Carl Ford : 4G Wireless Evolution
Carl Ford
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Smart devices

Ceilings and Floors: Vodafone and Verizon

September 25, 2009

It's game of inches as they say. 

I have been looking at the reporting about Verizon's App Store activity and find the perspective of some pundits troubling.

As I reported when I went to the Verizon Developers Conference, the goal Verizon has is very different than being the equivalent of the iTunes AppStore.

Lets be honest, how many of us have looked at all 65,000 apps, and how many of us really want to.

Verizon announced a partnership with Vodafone, China Mobile and Softbank to deliver applications their way.  Very specfically Verizon was looking to open the interfaces for location, billing and trust (security).  I noted that their strategy was associated with a API that masked alot of the behind the scenes OSS work. 

Carriers and cellphone vendors have procedures for turning on the phone that represent over 100 steps in provisioning and configuration.  Verizon has tried to make the network valuable without having the carrier's internal OSS stifle the developer.  The one requirement is work within a framework. A lot of the companies that are on the iPhone do not like this framework, and it shows in in the blogosphere.

So Vodafone makes its announcement about their efforts to build Vodafone 360 which to me is a another strategy in keeping with the alliance, but is not getting the anger yet.

I think the reason maybe be that Verizon is in the California footprint and the developers are asked all the time "Can I use it on my phone" and since VZW is big in California, the answer frustrating.















My Instincts about the Korean market opening up for iPhone

September 24, 2009

It will be interesting to see what happens next, now that the Korean Communications Commission has okayed the importing of iPhones and Blackberries. 

Korean has a very saturated market, so I would not expect a fast migration.  However I would expect to see improvements from Samsung in software strategies, including an adoption of Android in the states.

It has been interesting to observe Kanji based cell phone users, They have a phonetic use of the alphabetic keyboard that makes their sms messages happen quite quickly.  I am not sure the soft key boards on a screen are going to add any value to most users.

Additionally most games in Asia have found their way through existing solutions, so I am not sure how much additional value the app store will bring to the table.

Of course on a sheer numbers market perspective the adoption will probably be astounding, but like Telefonica, I think the more interesting question is what impact it will have on carrier adoption.









Apple you Win, I Bought the iTouch!

September 10, 2009

As my regular readers know, I am Apple user but not and Apple fan.

As so many of my friends around me are using the iPhone and telling me how cool it is, while never making a call with it.  I decided the best AV tool I could use to get my points across was an iTouch.

I bought the iTouch paid extra for the microphone headset and gave it access to my Verizon MiFi.  I then downloaded skype with an outbound international dialing service.  What are the points I am trying to get across?

1) the iPhone is a gadget not a smart phone.  The best application I have seen on the iPhone that is telecom related is Calliflower, but even that is just as good if not better on the web. It really is a gaming device that you can by virtual cartridges at the app store.
2) the App Store has nothing to do with the 3G.  When spectrum was ransomed with the hope of new services, the apps and the network were suppose to be a blend.  We have still yet to find a purpose to be married and the app store is little more than a WAP gateway of control.
3) the Apps are in the store, because it is a gateway.  For all the talk of the 65,000 plus applications, It is nothing in comparison to the Internet itself and the value of Internet is repackaged within the store.
4) the network is the Internet, no offense to ATT.  The ability to deliver worldwide connectivity can not be over emphasized. The iPhone / iTouch are beautiful devices, but it would be a wrong to consider them valuable as a network device.

As you should have expected its a poor concession speech, but its a beautifully designed device.
















Testing a Big Question for 'Open' 4G Devices

September 3, 2009

There was a little cold-water type reality splashed on the audience at the morning panels here Thursday at the 4GWE conference, specifically around the notion of 4G network and device testing -- a relatively non-sexy topic that may nevertheless slow down the delivery of all the new devices promised for the 4G networks of the future.

The problem, as outlined by the panelists, is that with the increased bandwidth and increased functionality of the mobile devices of the future comes exponential requirements for testing to make sure the devices and the applications residing on them work as promised.

There was some deep-dive material that we're not going to get into right now (check this space for an update when we post the panel presentations) but on a simpler plane panelists like David Gehringer, VP of marketing for Fanfare Software, noted that things like the IEEE standards, say for mobile WiMAX, are really just the starting point for delivering a working device.

"It's nice to have a standard, but it's really just the ante," Gehringer said. After you meet the baseline standard specs, he said, "then the real testing starts."

Fanny Mlinarsky, president of octoScope, said that in the past testing mobile devices was relatively simple, since they typically only had one radio inside. Now, multiple radios -- different cellular bands, as well as Wi-Fi and Bluetooth -- are a given, as are multiple applications, sometimes from third parties outside the carrier's own operations.

The complexity, she said, makes testing devices a much harder task these days. Even Apple's iPhone, which all panelists agreed was an extremely well-tested device from the manufacturer's standpoint, has attracted a wide range of add-on applications, some of which perform better than others -- especially when it comes to battery usage.

"That's why iPhone users stay close to the power plug," Mlinarsky said.


 














Developers Have the Upper Hand in 4G Apps Ecosystem

September 2, 2009

Two afternoon panels Tuesday at the 4GWE conference here in Los Angeles made it clear that software developers, and not carriers, will drive innovation when it comes to 4G wireless applications of the future. The big, unanswered question is if, how and when two very different camps -- developers and service providers -- will work together in a fashion profitable for both camps.

There was more than a little animosity on display during the panel talks, and perhaps it was a good idea to keep developers on one panel, and service provders (and their large-equipment vendor partners) on another. Francisco Kattan, who is newly signed on at Alcatel-Lucent as senior director of the company's developer ecosystem, said that while in the past developers "had to beg" to get on any provider's mobile application "deck," with the iPhone and its revolutionary App Store, "the tables have now turned and competition for developers is at an all-time high."

But while device manufacturers (Nokia, RIM) and large service providers (Verizon) are trying to catch up to Apple by establishing developer programs and appliction stores, developers aren't so sure that the old guard are the best leaders for the 4G app development future. "Maybe operators shouldn't be running an apps store," said Shai Berger, CEO of Fonolo, which builds applications that allow users to bypass automated dialing systems.



4GWE: Development Tools

September 2, 2009


Development Tools for 4G Hardware and Software, Part 1
(4G4-01)
Wednesday - 09/02/09,  8:30-9:45am
The mathematical theory often associated with wireless and mobile physical layer algroithms are complex and require a lot of thought when looking for new solutions in the wireless network. OFDM and MIMO are at the base of these algorithms. These sessions provides an intuitive and straightforward view beneficial to a wide audience of engineers and project managers.


After an overview of the discussion about how to design a 4G device from Frank Schirrmeister of Synopsys, Frank Vincze of Steepest Ascent talked about the library software.

The Library from Steepest Ascent deals with issues of channel optimisation, MIMO, and other LTE device management charteristics.

Operations that are needed to manage the development of the device in a set of libraries that take you through the OSI stack. 

Frequency Division Duplexing and the transciever functions are all within the library. 

The library has prebuilt models that represent some standard models of design.  This allows product differentiation to be done in relation to some standard sets that include test scenarios.  All of this done within the Math Kernel Library within System Studio.

Frequency is the subcarrier which makes up the orthogonal portion of the  OFDM strategy.

LTE uses a number of channel coding techniques in LTE.

The channel that makes the bitstream is controlled with a blended data channel and the control channel. 

All this signal processing equates to the throughput of the device. 

The algorithm in the MLK are put into the parameter blocks represented in software to enable the developer to manage the design through a GUI tool.

In LTE there are a number of reserved spaces in the packet format of the signal.

The blocks are the Scrambler, Symbol Modulation,  Layer Mapper and Precoder.  After your precode is completed it gets added to the LTE reserved signalling formats.

By using the libraries you get the benefit of testing against real data.






























Mobile Social Applications: How Carriers Can Help the Conversation

September 1, 2009

The panel here at 4GWE on Mobile Social Applications picked up a theme from Brough Turner's earlier presentation -- that there is a big potential audience for applications that make use of mobile data owned by the provider, such as a user's location, their status, etc., especially when linked in a sharing fashion, such as on Facebook or Twitter.

Troy Cross, head of sales at voice-recognition supplier Vlingo, said that mobile access to social networking applications "allows you to connect to your friends faster," a "significant behaviorial change" as opposed to updating Facebook only when you are sitting behind a PC or laptop.

Shoshana Loeb, executive director and chief scientist at Telcordia, said there will be personal tradeoffs that will determine how successful mobile social media devices and applications will be -- such as cost for perceived value, and whether or not people feel comfortable allowing personal data like location to be shared.

"The technology allows you to lose your privacy much more easily" than in the past, Loeb said, guessing that governments everywhere will soon look more closely at the privacy concerns of mobile customers. Vlingo's Cross also predicted a "tsnuami" of regulation related to use of mobile data while driving, as consumers go on beyond simple "texting while driving" to trying to update a Facebook page while behind the wheel.

Nokia's Timothy Jasionowski opined that the industry now is at the state of "throwing rocks at each other," but that widespread availability of GPS-enabled phones has "opened up a giant laboratory" for experimentation. One unanswered question from the audience: How can corporations make use of mobile social networking technologies? Ideas?







No Degrees of Separation: SMS vs. Mobile IM

August 27, 2009

Some good friends and I keep a dialogue going about the industry.  We don't make public our views, so as to protect the people from being exposed with their views versus their consulting / job opportunities.

A thread that I thought was intriguing was about the reason SMS / txting has not been successfully bypassed by IM.  It may be that the price is right to avoid the cross elastics.

But I think there is a simpler answer.  Signalling on IM on a mobile phone requires a learning curve and a redirection, while texting is via SMS is an embedded application.  So the cost to do the IM is in the time, and the cost to do the SMS is nominal.

I bring this up, because of the discussion about Apple's iPhone coming to China. In the article IDC states that about 7% of the iPhone market share is in Asia.  Previously, I have pointed out that Telefonica has not gotten the boost ATT has from the iPhone.  

I think China Unicom will have a big enough market that the opportunity itself will change the marketshare.  While Touchscreens are hot according to the article and my expectation is that will point to more gaming being done and less phone calls.

The reality is that Kanji characters are very easily navigated by the Asian market with alphabetic keyboards.  Spelling phonetically on the alpha the kanji characters appear on the screen until the option of four or five appears and bingo they mouse over to it.

It will be interesting to see if the that kind of a mix on a touch screen can be duplicated.  On my gPhone, this feature is less that spectacular for english, so the touch screens may be need to go through a few generations of optimization for this to work properly.

But the iPhone is to fun not to be bought and with China's software development capability, I have high expectations for the App Store, although it may be jointly owned with China Unicom in the end due to China's restrictions.













Death Star Apple

August 24, 2009

Lately, I am feeling right at home.  Regulatory is rearing its head and as some one no longer trying to navigate it, I can just sit back and watch the events.

Nothing is more fun to look at then the tenor of the three letters from Apple, ATT and Google,

ATT, long acquainted with their role and the concerns about them, write humbly even though they have done nothing wrong.  In their document, they make clear that they have accepted the concept of third party VoWiFi services.  As we head towards LTE, we might be saying "Its all WiFi eventually).  More about this later in the week.

Then comes Google's Letter.  A thing of beauty.  The writer, a friend has been in the advocacy area for carriers for years, has the high ground with  open standards and knows he does not have to defend Google here. Mind you they did keep confidential their contacts with other third parties, but on this specific case and on the Google app store they were clean.

Google has been very involved with this administration and it maybe to Apple's regret that they severed the relation at the board level.

Apple's letter has some interesting statements in it.  That if I were worried about monopolistic powers (RIAA are you listening) I would question.

"We provide every developer with the same software that we use to create our own iPhone".



Does anyone else want to challenge that statement.  Particularly after the answer to question number 1. 

"The application has not been approved because, as submitted for review, it appears to alter the iPhone's distinctive user experience by replacing the iPhone's core mobile telephone functionality and Apple user interface with its own user interface for telephone calls, text messaging and voicemail.  Apple spent a lot of time and effort developing this distinct and innovative way to seamlessly deliver core functionality of the iPhone. "

In other words, we enable compliance not openness.

There are other places in the document where Apple is placing their controls in the most favorable light.

















Can Walkman 2.0 Occur; Sony Ericsson

August 18, 2009

Today's Wall Street Journal has knews that Sony Ericsson is going to have a new CEO.  In the land where 4G is closer than anywhere else (Japan), SONY Ericsson has been a contender, but in other places not so strong.

With the Ericsson the parent now having a bigger footprint in the US with the acquistion of Nortel, the outsourcing by Sprint and the overall positive response to them from cable and wireless carriers, Ericsson has made the right moves.

And for Sony Ericsson with the game-focused mobile phones one that features an accelerometer for gesture-based controls and one that is linked to the Sony PlayStation 3 game consoles to swap content.

Gaming is certainly an important market, but my big issue is can the company get an advantage (again) in music.











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