Best of 4G Awards: Small cells, smart networks and devices rule the day

Chicago – 4G World and Connected Planet last night announced the winners of the Best of 4G Awards, with winners clearly reflecting the key industry trend of helping mobile operators stretch their networks and end users make their most of their mobile devices and applications.

The winners (and runners-up) in last night’s ceremony on the opening night of the 4G World Conference and Expo included:

Best New Mobile Device
Winner: Samsung Galaxy SII Epic 4G Touch

Samsung (which recently outsold Apple in the latest quarter) showed well in this important category, led by winning entry: the Galaxy S II, Epic 4G Touch for Sprint. The device supports Sprint’s 4G service, combined with a dual core processor for speedy performance. On the software side of things, it includes Samsung’s TouchWiz user interface and Samsung’s Media Hub, among other features.

First Runner Up: Infomark iPhone 4 case type WiMAX mobile router
Second Runner Up: Samsung Galaxy SII at AT&T and Samsung Galaxy II at T-Mobile

Most Innovative Network Deployment
Winner: Gemalto OTA LTE Advanced Solution

A big part of the success story in this year’s LTE launches is the relatively seamless move of traditional CDMA carriers onto this new radio technology. Gemalto’s OTA LTE Advanced solution played an essential role in those migrations, providing remote UICC management in LTE with full capabilities for a remote OTA mechanism to manage provisioning and device tracking.

First Runner Up: Alcatel-Lucent Consumer LTE Communications Solution
Second Runner Up: Nokia Siemens Liquid Radio Architecture

Best Mobile Commerce Solution
Winner: Alcatel-Lucent Mobile Wallet Service

Alcatel-Lucent’s Mobile Wallet service is a configurable and scalable payment framework that lets mobile operators offer a wide range of payment and e-commerce services. With the mobile wallet app on their phone, users can consolidate all their loyalty programs, coupons, transportation passes, credit and banking and membership cards, stored value accounts (such as prepaid coffee-shop cards) as well as movie or concert tickets all in one place.

First Runner Up: Aditux NFC Mobile POS Solution
Second Runner Up: Pontiflex AppLeads Platform

Best User Experience for Mobile
Winner: Alcatel-Lucent Motive ServiceView for Mobile

Motive ServiceView for Mobile helps service providers provide their help desks with a better understanding of the subscriber’s specific services, their device and the network conditions affecting subscribers. The platform helps operator improve their customer service metrics by giving agents a deeper look into device, network and business conditions. All of that context helps improve technical and sales support provided to end users.

First Runner Up: Nokia Siemens Networks Customer Experience Management Solution for Enhancing Mobile Video
Second Runner Up: Momac Mvolve Mobile Portal Solution

Best Mobile App for Tablet or Smartphone
Winner: BitStream Bolt Mobile Browser

The BitStream Mobile Browser allows feature phones to render Web pages exactly as they were meant to be seen on a desktop browser (or smartphone browser for that matter). While smartphones and tablets dominate the news these days, many users still use feature phones. BOLT has been successfully installed more than 30 million times in over 200 countries around the world.

First Runner Up: LogMeIn Ignition Remote Access App
Second Runner Up: TerraWi Mobile-Loc Platform

Best New Network Infrastructure Solution
Winner (Tie): Huawei Small Cell Solution and Powerwave Picocell

With mobile operators needed to stretch their networks for coverage and improved throughput, so-called small cell architectures are the vogue. So it was not surprising to see two small solutions at the top of the best new network infrastructure solution category.Huawei’s Small Cell Solution provides a layered network based on actual traffic distribution—offering seamless coverage in hot and blind spots. Powerwave’s Picocell helps wireless carriers build more flexible networks and extend coverage and capacity in locations of network congestion, without the cost and complexity involved when adding standard macro cells.

First Runner Up: Broadhop Quantum Network Suite Policy Management Platform
Second Runner Up: Ruckus Wireless Mobile Smart Wi-Fi System

Best Overall Innovation in Mobile
Winner: Alcatel-Lucent lightRadio

New network requirements and approaches require a different sort of wireless network infrastructure. Alcatel-Lucent made a splash this year with its lightRadio platform, which was recognized as the best overall innovation in mobile. lightRadio, including the eye-catching Cube, is a a completely new product family designed to dramatically improve network capacity, scaling from large macro-cells to small metros across all deployment topologies.

First Runner Up: Cisco OneVoice Voice over LTE Solution
Second Runner Up: Airspan AirSynergy 4G Pico Base Station