Over the Air Cellphone Software Upgrade Pack Launched
Bitfone Corp. has announced the General Availability of its flagship mProve product, which is the first commercially available product for updating a cell phone's entire firmware over-the-air. mProve 2.0 enables wireless carriers and mobile phone manufacturers to reduce costs and increase revenue through over-the-air phone enhancements. Without mProve, manufacturers and carriers must rely on product recalls, phone replacements, and retail center servicing to update the phone's embedded operating system. This results in significant costs to the carriers and manufacturers ranging between US$6 and US$9 billion annually for the global wireless industry.
"Bitfone provides a crucial technology fundamental to the wide-spread adoption of next generation mobile phones and networks," commented Chris Shipley, executive producer of DEMOmobile 2002. "With the rollout of 2.5 and 3G phones and subsequent integration of new applications and standards, handset manufacturers and carriers are faced with new challenges and complexity in supporting their customers. Bitfone's mProve provides manufacturers and carriers with an economical means to enhance and change a phone's core behavior after it is in customers' hands."
mProve 2.0 is an end-to-end software infrastructure comprised of 4 main components including the mProve Generator, mProve Device Server, mProve Update Store, and mProve Agent. Using the mProve Generator, manufacturers and carriers minimize bandwidth and memory requirements by creating updates that are just a fraction of the size of the total firmware image size. The updates are securely stored within the wireless network on the mProve Update Store and retrieved over-the-air by the mProve Agent on the phone. Using a patent pending method of applying firmware level updates, mProve is able to provide complete protection to the phone in the event of power failure or other interruption. This fault-tolerance ensures that updates are completed regardless of interruption mechanism, which can include loss of power, battery removal, or signal loss.'"
Posted to the site on 19th September 2002
