For mobile enthusiasts, the GSMA's Mobile World Congress is basically the focal point of the entire year -- a CES- or CeBIT-caliber event where manufacturers, carriers, software firms, and everyone in between gather to show off their latest goods in a setting where mobile is all that matters. In general, tradeshows have been showing signs of weakness; at many events, exhibitors and attendees have both withdrawn slightly in recent years as companies look to make announcements on their own schedule and their own terms (and a soft economy certainly doesn't help, either). This isn't any old company pulling out of MWC, though -- we've been able to independently confirm that Nokia, the world's largest phone manufacturer, is dramatically shifting its focus at the show next year by moving from a consumer-centric exhibition to an infrastructure-focused one led by its Nokia Siemens joint venture, using the existence of Nokia World as one of the justifications for the move. As far as we can tell, the industry's commitment to MWC remains very strong, but this isn't exactly a fly-by-night shop pulling its two-man stand out of the show -- it's definitely something to keep an eye on.

Arguably the crown jewel lying in fallen giant Nortel's corpse, the company's CDMA and LTE infrastructure units have been pursued by all the usual suspects -- Nokia Siemens and Ericsson, just to name a couple -- plus some unusual ones like fellow Canadian company RIM. That party appears to be drawing to a close, though, with Ericsson emerging victorious to the tune of $1.13 billion. Ericsson apparently has a vision that adding Nortel's bits will help it expand its North American footprint, and it thinks it'll be keeping about 80 percent of the existing staff on board to do so; first, of course, the deal has to actually close, which will happen later in the year if everything goes according to plan.

[Via Phone Scoop]

Clearwire may not be as ubiquitous as you'd like it to be, but it's taking a huge step forward in hopes of wildly expanding by linking up with Cisco. In essence, the two have joined hands in order to "enhance and expand CLEAR 4G mobile WiMAX services throughout the United States," with Cisco providing the core infrastructure and Clearwire providing the guidance. Potentially more interesting is the notion that Cisco's Linksys brand will soon be delivering "new mobile WiMAX devices," such as routers that will presumably tune to WiFi and WiMAX waves. Specific product details are sorely absent, though Clearwire does reiterate that it's hoping to have WiMAX service to more than 80 markets across the US by the end of next year.

Word on the street is that Sprint is currently in heated discussions with Ericsson -- the world's largest network infrastructure company -- to take over management and maintenance of its vast back end along with somewhere between 5,000 to 7,000 of the carrier's employees in an effort to lower costs by about 20 percent as its subscriber counts and tends both stay soft. Interestingly, Sprint already sold some of its towers to TowerCo last year for over half a billion dollars, so it's not clear exactly how Ericsson fits into the puzzle yet -- but at any rate, Sprint would apparently be paying something on the order of $2 billion over the next several years for Ericsson to do its thing. In light of this, it's kind of ironic that Sprint doesn't sell a single Sony Ericsson handset, isn't it?

When major disasters strike, cellphones have a bad habit of being about as useless as that morning piece of burnt toast. At least, that's what those working Ground Zero after the 9/11 attacks found out, and those who were directly involved in the Minnesota bridge collapse more than a few weeks ago witnessed as well. Again, the culprit In Minnesota appeared to be overloaded cellular towers and switch traffic that apparently affected all carriers in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area where the collapse happened. With cellular service being integral to everyday life, should there not be contingency plans in place for continuing service in the event of a disaster? A recent suggestion of cellular "peer-to-peer" service that bypasses towers and switches in an emergency sounds intriguing to us. Maybe in 2015 or so we'll see it happen.

Seeking to avoid the communication breakdowns that occurred as a result of the September 11th terrorist attacks and the Hurricane Katrina disaster, the Department of Homeland Security is developing an emergency network that would let officials email one another even in the absence of a cellular infrastructure. The DHS' Advanced Research Projects Agency, which is analogous to the Pentagon's DARPA, is looking at a number of options to keep the data flowing following an emergency, including widespread deployment of mobile mesh networking technology or re-purposing some of the government's legacy satellites to handle terrestrial communications. This latter option is particularly attractive because some sats could offer transfer rates in excess of 100Mbps, and in fact a trial program is scheduled for this summer that will employ modified BlackBerries and Treos to send secure, satellite-based email between Homeland Security officials and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

[Via Smart Mobs]

We're not entirely sure how many more businesses Siemens has to churn through (by our count -- quite a few), but according to a report in German paper Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, Siemens may be looking to unload Siemens Communications, furthering an exit from the telecommunications industry after last year's sale of their handset business to BenQ. According to Frankfurter's sources, talks maybe ongoing with at least one prospective buyer of S-Com, Motorola; another German publication, Manager Magazin, reported in February that Siemens spoke with Nokia on the same topic. It wouldn't be out of the realm of possibility for Siemens to drop their Communications division (which handles their money-making wireless infrastructure, and money-losing landline biz, among other things), but we'll have to keep an eye on this one.

[Via GigaOM]