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Mobile World Congress Key Terms

As you may know, Mobile World Congress kicks off this week and to get the ball rolling the event has put out some of the key terms you will be hearing more about this week. I have posted them here with their definitions in case you need to brush up on your acronyms. ;)

Also be sure to check out the Mobile World Congress News Page to stay up to date on the show.

3G

3G, or third-generation, is loosely defined as offering high data speeds, always-on data access and greater voice capacity, enabling operators to offer customers fast internet access, live, streaming video and other multimedia or "converged" applications over a wireless network. There are several 3G technology standards.

4G

4G, or fourth-generation, a loose term for wireless mobile radio technology that offers faster data rates than 3G. 4G networks are also more data-centric and based on standard internet technologies such as IP (Internet protocol), with voice services typically provided using a form of VoIP (see VoIP). See WiMAX and LTE.

CDMA

CDMA, or Code Division Multiple Access, is a second-generation digital wireless technology that competes with alternative technologies such as GSM. CDMA technologies operate at the 800 megahertz and 1900 megahertz frequencies, primarily in the U.S. and Asia. CDMA2000 is a third-generation, or 3G, technology that arose out of CDMA.

EDGE

Enhanced Data for Global Evolution is an upgrade for GSM/GPRS networks that triples speed, and is used extensively in countries which currently lack a dedicated 3G spectrum. It is also often described as a 2.5G network technology.

Femtocell

Femtocells are small, box-shaped base-stations for use within residential homes and businesses that allow mobile operators to send voice calls and data directly over the internet using a broadband connection. The prefix femto-, means one quadrillionth).

GPRS

General Packet Radio Service is used for data applications on phones, including wireless application protocol (WAP) Internet services, multimedia messaging services (MMS) and software that connects to the Internet.

GSM

Global System for Mobile Communications, GSM is the dominant mobile phone standard. GSM is one of two major phone technologies deployed, the other being CDMA. GSM, which is far more prevalent outside of the U.S., particularly in Europe. GSM phones are incompatible with those that work on CDMA networks, and vice-versa. The key feature of GSM devices is the SIM card which allows users to switch phones by simply moving the thumbnail-size storage device from one phone to another.

HSDPA

High-Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) networks, also described by some as 3.5G networks, is an upgrade to WCDMA/UMTS networks that doubles network capacity and increases download data speeds by fivefold or more.

HSUPA

High-Speed Uplink Packet Access (HSUPA) networks apply HSDPA-like enhancements to the uplink side of the connection.

LTE

LTE, or Long-term Evolution, is the term used to describe the advanced wireless mobile technology that is succeeding the current 3G WCDMA/HSDPA/HSUPA technology. LTE is widely considered to be a 4G technology, both because it is faster than 3G, and because it uses an all-IP (Internet protocol) system architecture in which everything, including voice, is handled as data.

MVNO

Mobile Network Virtual Operators, or MVNOs, are wireless companies which use another operator's radio towers and network to provide mobile services to their customers, instead of investing in their own infrastructure.

Picocells

Cellular base-stations which are smaller than microcells but larger than femtocells.

Quad-band

A GSM phone which supports all four major GSM frequency bands, including 850 MHz and 1900 MHz used in the U.S., and 900/1800 MHz used in the rest of the world.

UMTS

Universal Mobile Telecommunications System - a 3G mobile technology often used and referred to interchangeably with WCDMA.

VoIP

Voice over Internet Protocol, also called IP telephony, is a technology for transmitting voice traffic over packet-switched data networks. See Packet Switching.

WAP

Wireless Application Protocol is a technology designed to allow efficient transmission of optimized Internet content to mobile phones.

WCDMA

Wideband Code Division Multiple Access, is a third-generation wireless standard, deployed in Europe and Asia at the 2100 MHz frequency, and in North America at 850 MHz and 1900 MHz. Also referred to interchangeably as UTMS. WCDMA is a GMS-path standard, while CDMA is based on the CDMA2000 track.

WiMAX

A group of wireless broadband standards with very long range (of five miles-30 miles) and high speed, in contrast to Wi-Fi, which offers megabits of bandwidth over service distances of around 300 feet. WiMAX operates at higher frequencies than mobile phone networks, typically in the 2.5 GHz or 3.5 GHz bands.

GSM vs CDMA

There are effectively two paths for 3G evolutionary standards: one rooted in GMS, the other in CDMA.

The GSM path begins with traditional 2.5G access, which over time has GPRS added for data service, and in the U.S. EDGE was later added. This is often referred to as Wideband CDMA.

The CDMA path begins with CDMA2000 and adds high-speed data through an overlay service called EV-DO.

The two paths begin to converge in fourth-generation networks, as carriers using different standards have committed to LTE, likely making it the dominant technology going forward.

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Microsoft Better off Hiring than Buying

Phil Greenspun has some great points about the pending Microsoft/Yahoo! merger and why the value Microsoft has ascribed to the company is more than they deserve.

Here is an excerpt:

The interesting question is why a company that claims to know how to program would pay anything for Yahoo, much less a P/E ratio of more than 60.

Google unseated Yahoo at a cost of about $20 million in financing, simply by being effective software developers and tasteful interface designers. We can infer from this offer that Microsoft expects its own programmers to be only 1/2000th as effective, dollar for dollar, as Google’s. In comparing Vista to XP and dividing by the amount of coding effort that went into Vista, it would be tough to argue with this conclusion.

[If I were a Yahoo shareholder, I would be looking at purchasing an old battleship right now, sailing it into San Francisco Bay, and lobbing some 16″ shells on the Board members’ houses in Atherton. The chance of a Yahoo shareholder ever getting more than $31/share, adjusted for inflation and risk, seems remote.]

But the truth is not really so simple. Google didn't really unseat Yahoo!, what happened was that Wall Street and VCs believed that being a portal was more important than being a search engine.

When Google was growing in fact, there was no clear plan to generate revenue from all those searches. Eventually Google figured out how to leverage their website and the websites of others to display ads but I blame most of Yahoo's problems on the financial community that didn't really see where the web was going.

Remember that Yahoo was so convinced that search was not important that they they actually slowed or stopped search development and used Google's technology for many years.

Having said all this, Yahoo! is the undeniable portal destination online and Google is the undeniable search leader. Microsoft is a leader in other spaces but they desperately need to be more important in web advertising.

I do agree there is some logic to spending more R&D dollars to compete with Google by getting more eyeballs but if I am not mistaken, that is what the company has been doing these past years with little web growth. Picking up Yahoo would be quite a shot in the arm in terms of ad network and of course page view growth.

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Yahoo!/Microsoft Negotiations

Does Yahoo! know how to negotiate with Microsoft? If they are not sure, all they have to do is check out this video which says it all.

Ideas to discuss in the meeting:

1) Divide the company
2) Sit up
3) Be sad but confident
4) Use your iPhone often
5) You are handsome

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Bluetooth on WiFi Steroids

Imagine a world where your bluetooth devices could take some instant steroids which bulk up your file transfer speeds allowing you to transfer at 100 Mbps or more. Ultrawideband was supposed to be the "steroids" allowing such functionality but delays in getting this standard into production has left a void that WiFi will likely fill.

I remember that a plethora of technologies were supposed to replace Ethernet over the years and none did. Ethernet just keeps getting better... Faster and more secure.

If WiFi is just wireless Ethernet then we will likely see it continue to one up a slew of technologies which are supposed to overtake it.

More

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