CoolSign, NCR part of expanded working group on 4G mobile broadband

March 24, 2010 by Dave Haynes

If the tariffs are not crippling and the network infrastructure can actually support everyone using mobile broadband, then the emerging 4G/LTE standard might be a very useful in this sector.

Using mobile broadband is one less cable to drop and one less technician to not show up on time for install jobs. And it goes where cable and DSL might not be.

CoolSign and NCR are part of a largely impenetrable announcement this morning about being part of a program designed to develop 4G solutions concepts for real-world business needs.

Here is the 93 word opening paragraph:

The ng Connect Program, co-founded by Alcatel-Lucent (Euronext Paris and NYSE: ALU), today announced that ten new members have joined the program bringing new areas of enablement to the program including assisted- and self-service solutions, cloud-based IT services, video security and video conferencing as well as expertise in 3D and virtual reality, digital signage, and online education technologies. The multi-industry organization, dedicated to creating network-ready applications, services, content and devices for emerging Long Term Evolution (LTE) networks, has grown to include 37 companies – more than doubling its initial membership in its first year.

It blabbers on and on with buzzwords and stuff only a telecom engineer could get tingly about, and rattles off the description briefs about the 10 companies. BAD press release. Bad. Bad. But this is the program’s PR work, not CoolSign’s or NCR’s.

I write more about this sort of thing on my Buzz Not Buzzwords blog, but I will again state my bewilderment at very large companies paying very large fees to PR firms to grind out stuff that requires a decoder ring and is filled with puffery and buzz words, far too dense in word count and structure, and largely absent of answers to two key questions: What does this mean to you and your readers? Why you should care?

Anyway, end of rant.

I think this is an interesting little program for CoolSign (disclosure: writing client but definitely NOT on this mess) and NCR (which is doing digital signage now through its Netkey acquisition) to jump into because it gets it guys starting to understand 4G, probably develops some inroads and contacts with carriers, and connects the company into a working group that has some pretty interesting companies – like video streaming, h.264 and telepresence guys – involved in it.