Month: July 2005

TECH TALK: Next-Generation Networks: The Future

Peter Sevcik, president of NetForecast, lays out the forces that are shaping next-generation networks:

Innovation Moves Up And Out: The bulk of technical innovation is shifting from network cores and low-layer protocols to the edge and upper-layer protocols. This movement up-and-out is both a natural progression of the TCP/IP success story and a byproduct of core network scale. The core is huge, must operate non-stop, and is built out of optical components and ASICs. The core cant change quickly any more But the edge is still fast-changing software running on general-purpose computers. These innovations are strictly focused on Layer 4 and above, where the news is what it doesthe applicationrather than how its done.

Technology Lock-Down: Big carriers have power, and they are finding new ways to use it. They are using their purchasing clout and customer base to go back to forcing the consumer to buy the terminal with the service.

Power Concentration: Even as carriers are working to lock down the technology, big players of all sorts are moving to consolidate their market power in the networks of the futureFor starters, not only are carriers exercising dictatorial control over their own networks, theyre also seeking to extend their domination over the playing field on which those networks compete. Not content simply to wield monopoly control over the last-mile copper (and soon fiber), the incumbents are fighting any newcomers.

Regulation: Of course, the ultimate power player is the government, and its a sure bet that the Internet will not remain unregulated for much longer.

Conclusion: These forces are set to clash: Innovation against walled gardens. Business might against government power. Notice that technology has very little influence in shaping the future. The next generation networks will be defined by how the trends find temporary states of coexistence.

So, whats really changing? In the past (and true even now), there have been separate networks for voice, data and video. The phone system has carried our voice calls, while the Internet has been used for our data traffic. Video (especially TV) has relied on its own networks primarily a combination of cable, satellite and terrestrial broadcasting. What is changing now is that the shift is happening from vertically integrated networks to horizontally-integrated networks, which decouples the services from the transport layer.

We are seeing a fascinating evolution in the networks that connect our computers and mobile phones to services. On the wired networks, technologies like VDSL2 have the potential to dramatically increase the connectivity we have available at home and work. In the wired world, 3G networks are starting to get deployed. WiMax is also being touted as an alternative to 3G. For now, technologies like EV-DO offer hundreds of kilobits per second connectivity for the early adopters. Among other technologies, one which is getting increasing recent interest is Broadband over Power Lines (BPL).

In other words, NGN is all set to usher opportunity as disruption as the worlds of mobile and fixed networks collide. At the same time, they will also usher in a new dynamic in network-aware applications.

Next Week: NGN (continued)

Continue reading TECH TALK: Next-Generation Networks: The Future

Business 2.0 on Novatium

Om Malik points to his story in Business 2.0 (subs needed) talking about Novatium, a company which I have co-founded. An excerpt:

The $100 PC has long been considered the hurdle to clear in order to reach technology’s biggest pot of gold — affordable computing for the masses in countries like Brazil, China, India, and Russia. Make no mistake, this isn’t just altruism. A cheap PC is a great business opportunity for anyone who can build a 10 percent profit margin into each device, as Jain’s company is trying to do. That’s why chipmaking goliath Intel is working on cheaper processors targeted overseas, why Microsoft has begun selling a $20 stripped-down version of its Windows operating system, why giants like Advanced Micro Devices and Google have partnered with maverick MIT professor Nicholas Negroponte to develop a $100 laptop. And long before them, Oracle and Sun Microsystems chiefs Larry Ellison and Scott McNealy tried, and failed, to market so-called network PCs.

So what gives tiny Novatium an edge over such high-profile competition? Most of those companies have focused on making traditional desktop PCs or laptops cheaper by using older, slower chips and skimping on memory and hard-drive storage. Novatium, on the other hand, has created a state-of-the-art network computer that mimics a traditional desktop machine at a fraction of the cost — and that will soon be made to run on any television, anywhere.

Continue reading Business 2.0 on Novatium

Texas Instruments’ Chips

[via George Gilder’s technology Report] Forbes writes:

One way to take advantage of GSM’s huge footprint–as well as the growth opportunities for the technology–is by acquiring shares of Dallas-based Texas Instruments. While Texas Instruments develops chips for “sensor” products such as air conditioners, heaters and automobiles, its biggest business today is in wireless. Texas Instruments puts its digital signal processors and other technology inside hundreds of millions of handsets each year.

Today, TI’s OMAP processors, as they are known, and digital baseband processors (essentially modems) provide multimedia application processing capabilities which are essential to 3G networks. The company also has its stripped-down, all-in-one processor, the Digital RF Processor. The chip, which is also known as the “Hollywood Chip,” should be a real winner for use in lower-end value handsets. The chip allows for digital television service on a handheld–a service that should become available in early 2006.

While Texas Instruments is doing a great deal outside of wireless (one of its biggest growth drivers is the digital light processor,a chip for high-definition televisions), wireless remains the company’s key driver of growth, and TI expects significant growth for 3G networks in China as well as new opportunities in providing voice-over-wireless local area network service, which would allow you to make wireless calls at work, for example, over your company’s network instead of through your cellular carrier. With demand for increasingly complex modems to handle the move from 2G to 3G networks; demand for multimedia, greater image processing and the need for mass storage devices; and the requirement that cell phones be able to connect not just to a cellular network but to Bluetooth technologies and Wi-Fi networks, TI’s wireless chips should have a robust future.

OPML and RSS

Dave Winer writes:

The OPML Editor is good for all kinds of lists, directories, project planning, designs. The tool can be used by professionals and managers,
doctors, professors, lawyers, accountants, writers — basically anyone who thinks for a living.

Another way of looking at it — RSS is great for news, but not everything is news, some things, like the distance between the Earth and the Sun, or the elements of the periodic table, don’t change. Or change slowly, like the teams in major league baseball, or the top home run hitters. For information like that, knowledge, representing the relationships between nuggets is what’s important, and that’s where outliners like the OPML Editor, that’s now in beta, excel.

Here is an interesting example.

Podcasting

Mark Cuban writes:

Podcasting is hot. Podcasting is cheap and easy. Podcasting can be fun.

Creating your own podcast and trying to make a business out of it is a mistake.

Unless you are repurposing content from another medium, it will be rare to find anyone making money from originating podcasts.

Talk Radio Shows repurposed from radio to a podcast. No brainer. Its cheap and easy. Repurposing industry specific information from tradeshows, speeches, product presentations for employee or customer education or as sales support. No brainer. These are just extensions of existing content into a new low cost medium.

For those who are tying to jump on the podcasting bandwagon and create a hit podcast that you plan on selling advertising in, its cheap and easy to do, but even with Google Adsense for RSS its going to be really tough to do it as a fulltime job and make minimum wage back.

Podcasting is right where streaming was about 10 years ago. Before you dive into podcasting as the next big thing, you would be wise to do some homework on how the streaming industry evolved.

Attention

O’Reilly Radar has a post by Nat on a talk given by Linda Stone:

In 1997 I coined the phrase “continuous partial attention”. For almost two decades, continuous partial attention has been a way of life to cope and keep up with responsibilities and relationships. We’ve stretched our attention bandwidth to upper limits. We think that if tech has a lot of bandwidth then we do, too.

With continuous partial attention we keep the top level item in focus and scan the periphery in case something more important emerges. Continuous partial attention is motivated by a desire not to miss opportunities. We want to ensure our place as a live node on the network, we feel alive when we’re connected. To be busy and to be connected is to be alive.

We’ve been working to maximize opportunities and contacts in our life. So much social networking, so little time. Speed, agility, and connectivity at top of mind. Marketers humming that tune for two decades now.

Now we’re over-stimulated, over-wound, unfulfilled.

TECH TALK: Next-Generation Networks: IMS (Part 2)

John Waclawsky, part of the Mobile Wireless Group at Cisco Systems, provides some background:

Out of the wireless standards consortium called 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) comes a slow-growing and complicated collection of carrier network functions and processes that collectively are referred to as IMS, which stands for the IP (or Internet) Multimedia Subsystem. The IMS standards promise an operator-friendly environment for real-time, packet-based calls and services that not only will preserve traditional carrier controls over user signaling and usage-based billing, but also will generate new revenue via deep packet inspection of protocols, URI and content.

IMS was conceived for the evolution of cellular telephony networks, but the benefits of user signaling and billing controls have attracted the endorsement and involvement of wireline network operators and standards makers.
IMS is only a part of such a system, as defined by 3GPP. The entire 3G system can be briefly summarized in five pieces:

1. The IMS, or SIP/SDP control plane, at the core.
2. The media and signal conversion layer wrapped around the core.
3. The embedded walled garden, defined by the applications or services the operator offers to its subscribers and the limits it also sets on their behavior and signaling.
4. The billing and back office function layer.
5. An array of network, systems management and operations tools.

IMS is a result of the telephony carriers growing interest (at 3GPP) in data applications, the Internet in general and the emerging wireless Internet in particular. IMS is part of a huge 3G gamble by the mobile telephony operators around the world, with assistance from traditional telephony vendors, to obtain control of the vast new Internet medium and monetize it.

TechTip adds about SIP:

SIP [Session Initiation Protocol] is the real-time communication protocol for VoIP [Voice over IP]. SIP has been expanded to support video and instant-messaging applications. SIP is designed to perform basic call-control tasks, such as session call set up and tear down and signaling for features such as call hold, caller ID, conferencing and call transferring.

“Presence” is an all-encompassing term used to describe reachability control over how, where, when and by whom they can be contacted (reached). Presence covers any concept such as “buddy lists” (desired contacts) or the means (wireless/wireline), device (pager, cell, PDA, TV, etc.) or media (voice, data, music, multi-media) and yet-to-be-defined means of communication.

Tomorrow: The Future

Continue reading TECH TALK: Next-Generation Networks: IMS (Part 2)

Mumbai’s River of Water and Traffic

Everyone will have their stories about yesterday and the rains. I was at home because my wife wasn’t feeling well. In the afternoon, we needed to go see a doctor. And that started a harrowing hour caught in water which was waist-deep and entered the car. Somehow, our driver ploughed through. I should have taken some pictures but it didn’t strike me then. My only concern was how to make sure Bhavana and Abhishek get home fast enough as the water levels were rising on the streets due to the heavy rains (combined with high tide). We finally made it home without reaching the doctor.

The one memory which will stay on is when I stepped out at Tardeo/Haji Ali and as I looked at the road, the fury of the swirling waters on the road almost made me dizzy. Water had always been so peaceful in the world I inhabited…Now, suddenly, roads had become fast-flowing rivers and endless streams of cars were just stuck or wading through them. People were making their way through the water. And the rains kept coming. I had seen pictures on TV of this in other places — here I was right in the middle of it all.

Many of our staff spent the night in the office since the trains weren’t working. Ramesh had to take a flight to Bangalore and spent 4 hours in traffic before they made a U-turn and got back to the office.

Every year there are a couple days when life in Mumbai comes to a standstill because of the rains. So far, I never really experienced what it was like to be outside during these days. Yesterday, for a brief time, I did.

I couldn’t help think that it is at times like these we need “citizen’s media” – a mechanism whereby people can exhange info on what’s happening. Cellphones can make this happen. Even as the voice networks were clogged, data channels (SMS, GPRS) seemed to be working quite okay. More on this later.

Google Wallet Musings

Charlene Li writes:

I was at the Supernova conference yesterday and ran into transplanted Bostonite Scott Kirsner we had a good discussion about how all of the new blog publishers would get paid for their good work. One of the ideas we tossed around was Google Wallet AdSense already puts paid links on thousands of content sites, so why not also enable them for micropayments? Google is already very good at tracking and collecting clicks worth five cents each. Google could also offer be a subscription pass that securely grants users access to premium content on multiple sites, with each site getting a share of the payment based on usage.

And heres another way that Google could leverage a payment system. Google is one of the largest backers of the new Atom standard, which helps syndicate content. Today, most of the content thats distributed via RSS is news headlines, but Im a strong believe that commerce-oriented content will be appearing soon. So what if Google were to come out with its specialized aggregators or Web sites that would use the open standard to receive items and information?