Qatar’s ‘green’ mobile base station

Vodafone Group has set up a hybrid-powered mobile base station in Qatar. The base station is part of a wider “green” technology initiative from Vodafone Group which aims to use renewable energy sources at all of its affiliates worldwide. “As the first hybrid solution in Qatar to make use of both wind and solar energy, this achievement increases the availability and quality of mobile services to the end customer, while reducing the impact on the environment. What’s more, it is one of the most innovative and best-performing solutions that we have tested so far in Vodafone,” said Jenny Howe, CTO of Vodafone Qatar. The Vodafone trial site in Qatar is a significant milestone in the validation of alternative energy solutions that can be implemented elsewhere in the Vodafone Group to enable the expansion of mobile communication to areas not served by electrical grids, as well as to reduce both operating expenses and environmental impact. The solution is provided through Alcatel-Lucent’s Alternative Energy Program and its “Sustainable Power” services suite. The goal is to quip 100,000 mobile base stations with alternative energy solutions between 2010 and 2012, representing a yearly savings of about 7 million tons of CO2. The wind turbine at the Qatar site has been mounted at the top of the existing base station’s mast to leverage higher winds. The energy controller brings intelligent control to simultaneously draw power from both the photovoltaic panels and wind turbine, based on solar intensity and wind speed, making the most — at every second — of the two sources’ fluctuating availability.

New tech investment cycle

After a dismal performance in 2009, the technology sector will see a recovery in 2010 as businesses and governments around the world begin spending again on information technology, according to a new report by Forrester Research. After declining 8.2 percent in 2009, US IT spending will grow 6.6 percent in 2010 to $568 billion. Global IT spending, which dropped 8.9 percent last year, will rise 8.1 percent in 2010 to more than $1.6 trillion. Software and computer hardware will see the greatest growth, as Forrester forecasts a new multi-year cycle of technology investment growth and innovation defined by Smart Computing. “The technology downturn of 2008 and 2009 is unofficially over,” said Andrew Bartels, Forrester Research vice president and principal analyst. “All the pieces are in place for a 2010 tech spending rebound. In the US, the tech recovery will be much stronger than the overall economic recovery, with technology spending growing at more than twice the rate of gross domestic product (GDP) this year.” With regard to sector growth, hardware and software will lead the charge. Measured in US dollars, global purchases of computer equipment will be up 8.2 percent, communications equipment buying will rise by 7.6 percent, software spending will increase by 9.7 percent, purchases of IT consulting and systems integration services will grow by 6.8 percent and IT outsourcing services will be 7.1 percent higher. “We are entering a new six- to seven-year cycle of IT growth and innovation that Forrester calls Smart Computing,” said Bartels. “New technologies of awareness married to advanced business intelligence analytics make computing smart. Smart Computing rests on new foundation technologies such as service-oriented architecture, server and storage virtualization, cloud computing and unified communications. 2010 marks the beginning of this next phase of technology advancement.”

Mobile apps surging

ABI Research expects application downloads to reach five billion by 2014. That is an increase from an estimated 2.3 billion applications downloaded in 2009. The growing adoption of smartphones which saw sales rise 20 percent in 2009, as well as the proliferation of application stores, are the major drivers for this expansive surge. “The iPhone’s share of the app market will contract from its 2010 level during the latter part of the forecast period,” said ABI wireless research associate Bhavya Khanna. “The big beneficiary will be Android, which will see its market share of total application downloads increase from 11 percent of the market in 2009 to 23 percent in 2014. This rapid growth is driven by the mass adoption of the Android OS by both vendors and consumers from 2009 onwards. There are now more than 14 phones that run the Android OS, and many more will launch in 2010.” ABI Research expects revenue from mobile app sales to decline by 2013, as competition will lead to downward pressure on application prices, and a greater proportion of “must-have” applications will begin to face competition from free or advertising-supported substitutes. This has already started to happen, with the launch of Google’s free turn-by-turn navigation service for Android users through Google Maps Mobile and the Ovi Maps free navigation service for Nokia smartphone users.