TRAI makes the case for femtocells and GSM phones with WiFi support
The TRAI has figured out something that I felt was obvious, that 60% of all calls on mobile phones are made when the caller or the called person is inside a building.The Hindu Business Line : Mobile phone calls within buildings account for 60%According to estimates made by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), about 60 per cent of all mobile phone calls are actually originating or terminating when the subscribers are indoors within buildings such as offices, homes or hotels.
What does this mean for 3G? While 2G GSM coverage is hard to establish indoors without placing indoor antennas and/or repeaters, 3G's indoor coverage would only really be possible if there were pico and femto-cells. So what this estimate of TRAI's boils down to is that there is a recommendation for operators to adopt pico/femto cell architectures as well as investigate WiFi as an alternate means of providing indoor coverage.
Technorati Tags: TRAI, Telecom, 3G, femtocell, picocell
AT&T decides to wait for and invest in LTE
I shared this news item on my link blog earlier today: Looks like AT&T is going to sit out the WiMAX deployment cycle and wait for Long Term Evolution (LTE) - the 4G equivalent of GSM. Engadget is linking to an article about this in Wireless Week and connecting this to the Sprint story on plans to reduce their WiMAX investment requirements by possibly partnering with other operators (read Clearwire) that are also deploying. Good luck to AT&T subscribers who aren't seeing much of an improvement in service speeds for their HSPA network! See the Engadget article's comments for complaints about HSDPA service. Engadget article: AT&T looks beyond WiMAX, headed for LTE What is LTE? Technorati Tags: AT&T Wireless, WiMAX, LTE, SprintLost amidst the hype around WiMAX, South Koreans are snubbing WiMAX/WiBro
I somehow missed this gem in TeleGeography's CommsUpdate (March 14, 2007) until just now: WiMAX snubbed by users: CommsUpdate : TeleGeography Research It appears there are only 1,057 subscribers to WiBro in all of South Korea! And SK Telecom's got about 14.3% market share while KT Corp has the remaining. Why isn't this piece of news being analyzed among the WiMAX community? I don't see even one of the sites that claims to only talk about WiMAX discussing this. My guess is that the coverage patterns are limited at this stage, despite the significant investments ($658 Million in Korea) and that there simply aren't enough handset/terminal options available. That probably limits use to "nomadic" customers who would probably get just as good service from Korea's ever-present CDMA 3G networks or from WiFi instead. Technorati Tags: WiMAX, WiBro, South KoreaAntenna overload in personal communication devices
Nick Jones at the Gartner blog brought up a very important issue regarding miniaturization of communication devices: How do we deal with the antenna overload?Typical dual-mode 3G phones have at least these antennae:- 3G antennas for 850, 1900 and 2100 MHz to support tri-band 3G
- 1800 and 900 MHz for the other two 2G frequencies
- 2.4 GHz - one antenna for Bluetooth/WiFi - multiple once 802.11n is adopted
So, where are they all going to go? As mobile gadgets get smaller because of greater chip integration, the problem just gets worse. Furthermore, antenna positioning forces some unpleasant design compromises. For example, if you put the antennae around the edge of a laptop screen, you can't have a continuous metal frame around the screen, so your laptop becomes less robust. So, although it may not be immediately obvious, the number and size of antennae required by future mobile devices may thwart designers' ability to use new technology such as more-integrated electronics and flexible screens to make gadgets even smaller.This presents us with an incredible challenge: implement truly re-configurable circuits (software defined radios - SDRs) and tunable antennae for handsets.One company known to be working with SDRs for base stations is Vanu. Technorati Tags: sdr, antenna, wifi, bluetooth, 3G, wimax
Steve Jobs announces the Apple phone - iphone?
Steve just announced the 4GB Apple iphone (?) at MacWorld today, with Cingular as the exclusive launch partner for the US. Looks like it won't be available until June 2007 in the US and it will be 2008 by the time it makes it here to Asia.Both models have Quadband GSM, EDGE, Bluetooth and WiFi support + work as a widescreen iPod as well!All the top mac sites have live coverage and photos, here are a couple from macrumorslive.com
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Opera Mini 3.0
I'm a few days late on this - Opera Mini was released on November 28, 2006...I use Opera Mini on my RAZR V3 and its a great browser - much better than the built-in browser that Motorola provides. I've just upgraded after reading this news via OSNews - lets see how the new version is.Opera Mini drives social networking from mobile phonesOpera Software introduces Opera Mini 3.0Technorati Tags: opera mini, opera, RAZR, Motorola
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DECT cordless phones in US market from Philips
No Snap or Crackle: A New Technology for Cordless Phones - New York Times Its hilarious to see the NYTimes not checking their facts before writing this article... DECT has been around for at least a decade as a technology for cordless telephony. In fact, it has been used for much more. There are over a million fixed phone lines around the world that depend on DECT for their connectivity instead of a regular POTS connectivity via copper wires. These are mostly in South Asia, South Africa, South America and Russia where DECT offers a very affordable solution to telecom operators vs. digging/stringing cable up to subscribers' premises. As related news I should mention that the DECT Forum, part of the ETSI group is meeting on Friday April 28, 2006 in France. Disclaimer: I work for a company (Midas) that supplies DECT equipment for fixed line telephony in emerging markets. Technorati Tags: DECT, cordless, telephone, MidasEach new generation takes tech for granted (& adopts it) while those even 5 years older have a hard time getting used to the same
Peter Cochrane's Blog: Kids today - LANs - Breaking Business and Technology News at silicon.comSo what of today's youngsters, what do they see? One eight-year-old I came across has never seen a computer connected to anything other than a power outlet when charging.Kids in each new generation just take certain things (especially technology related) for granted that someone even 5 years older would have seen appear and disrupt they way they used the same technology. Peter Cochrane sites a few examples such as kids today expecting WiFi access to the internet wherever they go and the appearance of the IR remote control instead of a wired one.
NTT DoCoMo achieves 1Gbps downlink in 4G lab test
NTT DoCoMo has managed to maintain a 1Gbps downlink at a moving speed of 20km/hr while conducting field & lab tests of 4G technology. This is apparently based on Variable Spreading Factor Spread OFDM (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing) and multiplexing 4 MIMO interfaces. More details at Unstrung: DoCoMo Achieves 1Gbit/s Downlink
It remains to be seen how this tech would work when really deployed, as this was just a field test – effectively an alpha test.
Via: Om Malik
More on GigaBeam
Stealth Communications, an NYC internet gateway and VoIP service provider, will use GigaBeam’s wireless GigE technology.
Light Reading coverage on this topic: GigaBeam, Stealth Expand VOIP Services
Om Malik writes about it: Stealth, GigaBeam team on VoIP
It appears the primary reason for choosing GigaBeam is the advantage of bypassing local infrastructure and its significantly lower levels of network access latency (expected to reduce by as much as 30% with this network).
I last mentioned GigaBeam here: GigE Network in the air over Manhattan
GigE Network in the air over Manhattan
WiFi Networking News coverage on GigaBeam: GigaBeam puts multi-gigabit-per-second wireless into lower Manhattan: Using a carrier-neutral interchange, GigaBeam is using point-to-point wireless gigabit connections in the 71-76 GHz and 81-86 GHz range. Prices weren't noted. The company plans to hit 10 Gbps in 2005.... [Wi-Fi Networking News] You can read more about GigaBeam's technology here.WLAN monitoring and security
Here's an article discussing WLAN monitoring technology. Over the last few months, AirMagnet is the second company (the first is Wibhu Technologies - I came across them in January 2004) I have come across that has a hardware & software based solution to deal with monitoring of Wireless LAN networks as well as offer security. These systems mostly work by monitoring the airwaves in a range of frequencies at a customer's site using a group of sensors scattered around the facility. The true winner of this market space will be the company that is selected by the most number of WLAN vendors that sell to corporations to be included in their standard access-points and wireless bridges.The Year of WLAN Adoption?
There's some cautious optimism in the WLAN industry, as this could very well be the year of WLAN adoption in corporate environments and in industries that have no relation to IT. Yahoo! News has coverage on this here. Other news sites have had similar coverage over the last few weeks.About Me
Ram ViswanathanApple customer & fan, intrapreneur, @ramhv on twitter. Create and drive go-to-market initiatives for a major systems engineering & integration company headquartered in India with a presence in South Asia, Middle East, Africa, UK & Europe & North America.
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