Plumbing may seem like a strange word in a telecoms focused blog – especially one that highlights Long Term Evolution or LTE.  Still, that’s what it is.  Plumbing moves something from one place to another – typically through pipes.  In the plumbing that we all rely on, water or gas is moved to faucets, heaters, cooktops and other other appliances.  In the mobile telecom world, we have new and shiny LTE networks being deployed around the world.  To move all of that data between these high speed network island, we need plumbing – and that plumbing is called an IPX.   Peter Bernstein put it this way in his article: LTE and Roaming – Sybase 365 Leading the Charge: “Let’s face it, plumbing is not sexy.”

As it is now the middle of November, the iPhone has now been launched (without MMS, of course) in the UK and Germany.  Additionally, China Mobile announced at this week’s GSM Asia Congress in Macau that they are in negotiations with Apple over bringing the iPhone to China.  In fact, the sales figures are estimated around 23 million units, during the first year.