, the chief research officer at Informa, wrote a piece titled “Price bundles and ‘cheap’ mobile steal FMC’s thunder”. This got me thinking, is UMA a technology for “FMC” or “FMS”?

As with all these things, it depends on your definition. And often the definition depends on your perspective (fixed operator, wireless operator, MVNO, alternative provider).

Fixed-Mobile Converge (FMC), literally defined, means converging the services, devices and networks into a single, common application architecture. FMC means getting (and delivering) the same services over the fixed network as over the mobile network. This is more the vision of integrated operators with both fixed and mobile assets (Telecom Italia, Orange/FR, Deutsche Telecom). Quite frankly, this is the vision of IMS.

Fixed-to-mobile substitution (FMS) is much more of a service strategy/vision. The idea is to provide sufficient incentives to subscribers to stop using their fixed line phones and to begin using their mobile phones (thus “substituting” usage from fixed to mobile). FMS is being pursued in earnest by stand-alone mobile operators like T-Mobile US, Orange/UK, and O2/DE.

So where does UMA fit?

Operators deploying UMA are offering “flat rate” calling packages when in the home or office. These flat rate plans are designed to give subscribers the incentive to use their mobile phones for all calling services. Since UMA is targeting the home and office, where most fixed line calling happens, it’s fair to say that UMA is a technology approach for FMS.

But for operators like Telecom Italia/TIM, Telia Sonera, and Orange/France Telecom, UMA is being used as the technology for delivering mobile services over the fixed (broadband) network. In these cases, UMA is first technology to cross the FMC bridge, and because UMA can be used to deliver IMS services/applications, it can be viewed as the first viable FMC technology.

The reality is that UMA is used for both FMC and FMS services depending on the operator and their business/market requirements.

For FMS, there are competing approaches, the cellular “homezone” being a popular one. Comparing UMA to homezones offers several pros and cons based on market and business issues in the region.

For FMC, there is talk about the future VCC specification being able to bridge the fixed and mobile networks together. UMA can deliver mobile services of the fixed (broadband) network today and offers several other advantages.

One thing is clear, UMA is for mobile operators (integrated or stand-alone). How they use it (for FMC or FMS) depends on market and business requirements.

When the "homezone" is free

I was talking with a colleague about mobile-only “homezone” services. These services, quite popular in Germany, give subscribers deep discounts (ie “free”) for calls made within a cellular “zone”, typically around the home. The zone can be as simple as the cell tower nearest the subscriber’s home, or based on 3G “triangulation” techniques to draw a virtual circle around the subscriber’s home.

For calls made within that zone (or circle), two things happen: First, the subscriber gets a deep discount because they are in the zone, and two the mobile operator uses the same network infrastructure to carry calls. The result for the operator is that calls within the home zone are under significant profit pressure.

Apparently one product manager at an operator offering such a service has first hand knowledge of the price pressure. The story is that his wife lives and works within the zone. Because all the mobile calls made within the zone are free, the man’s wife pays nothing for the vast majority of her mobile usage.

The point is home zones and quite often office zones are free or will be free very soon. This is because in the home or office, there is real competition from both fixed line phones as well as new VoIP service providers.

Faced with this incredible competitive pressure, mobile operators are forced to develop artificial zones with artificial pricing to match these disruptive service providers.

While cellular based home zones will “solve” the problem in the short term, the reality is that operators cannot pay real network transport costs when the revenue collected is zero. Pricing below cost is a recipe for disaster.

This is the beauty of UMA. With UMA, operators can offer free services because they are using the same “free” Wi-Fi/IP network infrastructure the upstart VoIP providers are using. Second, UMA provides a zone that’s exactly the same size as the zone a VoIP provider has, namely the range of a Wi-Fi access point. With UMA, operators get a very targeted home zone, not one that covers an entire town or village.

There is no doubt that homezones are viewed as a “quick fix” to the pricing pressures faced by operators today. And it's clear what consumers want: Cheap Voice.

In the end, voice is a commodity, and the way to win is to be on the lowest cost access network. That’s what UMA does for mobile operators.

The Hybrid Strategy

McKinsey has an excellent, free (with registration) series on the mobile telecoms market.

This week’s installment featured interviews with both T-Mobile Croatia’s CMO as well as Jon Erik Haug, the head of consumer mobile business for Telenor in Norway.

An excerpt from the interview:

McKinsey: Should mobile operators launch flat-rate schemes to head-off the VoIP threat?

JON ERIK HAUG: Ideally, operators should try to avoid flat rates as long as fixed-to-mobile convergence continues. Operators should, however, be ready to launch hybrid plans, that is to say, price plans with flat-rate elements, in areas where the treat from alternative technology is imminent – such as, for example, the home.

We at UMAToday couldn’t agree more. What strikes a cord is Mr. Haug’s approach to provide differentiated service plans which best match the competitive environment.

The threat from wireless VoIP providers is highest in places where WiFi exists, specifically in the home and office. Rather than re-structuring the entire mobile pricing plan to counter a flat-rate competitor, develop a hybrid strategy. Limit flat rate pricing to Wi-Fi zones (home/ office), and retain the valuable per-minute pricing of the general mobile network.

UMA is the ideal technology for operators to precisely target locations with the highest competitive threats, and then use the same technology (Wi-Fi) to achieve similar cost structures and beat the competition. And this all occurs without having to de-value existing mobile plans.

Does it measure up?

I was on a call the other day with a very large service provider involved in UMA. Unpromted, the technical manager on the call said: "UMA is now the bar by which we measure any other FMC technology." Excellent!

While this should be the case, it was very comforting to to hear. UMA is one of the few technologies available today. There are vendor proprietary solutions and "pre-VCC" solutions, but UMA is the first standardized approach. And frankly, I think UMA has set the comparitive bar very high.

The user experience for UMA is exactly the same on Wi-Fi as on GSM, it supports full mobility of packet services (for SIP and IMS), it fits into the existing mobile network OSS/BSS and it is quite straight-forward to deploy

Because the specification is still being finalized, it's hard to tell what a VCC product will really do. But from what I've seen so far, UMA doens't have much to worry about.

UMA Keeps Delivering

Patrick Donegan from Heavy Reading has a new research report out on dual-mode cellular/Wi-Fi services titled "WirelessVOIP & the Future of Carrier Voice Services".

In an Unstrung article, Patrick makes the point that while the market is just getting started, there’s “still something left out of the total value proposition” for dual mode services.

But after reading the article, I can’t help thinking he really meant that there’s “still something left out of the total value proposition ...for non-UMA based services.”

Take a read, see if you agree. But for the “issues” listed, it seemed like UMA-based solutions were covered. The point being made was that it was really the non-UMA based solutions which were missing something. I couldn't agree more.

That darn UMA, it keeps delivering what operators and subscribers want.

T-Mobile... Finally

Well, for us in the UMA community, the launch of T-Mobile’s service in Seattle this week comes with a big sigh of... FINALLY! T-Mobile has been refining their service offer for months and completed an incredible amount of pre-market validation, through multiple, exhaustive trials to work through issues.

The result is a targeted service launch designed to start slow but quickly roll out across the country. The rumor is that you can take your UMA phone to any T-Mobile hotspot in the country and it will work, i.e. the entire T-Mo US footprint has been provisioned with the service.

In fact I was talking to one analyst who was taking the phone to Korea to see if the service would work over Wi-Fi from the hotel. That’s one way to get GSM phones to work in a CDMA environment.

The one comment I’ve heard several times now is that the $20/month price point seems high. I think this is classic early market adopter pricing. There is a certain percentage of the market with high demand and low price sensitivity, and T-Mobile might as well capture what revenues they can from that market now while they are the only provider in the market.

But it doesn’t take a genius to look ahead a couple years. $20 becomes $15, which becomes $10, then $5... then does voice over Wi-Fi (in the home and office) simply become free as part of a $40/month cellular plan?

With UMA, T-Mobile’s cost structure is optimized to support such a service plan. The interesting question is, what do the other operators do?

How's your Dutch?

Today Orange Netherlands went live with their Unique service offer.

My Dutch is a bit rusty, but it looks like the offer is similar to the France offer, with a twist...


In addition to the mobile and fixed calling, it looks like Unique offers €2,5/min calling to other countries.

Orange is certainly making good on their commitment to roll out service to their lead markets quickly. I suspect we'll see the UK next.

T-Mobile's HotSpot @Home

Check out this excellent flash demo for the new HotSpot @Home service from T-Mobile US.

http://www.theonlyphoneyouneed.com/

There hasn't been any press from T-Mobile about the service yet, but this flash looks like T-Mo is ready to go.

UPDATE: The NY Times ran an article on the service today, but I think Engadget has excellent coverage: http://www.engadgetmobile.com/2006/10/24/t-mobile-hotspot-home-finally-launches-in-seattle/

Orange tags the city unik

From our eyes/ears on the streets of Paris, unik, Orange's UMA service offering, appears to the primary message on billboards around town.


In the picture here, you can see unik/handsets advertised on three billboards on the street corner here











And we found unik advertised in the Paris subway:

But my favorite is "unik in lights":

Both the Samsung P200 and the Nokia 6136 handsets are the lead devices for the service. More news as the initial customer feedback comes in. Anyone out there with the service today?

UMA and IMS in San Diego

The IMS Expo, held in conjunction with the Internet Telephony show in San Diego last week, featured a panel titled “The Role of UMA and IMS in Converged Networks”. It was a full panel, with 5 speakers scheduled for just 45 minutes. But moderator Michael Khalilian from the IMS Forum kept things moving.

With presentations from Stoke, Hellosoft, Azaire, Infineon and Kineto, the panel had a solid cross section of views and approaches to convergence networks. Yet from a UMA perspective, the panel was quite open to UMA.

Kineto, of course, focused on how UMA and IMS are complementary technologies. The presentation also covered how UMA can be used to provide mobility for IMS data applications today.

Infineon focused on how UMA can be used to deliver fixed line VoIP services with new UMA-enabled terminal adaptors.

Azaire commented on how their solution provides security across the spectrum of approaches for IMS to UMA.

Hellosoft presented architecturally how their client works showing how similar UMA and their IMS/VCC client. In fact, the presenter made a point of showing that IMS applications would easily run over a UMA transport layer.

Stoke rounded out the presentations by discussing their feedback from carriers on IMS applications and the role UMA-enabled handsets may play in the future.

For their part, the IMS Forum talked about their work in standardizing FMC within IMS and some of the challenges with the standard currently in development known as VCC.

While traffic on the fourth/last day of any show is bound to be light, the IMS Expo overall was a great success. The organizers saw the value of bringing together UMA and IMS technologies together to make a strong statement to the industry.

With any luck, we’ll get to do it again at IMS Expo 2007.

Vodafone dumps Carphone Warehouse

In an article reported by Tony Dennis at the Inquirer, Vodafone today announced it has cancelled it’s contract with retail outlet Carphone Warehouse, who has become increasingly aggressive in delivering mobile services as well as fixed-line broadband.

The deal, announced today, severs ties between Vodafone and CPW, and announces a new partnership between Voda and Phones 4U, a retailer with more than 300 outlets across the UK.

The announcement comes on the heels of Carphone unveils ‘free’ broadband)

For it's part, recall that on Sep 11th Vodafone announced that it was entering the UK fixed line broadband market after striking a deal with BT (Voda makes UK broadband move).

Why is this interesting for UMA?

Well, it serves to highlight just how important mobile and fixed broadband technologies are for mobile service providers going forward. As a mobile retail outlet for Voda, CPW is not a threat. But their aggressive moves into the fixed line broadband market, and Voda’s equally aggressive response, show that the convergence of fixed and mobile is the new battle ground in subscriber ownership.

Tell me what you think...

T-Mobile to partner with Apple iPhone?

The rumors continue to fly...

As reported at T3 (“The world’s No. 1 gadget mag”), it is rumored that T-Mobile may scoop Cingular for the release of the still rumored Apple iPhone.

The implication is that T-Mobile’s investment in both UMA technology as well as 3G spectrum make it better fit for the requirements of an iPhone.

Just speculating here, but it does makes sense. An average song from iTunes is roughly 5 mbps, and a 1 hr TV show runs about 200 mbps. To be useful and profitable for the consumer, existing 3G technology just won’t cut it for multimedia downloads.

However, with UMA and Wi-Fi, T-Mobile offers Apple a very high speed, very low cost broadband access network with seamless mobility to the existing cellular network. Downloading multimedia over 802.11 is cost effective and extremely fast for both the operator and the consumer.

Does UMA give operators the upper hand in new multi-media applications and service delivery? We’ll have to wait to see how this plays out.

Mobile Operator Vodafone Goes Fixed

In a story reported by Martyn Warwick at Telecom TV, Vodafone’s Arun Sarin said that by 2010 at the latest, 10% of the mobile company’s revenues would come from fixed-line internet, office and domestic communication services.

Stressing that the mobile sector is under incredible price pressure, with mobile call costs “falling by more than 10 per cent per year”, the company said it will look to Home Zone, Office Zone and DSL products to reduce the downward price pressure.

The story went on to say that Vodafone with announce further network sharing and outsourcing agreements in the near future.

Sounds like an excellent opportunity for UMA technology.

T-Mobile Readies New Web Phones

From today's Wall Street Journal , Amol Sharma writes that T-Mobile USA is expected to announce a host of new services, including a new generation of of Internet phones to attract new customers from both wireless and wireline phone companies.

The article also states the the company plans to release cellphones that can roam onto Wi-Fi connections at home and in T-Mobile's thousands of hotspots.

There has been much speculation on the web and in discussion forums about T-Mobile's plans.

Orange launches unik: a new generation of telephone

Orange France announced unik, their UMA-enabled dual mode service. The service will use subscriber's existing LiveBox DSL modem/Wi-Fi router.

Orange announced two tariffs for unik, one for unlimited calling from a Wi-Fi connected mobile to fixed lines throughout France for €10/month. A second tarrif offers unlimited calling to fixed lines and Orange mobile lines in France for €22/month.

The services will use the Nokia 6136 and Samsung P200 phones initially, with the Motorola A910 to follow in November.

Orange announced the service for France to begin October 5, but with plans for other Orange properties shortly. From their promotional material, the company states unik launches for the Netherlands October 17, UK in November, Spain in Q1 2007 and Poland in 2007.

TeliaSonera's First to Launch UMA!

TeliaSonera launched their UMA service, called "Home Free" on Aug 28th. The service comes in two forms, one for families with up to 5 handsets, and one for couples with up to two handsets.

The service initially launched with the Samsung P200 handset, but there are rumors of a Motorola and Nokia handset coming soon.

Welcome to UMA Today!

Welcome to the first post on the UMA Today blog. With the UMA market taking off, there is tremendous demand for location on the net for users, vendors and operators to come together to share the latest news and information about UMA.

This blog, in conjunction with the UMA Today website, form the basis for the growing UMA community. In the coming weeks, we will focus on the latest developments and issues in the UMA market.

Thank you for your continued support.