Category: Telecom

Unwired has an interview with Dave Mock. Excerpts:

Q: What are your predictions about Qualcomm and China? China has been testing the two leading 3G technologies along with a homegrown technology. Any thoughts on how it will all play out?
A: I think China will push TD-SCDMA into the market somehow, with the principle purpose of leveraging a bigger role in the industry. Whether it is successful or not probably doesnt matter as much as what it buys them. I think arguments of Qualcomms assertion of IPR in the standard are moot, as I dont see it as a significant driver of royalty for them. However it plays out, CDMA and WCDMA should still develop a significant presence.

Q: Speaking of Wi-Fi, do you think that Wi-Fi-enabled handsets will hurt the success of EV-DO and other 3G technologies, or increase usage of these networks (or both)?
A: I think Wi-Fi is shaping up to be a serious threat, and this is no surprise to anyone in Qualcomm. But I think it hurts Qualcomm less than the operators, who will lose control of the channel. Regional (and municipal) Wi-Fi deployments have the biggest chance of limiting the uptake of EV-DO, and pressuring service prices. Actually, Wi-Fi itself is not the true threat its the aggregation of hotspots and roaming agreements for WLANs that potentially could cut out EV-DO. But so far these efforts have failed.

Q: Should Qualcomm be frightened by WiMAX? And do you think the vendor will ultimately support WiMAX?
A: Qualcomm should be concerned about WiMAX and anything like it and they are. The standard itself will likely be stalled to no end as it is too broad right now, but some significant decisions will be made in 2005 that could put it on the fast track or send it out to be shot. Intels weight shouldnt be underestimated here, and I think theyll be successful in getting many in the industry to adopt the standard if it comes through in marketable form.

AlwaysOn Network has a post by Brennan:

[Here is] what Voice Over IP (VoIP) can offer versus the standard Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN).

Waay Lower Costs: In addition to eliminating the cost of long-distance calling, VoIP allows organizations to converge all communication onto one data network, eliminating their voice network, and saving on maintenance costs.

Wicked Flexibility: Since IP addresses are location independent, an integrated VoIP system allows tele-commuting employees to direct all communications to a remote office, home, or even a broadband wireless device.

VoIP for the Lay-Businessman
Once you believe in the benefits of this new communication platform, your real questions become, when do I adopt? and how do I reap the most rewards?

Brennan [AlwaysOn Network] | POSTED: 12.22.04 @23:13
Note to Readers: Since I was busted for my youth in my opening column last week, I thought I would write this one in the vernacular of my generation. What ever happened to that Dude, youre gettin a Dell guy anyway? Oh yeah… I remember.

Alright, here goes, first lets go over what Voice Over IP (VoIP) can offer versus the standard Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN).

Waay Lower Costs: In addition to eliminating the cost of long-distance calling, VoIP allows organizations to converge all communication onto one data network, eliminating their voice network, and saving on maintenance costs.

Wicked Flexibility: Since IP addresses are location independent, an integrated VoIP system allows tele-commuting employees to direct all communications to a remote office, home, or even a broadband wireless device.

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Totally Multi-media Communication: Data networks dont distinguish between voice, video, and data traffic (though administrators can prioritize), so any communication can easily integrate all three. VoIP allows for video conferencing and document collaboration, as well as unified messaging so that voicemails and emails can all be handled in the same place.

Sweet Call Centers: VoIP, when integrated with a CRM system, allows customer service representatives to immediately see all case history, account information, shipping and inventory the moment a call is received, eliminating the annoying process of repeatedly entering your account number on your touchtone keypad.

WSJ writes:

Each minute of wireless calling over Wi-Fi is a minute of calling not made over a cellular network. That has the potential to shake up the world of cellular calling.

Unlike a traditional cellphone call, which comes out of your bucket of paid minutes, calls over the Internet may not be counted at all. That means that if you were in your office — or eventually your home, or Starbucks or any place that has a Wi-Fi connection — you could make unlimited free calls (not counting the cost of the Internet service). That is particularly significant because roughly a third of all cellular calls actually are made from an office or home, according to a Yankee Group survey. DoCoMo’s phone will work only if it is configured with a specific corporate Wi-Fi network; you can’t just use it at Starbucks.

Already, as voice increasingly moves over the Internet, traditional land-line telephone providers are facing a threat to their core business: Internet phone providers such as Vonage Holdings are offering calling plans that in some cases are about half the price of a comparable telephone plan with a land-line phone company. Cable operator Cablevision Systems offers phone service as a free add-on for subscribers who pay for both TV and cable-modem service. Even some executives at the old-line Bell phone companies believe it’s only a matter of time before they will be forced to throw in phone calls as a free — or close to free — application on top of a broadband subscription.

The wireless carriers, currently the best source of growth in the phone industry, have so far been spared much of this tumult. That is likely to start changing with the advent of wireless calling via the Internet.

New Scientist writes:

With cellphone bandwidth so expensive, operators need another way [than GPRS or 3G] to transmit their pictures. Which is why the cellphone industry has been working on a number of ways to deliver live TV to phones via digital signals broadcast from existing TV transmitters.

The most promising scheme, called Digital Video Broadcast-Handheld (DVB-H), was last week chosen by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute as the standard for Europe. DVB-H is based on the successful digital terrestrial TV system that delivers the UKs 30-channel Freeview digital TV service.

Its strength is its method of transmission, which is highly resistant to the kind of interference that has bedevilled analogue pocket TVs till now. The data is split into packets that are transmitted in thousands of parallel digital streams spread across a range of frequencies. When they reach the receiver, the packets are joined up to reconstruct the video stream.

Using MPEG-4, Windows Media or Real Video compression, watchable live TV can be squashed into a 240 kilobit-per-second data stream. In addition, DVB-H banishes the problem of on-screen ghosting caused by signals reflected from buildings, mountains and aircraft. The digital receivers software recognises the reflected packets as duplicates and discards them.

Walter Mossberg writes about the most important development in US wireless communications:

This new Verizon network, which the company calls “BroadbandAccess,” promises users in 18 cities so far that they can get on the Internet at typical speeds of between 300 and 500 kilobits a second. That’s the equivalent of what many wired home DSL modems do, and much faster than prior American cellphone data networks. But in my first tests of the new network last spring I was able to do even better, averaging nearly 600 kilobits a second.

And, unlike Wi-Fi, another form of wireless broadband, the new Verizon network doesn’t require the user to be near a “hot spot,” usually found in coffee shops or hotels. Verizon hopes to have most major metro areas covered by EV-DO by the end of 2005, and Sprint is also planning to roll out an EV-DO network next year.

But so far, this capability has been available only via a special modem card inserted into a laptop computer, and it has carried a whopping monthly price tag of $80. Now Verizon is introducing two hand-held devices, a combination PDA/phone and a standard flip phone, that can tap the EV-DO network. And it is charging lower monthly fees to use the network with these devices than it does for laptop use.

In my tests, Verizon’s new Pocket PC was never slower than 349 kilobits a second, and it averaged between 450 and 550 kilobits.

Armed with those speeds, I was able to confidently set the e-mail program on the device to get the full text of messages and even attachments. It downloaded hundreds of e-mails daily, at speeds that, while not as fast as my office and home PCs, were close enough that I felt almost as if I was at the computer. On the Internet, Web pages rendered quickly, and I was able to play streaming audio and video, at good resolution, with no more stuttering than you’d get on a PC.

Bottom line: The new Verizon EV-DO network is a very good thing, and it’s a great addition to a laptop or PDA. But until Verizon and other carriers allow regular phones to have more computerlike capabilities, wireless broadband won’t matter much for average cellphone users.

The Broadband Daily has a post by Karl Bode on the US situation:

Verizons Fios fiber to the home deployment is the most ambitious, running the fiber directly to your living room, and costing the company an estimated $1000 to $1,300 per home. Once it emerges from limited trials, 5Mbps can be had for between $34.95 and $39.95 depending on the services you bundle. 15Mbps can be had for between $44.95 to $49.95. 30Mbps will be offered as a business service for $200 a month.

Less ambitious ($29 billion less ambitious, actually) is SBCs Project Lightspeed. SBC believes they should deploy fiber to the neighborhood node, then use next generation DSL (ADSL2+ or VDSL2) to provide 20-25Mbps worth of bandwidth to the consumer – most of that for video.

Critics charge this wont be enough bandwidth to seriously deploy HDTV, VoIP, broadband, and video on demand (not to mention apps of the next decade); but SBC insists theyll solve choke problems via compression. They recently signed a $400 million deal with Microsoft to provide set-top television software.

This week saw the expected announcement by BellSouth of the third most ambitious upgrade by the bells, a modest $2 billion improvement. Theyll be running fiber to the node, then ADSL2+ to the home; the pipe offering between 15 and 17Mbps, the broadband portion of that being a paltry 4-6Mbps.

Hey, thats great guys, but Time Warner Cable this week quietly started upgrading standard users in NY and California to 5Mbps – for free. Youll see the official announcement later this month.

Wall Street and cable executives find BellSouth and SBCs offerings tepid at best, and Qwest has other things to worry about. But even Verizons plan is a little light when you look elsewhere: Japans NTT Group intends to spend $47 billion on expanding fiber to the home for nearly half the Japanese population. A population that already sees 30+Mbps connections for less than $40.

AlwaysOn Network has a story about the future of mobile gaming by Paul G. Flanagan of Ariadne Capital:

So, where does the future lie for mobile multiplayer gaming, and what is going to be the most fun and accessible:
Bluetooth, GPRS, 3G, or Wi-Fi?
Mobile phones, PDAs, or gaming decks?
Real-time, phantom racing or turn-based games?
Sports games, racing, shooters, or location-conscious gaming?

Currently there is a lot of effort going into making games that run over GPRS and 3G networks. Features include uploading and viewing high scores, buying items, leaving messages for other players, and phantom racingnothing particularly thrilling, in other words.

What I really want are high-performance games I can play against friends I am with. Why? Because it’s most fun.

This is the opportunity for the savvy handset manufacturers: Enable Bluetooth for games; up the spec on your mass-market handsets; sell millions of units of handsets and games; and watch mobile gaming explode. If the operators won’t put the games on their top 10 game decks, sell them through your portals or those of game publishers.

Om Malik has a guest column by Angus Davis:

I believe IP-powered telecommunications will usher in a new range of enhanced voice services, changing the way people and businesses use the telephone. While standards like SIP enable innovation at the network transport layer, VoiceXML opens new possibilities at the application layer. Calls will get a range of new voice features; two-party voice calling will shift towards multimodal and multi-party communication as isolated applications give way to integrated services. Smart carriers will use these new voice services to differentiate and provide more value just as cable providers used ESPN and HBO to sustain growth in adoption and revenue per subscriber in the television business.

Drawing on the same technologies as the Web applications before them, next-generation phone applications created with VoiceXML can include ringback tones or call soundtracks from a record label, or sports scores and entertainment information from a content provider. Basic calls will be easier thanks to a smart networked address book, fast voice-activated dialing, and a simpler, better voice mail service designed for everyday people. One-on-one voice calls to friends and colleagues (Call Mom) will grow to include new forms of ad-hoc multiparty calls (Call my whole family or Add my brother to this call). The phone will be more fun and more valuable thanks to integration of premium content like music, entertainment and sports that make it possible for teenagers to share favorite music with friends on every call or for sports fans to discuss the plays from premium voice chat rooms. These applications, designed for broad adoption, allow carriers to differentiate and drive value on the basis of core voice services instead of niche gimmicks.

Ross Mayfield has more on the same theme.

I recently bought a RIM R Connect card. It is a PCMCIA card which goes into the laptop, and works as both a modem and mobile phone. I use the modem part to connect to the Internet while travelling. Has been working very well. The speeds are moderate – I’d say about 30-odd Kbps or so. The card uses Reliance’s CDMA networks which are in 1,000+ cities and towns across India. So far, I was recommending this card to others for connectivity but had not got it myself since I hardly travelled. But of late, the travelling is increasing and so I decided to get it.

The card is more convenient than using the cellphone with a data cable (though it is also more expensive). It takes about 5 seconds to get connected. The tariffs: Rs 14,700 for the card, and Rs 650 per month for 1 GB downloads. There is also a Rs 1,500 option for unlimited data transfer.

Knowledge@Wharton writes:

On Oct. 21, Verizon announced that it would expand its fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP) service to homes in Virginia and parts of Delaware, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York and Pennsylvania. The service is already offered in California, Florida and Texas. The goal for Verizon – one of the original Baby Bells with annual sales now topping $70 billion – is to reach one million homes and businesses with the new technology by the end of the year and two million by the end of 2005. SBC Communications – another former Baby Bell, which dominates the southwest and western part of the U.S. – is planning a similar rollout to offer video service in 2005. According to a report in the November 17 New York Times, SBC will pay $400 million to Microsoft for software that can be used to deliver TV programming over high-speed lines.

FTTP, based on the same fiber-optic technology used in telephone networks, offers speeds up to 20 times faster than current digital subscriber line and cable technology. Here’s why: Current telecom broadband connections – known as digital subscriber lines (DSL) – are slowed by the traditional copper wiring used for telephone service. Although a connection may start on a fat fiber-optic pipe, it ultimately goes onto a slower copper wire before entering a household. It’s like connecting a fire hose to a straw. Verizon’s plan to run fiber-optic cable directly to homes would connect a broadband fire hose to a home, enabling video on demand. Its broadband Internet access services will offer download speeds of up to 5 Mbps (megabits per second), 15 Mbps and 30 Mbps for a bundle of services at a base cost of $34.95.

“DSL was a lame technology because it was fiber going to copper wire,” says Wharton business and public policy professor Gerald Faulhaber. “The connection is only as strong as the weakest link. I’m surprised DSL did as well as it did. At least the telecoms leveraged DSL to get into broadband.”

The big question is not whether Verizon, which is spending $800 million on the FTTP rollout, can install super-fast broadband pipes, but whether it can bundle video with Internet access, local and long distance phone service and wireless to poach customers from cable providers. “In the big picture, everyone in telecommunications will have to provide a full bundle and compete in TV and voice,” says Wharton legal studies professor Kevin Werbach.

the company’s FTTP efforts could reinvent video service. With a fiber-optic pipe running into homes anything is possible, especially at speeds that could reach 30 mbps to 100 mbps, says Klugman. Indeed, the way consumers get TV might change. Consumers could pick and choose channels and access independent networks produced by amateurs armed with video cameras over the Internet. “Once the pipe is fat enough, you have convergence and can deliver anything,” says Werbach. “For instance, I pay Comcast for 200 channels, but I’d be more than happy to have constant access to two or three channels and pick a few on demand from there.” In one regard, Verizon could relegate video to just another part of a big bundle. “If you think of video as part of a vast stream of content from commercial and amateur sources, TV may look different.”