Our future Hi-Tech world

Back in 1986, i used to subscribe to a magazine called "2001" in India. One of its prediction that i still remember is that we would have prototypes of Flying cars and cars that would run solely on solar light by the year 2000. Now its already 2008 and none of these seem to have come absolutely true.

Anyway, one of my colleague pointed out an article from PC Magazine titled, "My High-Tech Life in 2032". Some interesting bits from that:

It's the year 2032, and I just received a gentle nudge from Galt, our telepresence android robot (and hear my wife's voice piping through it—I wish she wouldn't keep doing that). Roughly 5 feet tall and with the strength of a preteen, Galt has limited autonomy. It can navigate my home on a Segway-balanced body and use its telescoping arms to choose matching clothes for me to wear each day. Its vision system picks up infrared fabric codes on the backs of my pants and shirts to ensure a proper match-perfect for color-blind people like myself.

Galt has been programmed to know my morning routine, so it takes the OLED sheet ITV, an 8-by-10-foot, 3-millimeter-thick flexible screen that uses millions of organic light-emitting diodes, and quickly attaches it to the bedroom wall so I can watch ITV while I get dressed. Small eyelet hooks are on the walls of each room where I use the screen.

I set the car to autopilot and begin cruising out of the driveway. Magnetic/electric guide wires embedded in the road keep my car on track. A dozen cameras and motion- and laser-guided distance sensors manage traffic and road signs, and GPS 2.0 does the navigating. A tap on the tiny Bluetooth receiver in my ear connects my PC phone. My boss needs third-quarter projection numbers now, so I pull out the trifold PC, fold down the sides, and pull the screen out from the base. EV-DO Revolution-Z securely connects me to my office network, and soon I'm working in Moho, Microsoft's Web-based spreadsheet app. The smartest thing Microsoft ever did was buying the Zoho online suite in 2012. I like how smoothly it runs on the Google OS.

I'm halfway through August projections when an instant message pops up. I pull out the flexible screen addition from the side of my 8-by-10-inch roll-out screen, which gives me a 2-by-2-inch extra bit of screen real estate, and dock the message window there. It's my buddy John, asking me how I'm feeling. Yesterday I had a little medical procedure: 16 computer-guided nanobots scrubbed their way through my 65 -percent-occluded arteries. (I only passed the final ones this morning-that was a bit uncomfortable.) I tell John I'm feeling fine and log off.

This Acer/Gateway/Lenovo (they merged in 2017) ThinkFold is running a bit slow today. It's not the memory; I have about 128GB of available RAM and the 2-terabyte, solid-state drive has more than enough room. Perhaps it's the remastered 1977 miniseries Roots I'm downloading in the background? I pause the download and the ultralight system speeds up.

At the office, I step into the data room, slide on the TrueVue VR goggles, and start digging through terabytes of data to find a report and financial project from 1998. I push aside useless data with my hands and create a query so the system can find the right data on its own.

Ed from IT drops by with a new phone for me. It looks a bit like a pen but snaps apart into an earpiece and a section I can put in my pocket. There's no keypad; instead I "dial" it by tapping out mini codes. I program it to call my wife on two short taps. A tap, brush against the surface, and two more taps put through a call to my best friend. I take the new phone and drop my old one into the desktop grinder. All my gadgets are now totally biodegradable, so I expect it'll end up fertilizing someone's garden.

I notice a red glow coming from my left arm. It's my RF chip. Red means my son, Daniel, is in the building and probably coming up for a surprise visit. He works in Broadway's VR Theater, playing 15 separate virtual characters on a 360-degree stage. The audience is both local—people who attend the show in person, putting on the VR goggles and Bose noise-canceling headsets—and global. I've seen 26 of his performances from the comfort of my desk. He's very good.

Daniel's visit is nicely timed, since an e-mail is just arriving from my daughter, Sophie. She's dumping her latest boyfriend. On my 180-degree, 3,048-by-1,028-pixel, curved ViewSonic screen is an alive mail, with a video of her and Brad walking on the beach. While we watch, Sophie uses Liquid Resize to remove Brad and seamlessly stitch the beach back together. It's as if he was never there. But wait, she's not done. She has another clip of her dog on the beach and, as Dan and I watch, she's added Scruffy to the shot so it looks as if he's walking alongside her. Nice.

Click here to read.

"Love Detector" Phones

According to a report in Reuters:

The "Love Detector" service from mobile operator KTF uses technology that is supposed to analyze voice patterns to see if a lover is speaking honestly and with affection.

"We created this service because we thought people would want to know what others were feeling about them," said Ahn Hee-jung, a KTF official.

Users who speak by pointing their mobile phones at themselves for video conferences can see a "love meter" bar on the screen of their handset during a conversation.

They later receive an analysis of the conversation delivered through text message that breaks down the amount of affection, surprise, concentration and honesty of the other speaker.

The service costs subscribers a flat fee of 1,500 won ($1.59) a month for unlimited use or can be accessed at 300 won for each call, KTF said.
"The caller is paying the money, so the information is provided only to him or her," said Ahn.

So the next big thing would be "Thought Reader" to find out what the person was thinking when he was talking to you ;)

Nokia shows off Green Phone

Plastic from drink bottles form its chassis while its rubber keypad is made from old car tyres, Nokia said in a statement.

Called "Remade", the silver-coloured handset is a concept that "explores potential new ideas", the company said.

"The idea behind the concept was to see if it was possible to create a device made from nothing new.

"It has been designed using recycled materials that avoid the need for natural resources, reduce landfill, and allow for more energy efficient production," Nokia said.

Remade is part of Nokia’s ongoing environmental effort.

"It is designed to help inspire and stimulate discussion on how mobile devices might be made in the future," according to the phone maker.

Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, the Finnish firm's chief executive, pulled the clamshell handset out of his pocket during his speech at the Mobile World Congress trade show in Barcelona yesterday, pictured above. "It shows what can be done with materials," he said. "It is only a concept now but it gives you an insight into how we think we can break new ground." Nokia, which last year made four in 10 of the more than 1bn handsets sold worldwide, has been developing the handset - branded Remade - at its laboratories.

The metal casing and keypad are made from recycled steel, while inside the phone Nokia has been working on materials with an organic origin, such as polylactic acid plastics.

New Training Brochure now available

New Training Brochure available here.

Do I hear TDtv again?

From Fox Business:

BARCELONA, Spain, Feb 12, 2008 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- NextWave Wireless Inc. (formerly IP Wireless) a global provider of mobile multimedia and broadband technologies, today paved the way for handset manufacturers to easily participate in the global market for TDtv by announcing a TDtv Device Integration Pack. Designed to meet the strict cost, size, and power consumption requirements established by some of Europe's largest mobile operators, NextWave's TDtv Device Integration Pack includes a low-power TDtv System in Package (SiP), a complete MBMS software stack, and MediaFusion multimedia client software from PacketVideo Corporation (PV). NextWave's turnkey solution will enable device vendors to deliver TDtv handsets to market in 2008 in support of the TDtv initiative announced today by NextWave, Orange and T-Mobile UK.

"Our TDtv device integration module provides a simple and inexpensive way for device manufacturers to integrate the power of TDtv into their next-generation WCMDA handsets," said Dr. Bill Jones, CEO of NextWave Network Products. "We're confident that a growing number of device manufacturers will support TDtv as mobile operators begin to accelerate wide-area deployments of TDtv systems."

TDtv is an innovative 3GPP MBMS solution that provides mobile operators an opportunity to profitably deliver up to 28 high-resolution TV channels, digital audio channels, and other IP data-cast services to an unlimited number of concurrent customers. By operating on existing 3G spectrum and with the unique ability to support multi-carrier spectrum pooling and network sharing, TDtv represents a breakthrough in reducing the cost of implementing mobile television and provides UMTS operators around the world with a powerful multimedia and advertising platform. Currently, more than 150 mobile network operators in over 50 countries have access to the spectrum needed to deliver TDtv to more than half a billion subscribers.

"When we looked at the available mobile TV technologies, TDtv was one of the technologies that impressed us the most, both from a performance as well as from a market opportunity perspective," said Michael Thelander, CEO of Signals Research Group, LLC. "With spectrum available across Europe and many parts of Asia and with two major operators now moving forward with an initiative, this is a market that handset vendors should take the time to explore."

NextWave's TDtv Device Integration Pack includes everything device manufacturers need to create a TDtv- enabled handset. The Device Integration Pack includes an integrated TDtv System in Package (SiP) measuring approximately 10x10 millimeters, a complete software suite that includes the required MBMS software stack, and TDtv radio access network controller software. The TDtv SiP includes a TDtv baseband chip, RF chip, receive filters and passives, and interfaces directly with the handset's application processor. This low power (active power consumption under 60 mW) solution enables device manufacturers to better meet network operator requirements for sleek and highly-attractive mobile TV handsets with internal antennas, and includes filters that allow for seamless coexistence with existing 2G and 3G services.

Meanwhile in Guardian:

T-Mobile and Orange will today announce a partnership to run a commercial trial in west London of a new mobile TV technology which could allow handset users to tune in to up to 100 channels.

The technology, TDTV, has been developed by US-based NextWave Wireless at its British unit in Chippenham, Wiltshire, and could provide a cheaper and more efficient way to get broadcast TV on to mobile phones. The trial, due to start in late summer, will see several thousand Londoners given either a new handset - made by a far eastern manufacturer rumoured to be LG - or a wireless receiver, no bigger than a matchbox, which will transfer the channels to their mobile phones.

The six-month test will see Orange and T-Mobile share their masts in London and install equipment that will allow them to broadcast 24 high-quality TV channels including several from the BBC and BSkyB, and 10 digital radio stations. It follows technical trials of the service carried out by Orange in Bristol last year. Orange and T-Mobile are also inviting O2, Vodafone and 3 to take part in the London test.

TDTV uses a slice of the 3G spectrum which Britain's five networks spent £22.5bn buying eight years ago and which has so far lain dormant. As a result, TDTV works with the phone companies' systems, making it easy to bill customers.

TDTV is more efficient and has more capacity for channels than other mobile TV solutions. Orange, T-Mobile, Vodafone and 3 are all offering mobile TV through their 3G networks but they suffer from congestion if more than a handful of customers use the service in the same place. TDTV uses a different part of the 3G spectrum and many more users can watch TV simultaneously.

The European Union has proposed using a Nokia-backed standard called DVB-H for mobile TV in member countries, but there will be no spectrum available for it in Britain until the analogue TV signal is switched off in 2012, and the operators will have to pay if they want it.

DVB-H, which O2 tested in Oxford two years ago, can carry only about two dozen channels while TDTV could have up to 100.

Mobile World Congress 08 Diary

The Trade Show Disconnect - Telecom Magazine

Mobile World Congress highlights - Pocket-link.co.uk

Top 10 trends at the Mobile World Congress - InfoWorld

You can check the Financial Times Diary here on whats going on at MWC 08.

If I find any other sources, i will add them on this post.

Why is everyone talking of Gooogle Android?

It seems everyone is eager to show their own take on the first official Google Android phones at MWC. ARM, Texas Instruments, Marvell and Qualcomm are just a few of the companies hoping to impress with their Android handsets.

Google launched Android, an open development platform in November. Phones sporting the Android software are expected out later this year. Google also announced the Open Handset Alliance, a consortium of 34 handset manufacturers, carriers and chipmakers that have said they plan to support Android products and services.

Google hopes Android will become the dominant operating system for many mobile phones. Android is set to improve the Internet for phone users.

"What's the big deal? Android doesn't look like it enables anything different from what everyone else offers."

But James Bruce, North American mobile manager for marketing at ARM, said that it's not so much what Android allows cell phone users to do, but rather what it doesn't require handset chip and device makers to do.
"Android provides a complete application framework, which can be put on chipsets with a lot less work," he said.

In a nutshell, Android should simplify the process of getting a new phone and new applications to market. Today, the cell phone market is extremely fragmented. Every manufacturer has its own operating system for phones. And very often even different models of handsets are developed using proprietary software. This makes it difficult for handset components makers, application developers, and the handset makers themselves to develop new products and services quickly because they have to design functionality for each software iteration. Even the most basic functions like SMS could require different programming from one brand of handset to another.

Android is supposed to alleviate this problem, because it provides a common operating system and development platform that has all the basic functionality baked in. But the software, which is based on a version of Linux, is also open enough to allow application developers to design new applications and services for the device.

To learn more about Android, check this out.

Nortel's 4G cocktail at MWC 08

Nortel is busy demo-ing 4G technologies at the Mobile World Congress (MWC ... formerly 3GSM) 2008.

"Today, at home or at the office, your network is just there - putting the world at your fingertips. But if you are out on the move, whether it be for meetings, running errands, or traveling around the world, your communications experience becomes very, very complicated," said Scott Wickware, vice president of marketing and strategy for Carrier Networks, Nortel. "You can e-mail, but you can't send or open certain files. You can surf the net, but you have to wait ages for pages to load and forget about watching a video. Your other option is to search out a WiFi hot spot where you'll then have to pay yet another connection fee. When you go mobile, all of a sudden you are forced to pay attention to the network and you shouldn't have to."
The demand for better connections and the need for the experience to be simple are what drive the next level of innovation in our networks. For wireless networks, that next level of innovation is 4G mobile broadband, which includes LTE and WiMAX. 4G can extend the quality experience that users get from their fixed connections into the mobile world. Nortel has all the elements needed to bring carriers successfully into the 4G world: innovation in WiMAX and LTE, a strong ecosystem, all IP-core, and a deep understanding of what consumer and business users are looking for from their wireless experience.

Nortel's 4G Mobile Broadband website says:

4G delivers true mobile broadband for the masses with a superior user experience. Nortel is boosting the adoption of mobile multimedia and the delivery of a true mobile broadband experience through our leadership in 4G-enabled technologies (WiMAX, LTE (Long Term Evolution), UMB (Ultra Mobile Broadband), and IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem). 4G mobile broadband provides improved performance, lower total cost of ownership and enables a new era of personalized services. 4G networks are IP-based and flatter with fewer nodes to manage. The benefits are significant and can make 4G mobile broadband a truly disruptive and game-changing technology.

If Nortel calls this 4G then this is 4G ;)

World's Smallest ...

No we are not going to talk about this small camera as its not related to this blog :)

We are going to talk about the worlds smallest phone which has entered Guinness World Records.

The modular Modu phone system, created by Modu Mobile, the world's smallest mobile phone, which weighs just 40.1g and measures 72mm x 37mm x 7.8mm.

The modular Modu phone system, created by Modu Mobile, can be slotted into different cases or even into other specially developed consumer technology. "Modu starts with a tiny handset, which is the lightest phone in the world at 40.1g," said Zack Weisfeld, vice president of marketing at Modu Mobile.

Despite its small dimensions, Weisfeld claimed that the phone does " everything that a sophisticated cellphone does". "You can use it anywhere in the world, send and receive SMS, it has a speaker, Bluetooth, MP3 player with at least 1GB of storage and acts as a mass storage USB Flash drive," he said. "It is tiny, but it is the right size to make it functional, to make you able to dial numbers." Slotting the Modu into different "jackets" also allows users to change what the device can do.

On its own, the Modu phone might not have a standard keypad, but it will still make calls. Put it into a 'sleeve' or 'jacket' (which are essentially cases) and you can turn it into a multitude of different devices.

If, for example, you're going out clubbing, you can pop it into a fashion sleeve with a fancy design. If you're on a business trip and you need a phone with a Qwerty keypad and large screen, you just have to pop it into a 'jacket' with those features.

The idea is that when you buy the Modu phone, you'll get a range of two or three sleeves with it and therefore you're essentially getting three phones for the price of one. If you need extra sleeves you'll be able to buy them for €40-€60 (£30-£45) depending on functionality.

The Modu phone will be available from the 1 October in Israel, Italy and Russia to start with, and it'll cost €200 (£150) unsubsidised with two jackets. According to Modu, there'll be around ten jackets to choose from.

Turning the Modu phone into other phones isn't as far as this device can go. Have a look at the these to see what we're talking about.

LG Viewty is Beauty

Wow, LG Viewty (officially LG-KU990) allows you to record in DivX format (.avi extension) as compared to .3gp format. The trouble with .3gp format is that it can generally be seen on phones and not really watchable on PC or old PDA's. I am not sure of the resolution and quality though. With 5 MP camera, i assume it should be quite good.

I have a DivX compatible player at home, but i have not yet seen big brands supporting MPEG4. It would be fun in future we will have capability to record our favourite programs in DivX format as well as normal DVD format.

Any DivX fans around?

Video Sharing on Mobile

Youtube recently improved their mobile offering to include advanced features such as access to a large catalog of mobile video and to features that were only available on the desktop version in the past. YouTube for Mobile users can now choose from tens of millions of videos, according to the company. However, users must have a streaming-capable phone with 3G technology, which is necessary for high-speed data access over cellular networks.

Apple's popular iPhone comes with a preloaded YouTube application. But the iPhone doesn't support 3G, so the video-streaming experience can be sluggish at times. It's faster over Wi-Fi connections.

With the expanded mobile offering, YouTube users also can access their accounts, favorites, videos, channels, and directly upload and share content from mobile phones. Another new feature is the ability to rate and post comments on the go.

San Bruno-based YouTube has no immediate plans to make money off the mobile service but eventually may show ads to viewers, said Hunter Walk, YouTube's product manager. For now, YouTube just wants its audience to become more accustomed to watching video on their phones, Walker said.

Operators have realised that this can seriously impact their walled gardens and their ability to make loads of money out of the mobile users.

For this reason 3 and O2 are launching EyeVibe, a mobile video community that combines their highly successful SeeMeTV and LookAtMe! services into a single community allowing any UK mobile subscriber with a video-enabled handset to share and earn cash from their mobile video clips.

The advantage the operators have is that they will share their revenue with the people who upload their videos thereby encouraging them to use their service rather than Youtube for mobile. I am sure Google is already aware of this and working on a similar ad based scheme.

Finally, SK Telecom announced the launch of T LIVE Video Share that enables users to share images on the camera phone screen during the voice call.

T LIVE Video Share is based on IMS or IP Multimedia Subsystems, the next generation communication platform capable of at least two multimedia services. Major mobile carriers in the world such as AT&T Wireless commercialized IMS services called Video Sharing.

So far, mobile users had to hang up the phone to switch from voice to video call, but T Live Video Share users will be able to open the data call during the voice call so that they can share the images on the camera screen and start video chatting, according to SK Telecom.

To activate T Live Video Share, the sender should wait for the message that video sharing is on and push the "video call" button, and the receiver should accept the request. To return to voice call, they can either push the "video call" button again and select the "stop", or push the "end" button.

Unlike WCDMA video call, T LIVE Video Share uses the network optimized for data communications and offers video service of superior quality, the carrier said. SK Telecom expects T LIVE Video Share will expand the scope of communications beyond voice calls. Currently, the service is limited to sharing images on the camera screen, but the company will extend it into contents sharing service and enable users to share all contents in the phone such as photos, music and mobile internet connection images.

IMS Service: An Insight

Brilliant article from 'The IMS Lantern':

An IMS service is a service that makes use of SIP and the IMS either centrally or marginally.

SIP itself and even more, the combination of SIP with other protocols can give birth to a flurry of new services, some of them implemented on IMS.

The ability of SIP to combine various existing services of different types (communication, data, content, applications) can give birth to a new user experience, which is by itself a new service. This is an important matter to consider when comparing SIP with more purpose-centric protocols.

These new services can reach a huge community covering all the continents, all types of access technologies and spreading between telco domains, other business domains, and the Internet, possibly redefining the definitions of these domains.

IMS and SOA (Service oriented Architecture) are not alternative architectures to deliver new services. They should rather be seen as building blocks permitting to create a new and more powerful service architecture called UOA (User Oriented Architecture).

This draws a potential future world, in which there might be a little bit of SIP everywhere, and consequently a a good potential for IMS to fit as a particular SIP service architecture deployed by telco operators.

However, history shows that the best technologies do not always prevail. In a possible future, the potential of SIP as a service control protocol used in different architectures including IMS, and/or IMS as a service architecture augmenting the intrinsic capabilities of SIP, might eventually fail. Conversely, would SIP and/or IMS be only used at a fraction of their potential (e.g. for VoIP and a limited set of additional services), they could still be a success.

WiMAX or LTE or ............Both?

Everyday I am starting to get a bit more convinced that in future both WiMAX and LTE will work side by side and operators will be more willing to have an open mind about the rival technology.

This article from European Communications has put in words exactly how i have started to feel recently:

There is much expected of WiMAX and it's probably fair to say that some of this can be classified as ‘hype' yet there is much to be excited about, provided we set realistic expectations with early stage deployments. It's also important to remember that WiMAX comes in two distinctly different flavours - mobile WiMAX (referred to under standard 802.16e) and fixed (802.16d). There are significant differences between the two, not least the fact that it's technically much easier to deliver the high bandwidth speeds to a stationary external antenna associated with fixed WiMAX than it is to one on a mobile device in someone's pocket or handbag.

This means that whilst symmetrical speeds of 10 Mbps may be technically possible at a range of 10km today, in practice this is likely to be achieved only using fixed WiMAX and is reliant on other variables for its success, such as a high quality external antenna with line-of-sight to the base station. Given this situation is far from common and that buildings get in the way and degrade WiMAX signals, it will be more likely that mobile WiMAX users will only see half that data rate at much shorter distances from the base station - at least until techniques such as MIMO (multiple input multiple output) and beamforming are perfected to counter, and even take advantage of the multipath effects from physical obstructions.

One of the biggest obstacles to widespread WiMAX deployments is the lack of available high quality spectrum. In the US, Sprint benefits greatly from its 2.5 GHz spectrum holdings. This relatively low-frequency band allows greater coverage per base station since signals travel much further than at higher frequencies. This results in fewer base stations needed, making WiMAX cheaper to deploy in the US than in other markets that don't have access to the same spectrum. Even given the availability of 2.5 GHz spectrum, for Sprint's network to provide nationwide coverage it will require more than 60,000 base stations across the US.In Europe, bandwidth below 2.5GHz is scarce and mostly occupied by analogue TV and current GSM mobile signals. Therefore, until now most European WiMAX trials and licences have been limited to the 3.5 GHz or even 5 GHz bands with often disappointing results, which is why we haven't seen anywhere near as much WiMAX traction in Europe as the US. It may not be until after analogue broadcast signals are switched off across Europe (with the UK scheduled for 2012) that sub 2.5 GHz spectrum becomes available and we start to see large-scale European WiMAX deployments.

An alternative high speed mobile technology that could be used instead of, or to run alongside, WiMAX is LTE. The crucial difference is that, unlike WiMAX, which requires a new network to be built, LTE runs on an evolution of the existing UMTS infrastructure already used by over 80 per cent of mobile subscribers globally. This means that even though development and deployment of the LTE standard may lag Mobile WiMAX, it has a crucial incumbent advantage.

So which technology will ultimately prevail? It is arguable that LTE is more ‘risk-free' than WiMAX because it will run on an evolution of existing mobile infrastructure. Also, mobile operators will be able to use their experience from current 3G and HSDPA networks to carry out the incremental fine-tuning necessary to ensure that the rollout of LTE will deliver on user expectations. Also in Europe it has the advantage of being unaffected by the lack of available spectrum.

However, the recognition of WiMAX as an IMT-2000 technology by the ITU in October 2007 is a significant step, that in the future may help WiMAX to gain a foothold in today's UMTS spectrum and so close the spectrum availability gap, but the full impact of this move has yet to unfold.

Nevertheless, LTE is still perhaps three to four years from being ready whereas mobile WiMAX equipment is entering the final testing phase now. Some operators far from seeing LTE as being less of a risk may take the view that by missing an early mover advantage into ultra high speed mobile broadband and waiting for LTE would have an impact in terms of potential subscribers perhaps attainable by moving to WiMAX now.
Also LTE will start to come to the forefront at the same time as analogue TV signals are switched off in Europe, making the spectrum debate largely irrelevant to the WiMAX versus LTE argument. This is of course provided national governments release spectrum for WiMAX and it's available at a price that operators deem worth paying.

Interestingly many operators have already stated their interest in both camps. In August of this year, Vodafone, a key advocate of LTE, declared itself ‘technology neutral' and joined the WiMAX Forum. This pragmatic approach is perhaps a sign that for now many operators will adopt a ‘wait and see' approach and learn from the experiences of early pioneers such as Sprint Nextel before deciding whether to choose WiMAX or LTE.

Ultimately the decision may be to use both. As Spirent Nextel is showing in the US, the real estate occupied by an operator's current base stations can also be used to site new WiMAX base stations. Then the strategy could be that LTE is used to support mobile broadband users and WiMAX to support fixed or lower-mobility broadband users. Alternatively, they could well use LTE for macro cellular coverage and WiMAX for micro cell coverage.In all likelihood many devices of the future will ship with both LTE and WiMAX capability, meaning full compatibility across both technologies. Consumers will probably not even know which particular technology is delivering high speed data to them and they're hardly likely to care, so long as it works to their satisfaction, and the content provided is engaging and available at the right price

Bye Bye Moto...

Well its nearly time to say Bye to Motorola as they are planning to sell off (or merge perhaps) their Cell Phone business.

Guardian has an interesting peice on this:

Such a move could reshape the global mobile phones industry, leaving the rump of Motorola to concentrate on radios, networking equipment and household electronics such as television set-top boxes.

Although renowned for its ultra-thin Razr phones, Motorola has been losing market share; it slipped from second to third place in the world last year, behind Samsung and the industry leader, Nokia.

Motorola has been facing break-up calls for more than a year from the billionaire shareholder activist Carl Icahn, who owns 3.3% of the stock and sought boardroom representation last year.

Icahn greeted the announcement with satisfaction: "For many months I have been publicly advocating the separation of mobile devices from Motorola's other business and I am pleased to see that Motorola is finally exploring that proposal."

He warned, however, that he intends to try to unseat four or five of Motorola's 13 board members again at this year's annual meeting: "We believe Motorola is finally moving in the right direction but certainly still has a long way to go."

Motorola's profits slumped by 84% to $100m (£50m) in the final quarter of 2007. Although the Razr has surpassed 50m sales worldwide, the company has failed to follow up the model's success with a broader range of popular handsets.

Analysts have suggested that its technology neither suits burgeoning demand for multimedia functions in Europe and America nor the pressure for low prices which prevails in developing countries.

Motorola's announcement followed speculation of a sale of its phones division in a note published by an analyst at Nomura, who suggested that a Chinese buyer may be interested in the business.

Motorola's mobile phones division accounts for about half of its $36bn global sales. But its 12% share of the phones market is just half of its level at the peak of the Razr's success in 2006.

Regarding a takeover, Businessweek says:

A big reminder of the difficulties is the collapse of the highest-profile attempt by an Asian company to acquire a struggling Western cellular brand. In 2005, the Taiwanese electronics group BenQ, which had won respect in the telecom and computer industries for its innovative design and was making headway establishing its brand worldwide, tried to jump-start its global push by buying the struggling handset unit of Siemens (SI). The deal proved far too big for the Taiwanese company, though, and in 2006 BenQ Siemens went bankrupt.

As BenQ's experience illustrates, in the fiercely cutthroat handset market, a misstep could push a manufacturer way behind rivals, and achieving synergies could take time. A foreign takeover would probably involve the headache of integrating vastly different operations and clashing cultures, which could discourage any potential buyer from courting Motorola, particularly when its existing strategies are working. "It could be a dangerous undertaking," says Michael Min, a specialist on information technology companies at fund manager Tempis Capital Management.

Tomi Ahonen wrote an interesting comment on forum oxford on this one:

I'd hate to see Motorola quit the handset business, but its a very difficult market to succeed in. The mobile phone handset is the most complex piece of consumer electronics, the market place tolerances are tiny - with a shelf life for a given model of under a year (often under 6 months) - you have to continue to deliver hit models several times a year, every year.

We've seen giants quit. Philips was the world's largest consumer electronics firm in the 1970s and 1980s and quit the phone business. Siemens was the world's largest engineering company, also made phones; no more. Ericsson was the biggest telecoms manufacturer and couldn't sustain the losses of its handset division to merge it with that of Sony - which at the time and since the 1990s was the world's largest consumer electronics company. It took them years to turn their joint venture around.

We have giants from all sides playing in this game. Motorola the inventor of the cellular phone is now quite seriously considered to be on the way out.

Then there is the paper and rubber maunfacturing company from Finland, Nokia that got into phones that is now the giant. And two other conglomerates from South Korea, Samsung and LG, that are gobbling up market share..

A very rough market place. I do love competition. Americans are good at competition. I also love history, and it seems like a cruel twist of fate, if Motorola were to exit. But they haven't done really anything impressive since the Razr. And for a giant of their size, that is pretty sad...

Lets see how it plays. I often hear the big investor analysts say when they look at our industry, that there are too many players, and the market has to consolidate. It seems surprising when the news arrives of the Alcatel-Lucents, Nokia-Siemens Networks, Sprint-Nextels and SonyEricssons etc.

Meanwhile on another front we also see Microsoft wanting to gobble up Yahoo..

Vodafone's new data plan - playing catch-up with '3'

Vodafone has cut their mobile broadband rates. In a way this is good news as more small businesses will go for this option so they can check their mail while on the move.

I know some of you may be thinking that people always had the option of using Blackberry, but that option is expensive and not convinient for everyone.

So what is Vodafone offering:

• £15 (promotional period only) for upto 3G of data (18 months contract) and free USB modem
• £20 for 1GB of data on No contract + you buy your own modem

Even though this looks good initially, '3' has been offering a much better package:

• £10 for 1GB - 18 months Contract gets you a free Modem or Pay as you go with No Modem
• £15 for 3GB - Same terms as above
• £25 for 7GB - Same terms as above

The only problem with '3' is that people dont trust them enough (even though i used them and generally never had problems).

In any case this is still good news but the operators need to understand that they will have to lower the price slightly more before the critical mass adopts this whole heartedly. I say that £5 for 1GB and £10 for 3GB is a good starting point.

With more people adopting Mobile Broadband, operators will be forced to provide better services which in turn mean that they will have to move on new technologies like HSPA+ and LTE asap. This is because these new technologies increase the capacity and speed and the connections will become much more reliable.

We will have to wait and watch which operator has the courage to take the bold step of £5 for 1GB of data.

Ps: One of my colleague for India mentioned that you can get unlimited data using GPRS in India for Rs. 99 (< £1.5). Can anyone confirm?

Comparison: HSPA+ vs LTE

Advantages of LTE over HSPA+

• Flexible Spectrum usage possible with LTE: LTE will be the same whether the bandwidth available is 5MHz or 20MHz. Ofcourse the data rate will increase when the BW is increased. With HSPA+ only 5MHz bandwidhts possible. Similalrly with HSPA+ only FDD mode of operation is possible whereas with LTE FDD or TDD mode is possible.
• Spectrum Effeciency: Better spectrum effeciency, by a factor of 2 atleast over HSPA+
• Simpler Architecture: LTE has a much simpler and relatively flat architecture compared to the legacy UMTS network in HSPA+
• Higher Data Rates: LTE gives DL data rates of 144Mbps and UL of 57Mbps. HSPA+ gives 42Mbps in DL and 11Mbps in UL
• Ultra Low Latency: 10ms instead of 50ms for HSPA+
• Short TTI: 0.5ms instead of 2ms for HSPA+

Advantages of HSPA+ over LTE

• Will be ready much before LTE: HSPA+ technology should be available in Q1 2009 whereas the earliest with LTE would be sometime in 2010.
• Much less investment in infrastructure: Since HSPA+ is evolution of HSPA which is already being deployed, it would be easier and less costly to upgrade. With LTE since its based on OFDM a lot of new components will be required. Also in case of LTE the number of components are reduced but since they work in a different way, new components will be required.

Did i miss something?

Nokia Mobiles Dominate world

Nokia, the world's largest mobile phone maker, sold four in every 10 phones globally for the first time at the end of last year, boosting full-year operating profits by 46 per cent to €7.9bn ($11.6bn).

Strategy Analytics, a research company, said yesterday that Nokia's 40 per cent fourth quarter market share was larger than the combined 35.6 per cent of its three largest rivals, Motorola, Samsung and Sony Ericsson.

Motorola, the US's largest mobile phone maker, last year lost its position as the world's second largest to Samsung and this week reported an 84 per cent drop in fourth quarter profit to $100m and forecast a loss in the current quarter. But Samsung is gaining on its Finnish rival, saying last week that fourth quarter profit from its telecommunications business, which includes mobile phones, rose 67 per cent, fuelled by its range of aggressively priced products.

Earlier Sony Ericsson had reported that in 2007 their sales crossed 100 Million handsets.

Sony Ericsson gained market share during the quarter due to the continued success of such products as the K550 Cyber-shot™ and the W200, W300 and W580 Walkman® phones in the Americas and Europe. Although Average Selling Price (ASP) increased slightly sequentially during the quarter, as a result of the introduction of new flag-ship Walkman® and Cyber-shot™ phones such as the W910 and K850 models, the trend for falling ASPs year-on-year reflects the company’s direction to broaden its product portfolio.

During the fourth quarter Sony Ericsson announced that it had entered into a series of agreements with Motorola, Inc. whereby Motorola acquired 50% of the share capital in U.I. Holdings BV, the Dutch owner of the Swedish software company UIQ Technology AB, which was acquired by Sony Ericsson from Symbian Ltd. earlier in the year. The transaction was ratified by the appropriate competition authorities during the quarter.

Our friend Tomi has a very good analysis on this topic on his blog here.

LTE Architecture: Flat or Not so Flat?

'Migrating to Flatter, All-IP Wireless Networks' claims this article in converge digest. People have been talking about this Flat architectures for some time now and I decided that it was time i clear my understanding on this.

While searching my library of infinite resources i finally hit the jackpot. Qualcomm presentation from LTE 2007 has an answer.


The flatness of an access network can be measured by the depth of its link layer-specific network element hierarchy.

Going back to the article mentioned earlier:

Despite the growth of carrier networks and the evolution of standards, voice and data communications have not evolved in synch. Carriers have historically added data communications as an afterthought to voice network architectures originally conceived in the circuit-switched era, resulting in complex hierarchical networks that support both voice and data.

This type of architecture is expensive, leading to high operating and capital expenditures for service providers and significantly lowering margins in a highly competitive industry. In addition, networks employing cobbled-together voice and data communications systems simply do not have the capacity to provide the rich multimedia services and omnipresent Internet access that today’s wireless customers demand.

To address these limitations, service providers are moving toward emerging all-IP wireless technologies that promise to reduce complexity, simplify the wireless core, and decrease service providers’ operational and capital expenses.

Currently there are several initiatives that operators are considering for building wireless IP networks:

· WiMAX End-to-End Network Systems Architecture: Defined by the WiMAX Forum Network Working Group (NWG) and leveraging the IEEE 802.16e WiMAX interface.
· Long Term Evolution (LTE): Being defined by the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) and targeted as a successor to GSM-based technologies.
· Ultra Mobile Broadband (UMB): Being defined by the Third Generation Partnership Project 2 (3GPP2) and targeted as a successor to CDMA-based technologies.

All three of these architectures are similar in that they leverage a flat, user-plane, all-IP network architecture with fewer nodes that enables mobile operators to integrate the core with the access network, providing real-time multimedia and broadband IP services from the core to the mobile station. This flatter architecture results in reduced latencies and thus optimizes performance for real-time services such as voice and video.

So going back to the Qualcomm presentation and checking if the LTE part is as flat as claimed.

We can see that the LTE Network Architecture is Lumpy rather than flat. Even though it is an improvement from the Release 99 (or rather Release 6) its not as flat as claimed.

Sure this would be something to consider in case of 4G (IMT-Advanced).

2008: Which Technologies?

There are many tecchnologies being standardised or about to be rolled out this year. A summary of these along with the predictions are available on RCR News website:

WiMAX Certifications: As promised, the WiMAX Forum opened up its labs in December for mobile WiMAX certification testing. The expectation is that 802.16e-based products will start earning the forum’s stamp of approval by mid-year with, “hundreds of devices to go through certification,” over the course of the year. The larger hope is that certification will drive operators currently testing the technology (300-plus by some estimates) into broader, commercial deployments.

In reality, certification may be little more than a formality. Why?

1) Operators wouldn’t be deploying kit that they didn’t think complied (at least somewhat) to the 802.16e standard and WiMAX Forum profiles.

2) The forum’s plugfests have helped to get vendors roughly in-line in terms standards implementations.

3) Even if you don’t agree with points one and two, consider the following: Some so-called mobile WiMAX products may never get certified. Implementations in potentially popular bands such as 5 GHz or 1.5 GHz may always remain relative niches, never garnering enough interest from vendors to warrant the creation of WiMAX profiles in these bands. And, while Taiwan is oft painted as a hotbed of WiMAX device development, vendors there are reportedly bristling at the prospect of costly certification testing, setting the stage for certification delays or two tiers of products (fully certified and compliant, but not certified). Now, that would be buzz-worthy.

Long Term Evolution: If only in trade shows, WiMAX and LTE seem inextricably linked — usually separated by the word, “versus.” And, as with WiMAX, the LTE market will steadily develop throughout 2008. Tradeshow booths will be filled with prototype LTE systems. The 3GPP should make progress on getting the standard completed. Trials (based on finalized radio interface specs) will take place. Additional operators will declare their allegiance to 4G. Yep, it will be a good year for LTE … and we’ll hear about it often. None of these trials or demos, however, will change the facts. Commercial kit won’t be available until sometime next year; until then, we won’t know how any vendor’s solutions actually perform. Broader field trials will likely be a 2010 phenomenon given the habit of device availability trailing networks by a good margin. This means that commercial service deployments might be expected in the 2011 timeframe. Considering the fact that operators will continue to ramp up 3G usage, that might even be optimistic. So, at the end of the day, enjoy the show floor demos, pick up a few flashing toys for your kids at home and know this: The LTE landscape at the end of 2008 should look a lot like it did at the end of 2007. LTE will be broadly accepted as a dominant 4G standard, but services will be years away and real-world performance will be a question mark.

Note: On referring LTE to 4G please read this and this.

700 MHz spectrum: With all due respect to my troglodytic (cave-dwelling for those didn’t get My Word Coach for your Nintendo this Christmas) friends, the FCC’s 700 MHz auction begins later this month. In the run-up, intrigue around who will bid, how much they will bid, and the bidding/service rules they will face has provided fodder for nearly daily news. Once the bidding begins, we’ll get day by day (and hour by hour) updates on the auction process and what it means for the U.S. telecom landscape. I personally plan to avoid the fray by being in the middle of the ocean when the auctions start and then retreat to the West Virginia border (true story, I go from vacation to our annual corporate retreat at The Homestead). The buzz, however, is somewhat understandable, given the propagation characteristics at 700 MHz (great for broad coverage and in-building penetration), and the fact that it could support new market entrants … not to mention the potential for 700 MHz developing into globally standardized wireless spectrum.

But, what’s going to happen this year? Auctions will take place and spectrum will be allocated. Networks, however, won’t get deployed; I’m planning to continue watching analog TV with my old rabbit ears right up until I can’t anymore. More importantly, operators looking to 700 MHz as a platform for their 4G networks may need to wait for several years before they can even get access to the equipment they need (see rant above).

And, the value of propagation and global standardization? The prospect of 700 MHz spectrum being available around the globe will doubtless bid up the value of the band here in the U.S. and price me out of winning the B-Block CMA covering my house.

Yet, it will take years, if ever, before other countries can move on the band. By that point the costs of developing multi-band devices should be lower, perhaps thanks to innovations like software-defined transceivers. At that point, any operator building out a 4G network should be building for capacity and FMC solutions leveraging Wi-Fi or femtocells (or something we haven’t yet heard of) should solve most of our in-building coverage problems (cue the anti-femtocell rhetoric).

Femtocells: Speaking of femtocells … I like femtocells. I even have one on my desk; it’s a mostly-empty mock up handed to me last year as one of the industry’s pioneers was looking to empty out their booth at the end of 3GSM (back when it was still called 3GSM). 2008 should be a banner year for the little boxes since trials will start taking place beyond the more limited moves in 2007. These trials, in turn, will be critical for providing insights into how (or if) the products work. Just as we’ve heard about most major femtocell RFPs and commitments, we’ll hear about these trials as they move forward (often thanks to tradeshow sessions). What these trials won’t do is provide any immediate answers.

Yep, 2008 will be a year of figuring out what makes sense: the best business models, the best mobile core integration options, the best device management strategies, the best interference mitigation strategies, the reality of zero-touch installations, the tradeoff between products filled with bells and/or whistles and a bill-of-materials that can support profitable services. To this end, Sprint Nextel deserves credit for getting the ball rolling early, deploying commercial services instead of waiting for others to figure it all out. Yet, for all of the femtocell buzz (some of it warranted), 2008 will be largely about setting the stage for 2009.

More of it here.

3GPP LTE Progressing Nice and Steady

Press release from 3G Americas yesterday, applauds the progress of LTE standardisation over the recent months.

“3G Americas has consistently supported the 3GPP standards for the GSM family of technologies and we applaud the progress of the LTE standard. LTE is a dynamic OFDM-based next generation technology with a great future. 3G Americas is committed to not only today’s global leading standards of GSM, EDGE and UMTS/HSPA but also to the innovation that LTE provides our industry,” stated Chris Pearson, President of 3G Americas.

Pearson added, “With this recent approval, the LTE Terrestrial Radio Access Network technology specifications will be under change control, and included in the forthcoming 3GPP Release 8.”

Meanwhile Martin suggests in his blog that voice will be the real test for LTE networks.

While on mobile Internet devices it might be acceptable to have Skype or some other VoIP technology, smaller handsets who's main purpose is voice service might have a much more difficult time with VoIP. Such devices must also be capable of roaming to 2G and 3G networks when running out of LTE coverage. Especially in 2G networks, VoIP is a no go so voice service must fall back to good old circuit switched telephony. So apart from the question of how VoIP will be done on LTE handsets the much bigger question is how to make the experience seamless over 2G, 3G and LTE.

More about that here.

80 million mobile WiMAX subcribers (by 2013)

A new report by Juniper Research calculates the number of mobile WIMAX subscribers will exceed 80 million by 2013. The biggest surge in growth, says the research firm, will happen after 2010. Juniper’s projections assume a wide range of attractive devices will be available on the market within three years (at competitive prices), and mobile WiMAX operators will achieve service differentiation from mobile operators.

According to figures from the WiMAX Forum, WiMAX technology had the potential to reach 2.7 billion people before the ITU announcement. That number now rises to over 4 billion.

There are already some interesting announccements regarding WiMAX in the last one month:

Milton Keynes Council has launched what is thought to be the UK's first commercial wireless broadband service using WiMAX technology. ConnectMK, a private company set up by the council to address the issue of poor broadband connectivity across Milton Keynes, has joined forces with Freedom4 to provide residents and businesses in the area with access to WiMAX services.

For those who dont know, Milton Keynes is a relatively newly developed town in Greater London area. When it was being expanded in 1980's, the engineers decided they can save lots of money by having copper plated aluminium cables rather than copper cables for telephone, etc. Their experiment was successful and received lots of applause untill the arrival of ADSL when people realised that these cables cant be used for carrying broadband ;)

Sprint said that the Xohm service will be commercially available in select cities around the United States in the second quarter of 2008.

Sprint was one of a number of vendors at the Consumer Electronics Show with big WiMAX plans. For its part, Sprint said that the Xohm service will be commercially available in select cities around the United States in the second quarter of 2008. The company hopes for a large-scale rollout of its Xohm WiMAX service by the end of the year.

Other CES vendors with WiMAX-related announcements: San Francisco's OQO (an ultra-mobile PC planned for 2008); AsusTek of Taiwan (a variety of WiMAX-embedded devices); and Zyxel (collaborating with Sequans on WiMAX access devices for Xohm's commercial launch).

One of the promises of WiMax, a service Sprint will be providing under the Xohm brand, is that receivers for it can be built into a variety of devices like cameras and Web tablets that usually don't have a built-in Internet connection or rely on Wi-Fi, a short-range technology.

By the way, it seems Sprint is already going through a rough patch:

Now, another round of subscriber losses is expected for the fourth quarter ended Dec. 31 as the firm tightened credit standards for would-be subscribers and failed to price its handsets competitively, said Philip Cusick, an equity research analyst with Bear Stearns in New York.

Shares of Sprint, which have lost more than 25 percent in the past year, closed up 11 cents yesterday at $12.36.

Citing anonymous sources, the Wall Street Journal yesterday reported that Mr. Hesse plans to fire several thousand workers. The company last year fired 5,000. The Journal also disclosed that Mr. Hesse may relocate the company's headquarters to Overland Park, Kan., where 13,000 of the company's 60,000 employees are located.

And finally the rest:

Airspan Announces 5 GHz WiMAX Deployments in Ukraine

Alcatel-Lucent opens WiMAX interoperability testing center in Taiwan

Kirkland, Wash.-based Clearwire, founded in 2003, is building a nationwide high-speed wireless network based on WiMax technology. Under the agreement, Clearwire would offer Google's email and calendar applications to its customers. In the future, Clearwire also plans to offer Google's search tools.

Chrysler to put WiMax into its cars

Axtel (Mexico) selects Motorola for WiMAX deployment

Alvarion and Bridgewater Team for Joint WiMAX Deployment in Angola

Vodacom (South Africa) WiMax and ADSL on track

I-HSPA: HSPA+ by another name

Nokia refers to HSPA+ by the name I-HSPA or Internet-HSPA.

According to their whitepaper:

• 3G operators who have deployed I-HSPA have flat network architecture similar to LTE/SAE in place, and can thus cost-efficiently introduce LTE/SAE.
• 3G operators with a deployed WCDMA/HSPA network can migrate
  directly to LTE/SAE. Migrating to the flat network architecture of
  Internet High Speed Packet Access (I-HSPA) may also be beneficial
  because it accommodates LTE/SAE’s flat IP-based network architecture while supporting legacy WCDMA/HSPA handsets. The operator can thus enjoy the transport and network scaling benefits immediately and easily upgrade the network to LTE/SAE later.
• Greenfield and CDMA operators can introduce LTE/SAE networks
  directly or follow one of the above paths. GSM/EDGE may be a good choice for strategies more immediately focused on voice centric business. Operators opting to take the I-HSPA path can capitalize on the ecosystem of HSPA terminals, benefit from the flat architecture today, and quickly optimize mobile broadband performance.

Heard of MobileFi?

A new book title came to my attention, "Wimax/Mobilefi". I hadnt heard of MobileFi before so i did a bit of digging up and here are the details.

MobileFi is also known as Mobile-Fi or Mobile Broadband Wireless Access (MBWA) and is better known as IEEE 802.20

IEEE 802.20, also referred to as Mobile-Fi, is optimized for IP and roaming in high-speed mobile environments. This standard is poised to fully mobilize IP, opening up major new data markets beyond the more circuit-centric 2.5G and 3G cellular standards. The Mobile Broadband Wireless Access (MBWA) Working Group was established as IEEE 802.20 in December 2002. Its main mission is to develop the specification for an efficient packet-based air interface optimized for the transport of IP-based services. The goal is to enable global deployment of low-cost, ubiquitous, interoperable, and always-on multivendor mobile broadband wireless access networks. IEEE 802.20 has designed a new physical layer (Layer 1 protocol) and MAC/link layer (Layer 2 protocol) around IP packet Layer 3. It can operate in licensed bands below 3.5GHz, with cell ranges of 9 miles (15 km) or more. IEEE 802.20 can operate at speeds of up to 155 mph (250 kph).

Unlike WiMAX, which was incubated inside IEEE 802.16 family and evolved from earlier 802.16 technologies, 802.20 [5] or Mobile-Fi was designed from ground up as a technology to support high-mobility services. It aims to support mobility as high as 250 km/h and a peak rate of up to 260 Mbps in the licensed spectrum below 3.5 GHz. Th e enabling technologies are also OFDM, MIMO, and beam-forming. The draft standard is still under the IEEE standardization process.

Both WiMAX and 802.20 use OFDM-MIMO, which is emerging as the main technology for future cellular packet data networks, including 3GPP long-term evolution and 3GPP2 air interface evolution as well.

While the data rate and range of Mobile-Fi are only half those of Mobile WiMax, Mobile-Fi is inherently more mobile. It has an astonishing latency of just 10 milliseconds (500 milliseconds is standard for 3G communications) and can maintain integrity at speeds as high as 155 mph (250 kph), compared to just 60 mph (100 kph) for WiMax. Because it uses more common spectrumlicensed bands up to 3.5GHzit also offers global mobility, handoff, and roaming support. Whereas Mobile WiMax is looking at the mobile user walking around with a PDA or laptop, Mobile-Fi addresses high-speed mobility issues. One key difference is the manner in which the two standards are deployed. One assumption is that the carriers are going to deploy Mobile WiMax in their existing (802.16a) footprint as opposed to deploying a more widespread footprint, like a cellular network. Because Mobile-Fi is aimed at more ubiquitous coverage, a larger footprint will be required.

Countries and companies often seek to control the market by developing standards they hope will dominate the global scene. The United States has led the way with IEEE standards, and the European Union's ETSI standards are their counterparts. The work of standards consensus is ongoing, uncertain, and difficult to predict. Mobile operators, who are generally friendly to Mobile WiMax, see Mobile-Fi as a competing standard that could make their 3G licenses worth rather less than they paid for them. The fact that Intel is behind WiMax is a strong force and will undoubtedly push the WiMax standards forward.

Mobile-Fi will have to overcome several hurdles. First among them is the fact that it can be used only in licensed bands below 3.5GHz. Another is that Mobile-Fi trails the Mobile WiMax standards process by a couple years. Another hurdle is whether there is indeed a large requirement for 155 mph (250 kph) handoff. In addition, we do not know what effect Mobile WiMax being nationalized in Korea will have. And, very importantly, cellular companies may not be willing to undercut their 3G service. Certainly, we can assume that the US$100 billion investment in 3G spectrum by the European mobile carriers alone might be weighed against a workable Mobile-Fi standard. With the possibility of proprietary systems (e.g., WiBro, Flash-OFDM) being in place a number of years before Mobile-Fi is standardized, the likelihood is that by then, Mobile WiMax will be backward compatible with WiMax fixed services. Licensed or unlicensed, Mobile-Fi will not be ubiquitous, and WiMax probably will.

Further Reading:

* Book: Wimax/Mobilefi
* Official IEEE 802.20 website

HSPA Data Rates Calculation

People often get lost while calculating the data rates for HSDPA, HSUPA or HSPA+

Note: HSPA+ is better known as eHSPA or HSPAe where e stands for evolution or evolved

Most people are aware that the theoretical maximum for HSDPA is 14.4Mbps, so lets see how we reach 14.4Mbps:

In UMTS, in each slot the maximum number of bits transmitted is 2560. The correct term to use is chips rather than bits. If you want to know where this 2560 comes from or why chips then please refer 3GPP TS 25.211

There are 15 slots per 10ms frame so since the TTI for HSDPA is 2ms, there will be 3 slots. So there will be a total of 7680 chips.

QPSK has 2 bits per symbol = 7680 * 2 chips for 2ms = 15360 chips/2ms = 15360 * 1000 /2 chips per second

Now the SF is fixed at 16
= (15360 * 1000) / (2 * 16)
= 480 Kbps

Terminal that uses 15 QPSK codes will get 480 * 15 = 7.2Mbps

On other hand 16 QAM will have 4 bits per symbol so the rate would be 7.2 * 2 = 14.4Mbps



In HSPA+ we will also have 64QAM which has 6 bits per symbol (2^6 = 64) so the max rate would be 7.2 * 3 = 21.6Mbps.

The figure above is self explanatory and shows the data rate in case of eHSPA.

Ericsson Networks to launch MBMS in March 2008

Ericsson Networks last month successfully completed IOT (Inter-operability Testing) with EMP (Ericsson Mobile Platforms ... Handset people) and LG.

The plan is to have early launch systems in March 2008 followed by full deployment in September 2008. The only limiting factor might be the handsets which are not ready yet and have many problems that need to be sorted out.

According to CIO, Australians might be the first to get their hands on MBMS networks.

From what I have seen, Nokia is much ahead of its rivals in the MBMS game but they are keeping mum on this topic ... atleast for the moment. Sure it will be an interesting 2008.

Happy New Year

Its still not too late ... HAPPY New Year to everyone.