Robert Shaw: Mobile

Mobile Number Portability: lessons from Hong Kong, China

Wed, 16 Apr 2003 12:21:01 GMT

There's a piece Court Hears Fight Over Numbers Used for Cellphones in today's New York Times about the battle to introduce mobile number portability in the United States. There are perhaps some lessons to draw from Asia, particularly Hong Kong, China. In this "mobile-mad" economy, over 90% of the population has a mobile and it probably has the most highly competitive mobile market in the world with 6 providers for slightly less than 7 million people. A few years ago (March 1999), I happened to be in Hong Kong the day the regulator, OFTA, introduced mobile number portability (MNP). You could barely walk around with huge lines to switch mobile providers flowing out of the shops and stalls (today they also hawk broadband from street stalls but that's another story...). A key reason that no mobile provider has yet been able to dominate the market is due to the high subscriber churn facilitated by MNP. Before implementing MNP, OFTA commissioned a feasibility study and a cost benefit analysis. This study concluded "A wide range of consumers will benefit from the MNP in Hong Kong. Mobile subscribers will be able to switch operators and avoid the costs and inconvenience associated with a number change. Competition in the industry will be heightened as a barrier to switching is removed, further benefiting residential and business users.

Open Source ITU-T H.264

Fri, 11 Apr 2003 15:10:37 GMT

Further to "ITU-T H.264: Superior Video Codec Coming", it's nice to run across an open source H.264 project on SourceForge.net.

Roaming between Wi-Fi and GSM Networks

Tue, 08 Apr 2003 09:43:44 GMT

The Register has a piece: Roaming from wireless LAN to phone network discussing that t-net, developer of the Swiss-based WeRoam service, got together with Transat and Performance Technologies to demonstrate (registration required) seamless roaming between Wi-Fi and GSM networks at the recent 3GSM Congress.

Wireless Frontier: the Phone

Mon, 07 Apr 2003 07:30:08 GMT

Silicon Valley Hikes Wireless Frontier ""People see the PC as played out, and they are looking for new technology platforms to build new businesses on...". "We're on the cusp of the mobile Internet experience, but the key is going to be making sure the technological architecture of this world is open" [New York Times: Technology]

ITU-T H.264: Superior Video Codec Coming

Fri, 04 Apr 2003 12:17:45 GMT

At the next meeting of ITU-T Study Group 16, an important high-performance video encoding/decoding standard is likely to be approved, entitled Recommendation H.264, "Advanced Video Coding for Generic Audiovisual Services". H.264 is the result of work by the Joint Video Team (JVT) which combined the ITU-T Video Coding Experts Group (VCEG) and the ISO/IEC Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG). This article in vnunet.com discusses a possible application of the emerging standard, which includes videoconferencing, digital storage media, television broadcasting, and Internet streaming (also see this earlier vnunet.com article and CNET article. H.264 can deliver the same quality as MPEG-2 (e.g. used in DVD players) but with much less bandwidth.

Mobile Browsers

Wed, 26 Feb 2003 10:37:37 GMT

[from E M E R G I C . o r g] Rafe Needleman writes about Opera in his article Browsers on Cellphones on the new generation of web browsers for cellphones (like the Sony Ericsson P800). The PC was where the action was in 1996, but it's not where it is today. Today the most interesting technological developments are happening in game consoles, handhelds, and cell phones. That's also where the money is: Some 400 million cell phones are sold worldwide each year, yet only 137 million PCs will be sold in 2003, according to Gartner.

UK mobile users sent over 16.8 billion text messages in 2002

Fri, 14 Feb 2003 13:30:31 GMT

According to a press release by the Mobile Data Association (MDA), the total number of chargeable person-to-person text [SMS] messages sent across the four UK GSM networks in 2002 totalled 16.8 billion.

"For the year ahead the MDA forecasts continued growth with text messaging expected to reach 20 billion for 2003, equating to 55 million messages per day compared to an average of 43 million for 2002. The MDA will monitor the situation with a monthly statistics review - every month the MDA will post the numbers along with a reconsidered forecast for the 2003 figures on its website www.text.it."

3G TV Arriving in Korea

Fri, 14 Feb 2003 11:57:33 GMT

3G News is reporting that Korea Telecom will start beam 9 TV channels to 3G phone users this month for for about 25,000 South-Korean Won (about US$ 21) per hour.

First Look at the Sony Ericsson P800

Fri, 14 Feb 2003 11:47:06 GMT

Infosync has an in-depth review of the new Sony Ericsson's P800, the first palm-sized Symbian OS converged mobile. Not surprisingly, one of the first applications ported to the P800 is Doom.

Linux to power most Motorola phones

Thu, 13 Feb 2003 14:13:18 GMT

[News.com] Motorola will begin selling its first cell phone based on Linux this year and says most models will follow suit, a major sign of the growing popularity of operating system outside its stronghold on high-end computers.

Klemperer: 3G Spectrum Auctions not Culprit for Telecom Industry Woes

Fri, 07 Feb 2003 11:31:16 GMT

Paul Klemperer, the Edgeworth Professor of Economics, Oxford University, advisor to the UK government on its spectrum auctions, argued in an article in the Financial Times in November 2002 that 3G spectrum auctions should not be considered the culprit for the telecom industry woes (PDF).

Wireless Broadband, IEEE 802.16a & Mesh Networks

Fri, 31 Jan 2003 11:37:20 GMT

The IEEE has just announced it has approved the 802.16a extension to the 802.16 broadband wireless access (BWA) standard. See Roger Marks' tutorial on 802.16 (Zipped PowerPoint) to understand why this is important for providing broadband wireless access. 802.16a provides improved support for mesh networks, where each subscriber access point is also part of the routing infrastructure. For a general overview of the growing interest in non-line-of-sight wireless broadband systems, see the IEEE's Spectrum article: Wireless Broadband in a Box. For a more in-depth technical explanation with regard to mesh networks, see Dave Beyer's recent (November 2002) presentation on Wireless Mesh Networks for Residential Broadband (PDF), demonstrating some extremely important characteristics of mesh networks, namely:

mesh coverage and robustness improves exponentially as subscribers are added;
rapid area coverage with only a few subscribers (easy to seed);
increasing subscriber density increases overall network capacity.

Some earlier articles here on mesh networks can be found in "Cheap Wireless Mesh Networks", "Watch this airspace and parasitic networks" and "Seeding Mesh Networks".

Easing Wireless War in India

Wed, 29 Jan 2003 08:34:25 GMT

Easing Wireless War in India: "India's telecommunications regulator has announced a new pricing system in an effort to temper an intense fight over interconnections and revenue sharing in the country's fiercely competitive wireless market, one of the fastest growing in the world." [New York Times: Technology]

OFTEL Requires Reduction in Mobile Termination Rates

Fri, 24 Jan 2003 11:32:13 GMT

Further to my earlier note OFTEL asks investigation on mobile termination rates, following a study by the UK Competition Commission, OFTEL, the UK's regulator for the telecommunications industry, has decided that it will require four mobile operators to reduce termination charges for making calls to their mobile networks. The ITU Strategy and Policy Unit hosted a workshop on this topic back in September 2000.

Cheap Wireless Mesh Networks

Thu, 23 Jan 2003 11:08:36 GMT

Guy Kewney's Mobile Campaign has a fascinating article on Locustworld's affordable wireless mesh network solution, Meshbox. LinuxDevices.com has a primer explaining the MeshBox - a Linux-powered wireless mesh repeater by Jon Anderson, its creator. As Guy Kewney's article notes: "However, there are going to be some controversial areas in the Locustworld experiment. The cheekiest move was the setting up of an IP address numbering authority, WIANA, or The Wireless Internet Assigned Numbers Authority." Also see my earlier articles on wireless mesh/parasitic/symbiotic networks in Watch this airspace and parasitic networks and Seeding Mesh Networks.

First Production 3G in Europe?

Wed, 11 Dec 2002 07:34:43 GMT

Looks like Hutchison 3G UK, a unit of Hong Kong conglomerate Hutchison Whampoa, will be the first to deploy 3G production services in Europe branded "3" although the launch date is still unclear (there's a "Founder" program for early users). They've released their prices and list of initial and planned services.

ITU Asia-Pacific Telecommunication Indicators Report

Wed, 04 Dec 2002 09:20:41 GMT

Coinciding with ITU TELECOM Asia 2002, the ITU has published its 5th edition of the Asia-Pacific Telecommunication Indicators. A presentation (PDF) with highlights and extracts is available as is a related summary of the report. The report demonstrates the Asia-Pacific region has now become the world's largest telecom market. Asia-Pacific also leads in advanced Internet technologies such as broadband access and mobile data. The Republic of Korea and Hong Kong, China, are the top two economies in the world in terms of broadband Internet penetration. In mobile Internet, Japan and the Republic of Korea were the first two nations to launch third generation cellular networks commercially. The region also has the largest percentage of Internet users. These exploits corroborate the view that the global telecommunications epicentre is shifting from North America and Western Europe to the Asia-Pacific region. Also see the related ITU Press Release.

Cascading Style Sheets for Mobile Devices

Sun, 28 Jul 2002 12:37:54 GMT

CSS Mobile Profile Candidate Recommendation Revised. 26 July 2002: The CSS Working Group has revised CSS Mobile Profile 1.0 to incorporate review suggestions, comments by implementors, and deliberations of the Working Group. The specification defines a subset of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Level 2 tailored for mobile devices such as wireless phones. Comments are welcome through January 2003. Visit the CSS home page. (News archive) [The World Wide Web Consortium]

OFTEL asks investigation on mobile termination rates

Thu, 25 Jul 2002 13:16:04 GMT

In a follow-up to my note last month referencing the INTUG paper on Mobile Termination Rates, the UK telecommunications regulator, OFTEL, has formally asked the UK Competition Commission to investigate whether the charges that the four mobile network operators make for connecting calls to their networks are too high.

Isochronous mesh networks

Thu, 25 Jul 2002 10:27:53 GMT

Talk about timely. CommsDesign has a recent piece on the development by Motorola of an "isochronous network, developed with input from Nintendo Co. Ltd., Sony Corp. and other game platform developers, [that] will be extended into other markets to serve as a "feeder" for future ad-hoc mesh-based piconets that use 802.11 wireless technology as their underlying infrastructure". Slashdot also has a related thread. Isochronous ad-hoc mesh-based piconets? Wow. This almost seems like it could have been generated by dack.com.

Seeding Mesh Networks

Thu, 25 Jul 2002 10:11:32 GMT

Last month, in Watch this airspace and parasitic networks, I flagged the emergence of mesh networks, where end user devices can also be routing devices. Wired Magazine has a short article: A New Spin on the Wireless Web this month and mentions the interesting start-up Mesh Networks. Mesh networks, where user devices and routing nodes can get co-mingled, might be an interesting twist on Metcalfe's law, which says the value of a network is proportional to the square of the number of users or nodes. Think about it. Where all user devices are also routing devices, it's pretty obvious that, at least for the beginning part of the 'S' innovation curve, the value of network externalities is even greater. This has some interesting implications for seeding 'core' networks by seeding the 'edges'. I'll have to think about that.

Wind-up and talk

Thu, 25 Jul 2002 08:49:33 GMT

Last month, I mentioned the arrival of "Wind-up Mobile". There's now a first review of the Motorola Freecharge in ZDNet UK. Just like prepaid rechargeable GSM cards, I imagine this will become very popular in developing countries.

UK designer of 3G auction slams 'whingeing' telecom executives

Tue, 23 Jul 2002 09:06:34 GMT

Ken Binmore, the designer of the exceptionally lucrative UK 3G mobile phone auction two years ago, has slammed telecom executives for "whingeing" that they paid too much and dismissed calls for the consumer to foot the bill. [Ananova]

Smart mobs and thumb tribes

Mon, 22 Jul 2002 08:44:04 GMT

Motivating the Masses, Wirelessly: The term smart mobs has been coined by the author Howard Rheingold to describe groups of people equipped with high-tech communications devices that allow them to act in concert — whether they know each other or not. [New York Times: Technology]

Review of the Nokia 7650

Fri, 19 Jul 2002 13:58:03 GMT

Infosync has got a review of the new colour display Nokia 7650 that's got an integrated digital camera for picture taking and sending, support for the MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service) that's a step up over SMS, a photo album for storing pictures, GPRS, Java support, joystick navigation and a Symbian-based user interface.