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finally, intercarrier MMS

well with MMS on life support with no living will, north american carriers have finally gotten intercarrier MMS working. i was notified of the event via an unsolicited SMS from Cingular. it would have been way cooler if they actually pushed down an MMS slideshow showing off the capabilities of picture messaging, but no - it was just the message as above.

i am glad this finally works however...i'll try it out on my myriad phones i have and report back on some of the results, just for shits and giggles.

Verizon EV-DO giving me 382 Kbps ! (?)

as a follow up to my LG-VX8000 review i did last week, where is stated DSL reports was telling my the EV-DO connection was only at 82 Kbps, but it felt much faster to me, i tried testing the connection using Jeremy Gillick's Mozilla/Firefox bandwidth tester extension, and it's giving me a more acceptable answer: between 250 Kbps and 380 Kbps.

I tested the connection on my train ride this morning at different points and got those two results. wow.

i think the DSL reports test is optimized for the "large download" scenario - but doesn't test bormal usage scenarios, like browsing. i don't know enough about TCP/IP internals and how things like MTU affect downloads and such - but i do have to say, even these speeds are surprising.

That's real mobile productivity. I spend an two hours on the train every day when commuting to our office in the city - and i used to get by using 1X or EDGE, but EV-DO is livin'!

now, how can i get this to work on the plane?

verizon wireless launches V CAST

Verizon wireless today launched their V CAST service, which includes 3 hot new phones and super fast 3G speeds.

the sad thing is, none of them seem to support being a bluetooth modem at 3G speeds. this is unfortunate. Lately i've been using my Moto V710 as a bluetooth modem, and finding the speeds to generally exceed EDGE on Cingular, even using a Class 10 (4 channels down) nokia 6630.

Their Audiovox VX6600 Windows Mobile phone does support being a BT modem - so that would be interesting.

So far the reviews of the V CAST service haven't been stellar - so i can't wait to test it myself. I'll be getting a couple of these phones over the next few days so i will definitely report back.

Verizon explains V710 Bluetooth crippling

In this article in eWeek, a Verizon Wireless spokesperson is quoted as saying

"The v710 includes Get It Now, our virtual mall of games and productivity tools that customers can download. The agreements we have with our content providers preclude our allowing anyone to download these applications beyond the phone. The open architecture of Bluetooth could also allow customers to download Get It Now applications beyond the phone,"

so to read between the lines - they are concerned about piracy of BREW games and ringtones. that's what this has all been about. keeping tight control over what is put on their handsets. the explanation is a legal one that the BREW developer contracts with CPs - but i am sure there is way more to it than that.

BREW, unlike J2ME, is compiled for the specific handset and processor - and although J2ME is hardly write-once-run-anywhere, BREW applications are even less so. The strict NSTL testing process can easily fail an application on a handset for slight differences in keypad configurations and such, more often for memory errors that occur with sloppy C programming.

It's pretty easy to crash a phone with a BREW program. I've done it myself many many times by doing things like writing to an array index that doesn't exist.

If applications were to be spread around to handsets via the internet and not over-the-air - this would create a customer service nightmare for Verizo. People would call with all sorts of problems and not admit they have pirated apps on their handset.

Keep in mind - getting an application on a BREW phone is a pretty difficult task to begin with. Currently, we developers have to send every handset we test on to Qualcomm to get the magic bit flipped that allows us to load applications on the phones via a cable.

and it seems that someone would have to write a custom BREW application to even send applications off the handset from bluetooth.

wouldn't a simpler soultion have been to request that Motorola not allow the Bluetooth application to have access to anything but the images folder?

i guess the bottom line is, don't expect to see many Bluetooth enabled handsets from Verizon that are totally open. The LG-VX8000 that comes out next week does not have bluetooth enabled, but it's successor the LG-VX8100 does, so it will be interesting to see what they do here.

BlackBerry sync for your Mac

Finally, a solution "blessed" by RIM for syncing your BlackBerry to your Mac is out there: PocketMac for BlackBerry.

There have been a lot of half-baked solutions out there, and people have been waiting endlessly for a solution that RIM would at least acknowledge. Even the developer forums are littered with "sync to my mac?" posts from non-developer types with no other outlet.

It looks like they did a complete job on the integration supporting both entourage and the on-board mail/address book/iCal apps, and it supports iSync. Other vendors should take note.

It's available for $29.95 from the PocketMac website.

car to car WLAN

this article in the register reports there is a group that has been funded to investigate car-to-car wi-fi networks in Germany.

what would really be interesting here is that if each car could act as a wi-fi repeater, then any place that has a critical mass of traffic could essentially be a hotspot.

Cingular announces 3G plans

I'm starting to like the new Cingular/AT&T more and more, especially when they start talking about their plans for expanding their 3G Network.

They are saying their Ericsson equipment will offer data speeds of 400-700 Kbps and the theoretical limit for the e/// equipment will be 14 Mbit/s!

I have a Nokia 6630 on order (already available in Scandanavia) and although I am sure it's not tweaked to go anywhere near that fast, I can't wait for it to pick up test towers with those speeds, assuming Cingular configures their gateway to test that handset.

In other Cingular news, I went to a Cingular store the other day, and they are expecting the EDGE capable Sony Ericsson S710's to start showing up after the first of the year. I currently think the S710 has the best camera on a phone available outside of Asia.

C'mon Sbux, please free wi-fi? [via Mobile Pipeline]

this story in Mobile Pipeline tells of the pressure for Starbucks to provide free wi-fi instead of their current deal which requires signing up with T-Mobile.

"John reports rumors that some Starbucks are being squeezed so badly by competitors that offer free access that their managers are begging higher-ups to let them provide free access."

more and more when i travel and find myself in situations where have to eat alone, i look for places with free wi-fi where i can sit and have dinner, drinks, extended coffee etc and i have to admit i've passed up starbucks on many an occasion.

a year ago, i wasn't sure if T-Mobile's decision to go heavy into wi-fi instead of 3G was the right decision, and now i'm pretty positive it was the wrong one. the wi-fi space is just too crowded - i can typically choose from a $6 day pass when i need to, or find access for free - but i will proabably change wireless providers away from T-Mobile if they don't get with the program.

T-Mobile testing EDGE?

i've been using a Nokia 6230 for awhile now on and off, and just the other day on the T-Mobile network here in Chicago it started acting funny... upon making the data connection it tries to connect, then drops down and says "2G" in the corner, which I don't remember ever seeing before. seems interesting at least....

mobile phone as bond?

i got my first speeding ticket in awhile the other day (42 in a 30, who gives a ticket for that?) and of course I had to post bond. as i never carry cash, i had to give up my license. i was thinking, i should be able to execute a PayPal transaction on my phone to the cop and be done with it. crazy?

it's not, especially when you read stories like Filipinos Are Getting The Message about how Smart and Globe are starting to make money off transactions like this, and people are using it.

In a previous life, I worked for a company that peddled mobile payment and transaction services, and most places in the world, especially here in North America, services like these were a total flop.

Filipinos are crazy about texting though (they send more texts per year than any other country, I beleive) averaging seven messages per sub per day. Filipinos in my family say the first thing that happens when they go visit is they are handed a mobile phone - but they won't get called, they will get texted, about anything and everything going on. in "taglish" - half tagalog, half english. i imagine there are some messed up T9 dictionaries. but i digress...

The point is, great mobile service ideas are a dime a dozen. anything you can think of has probably been thought of, but it takes enough critical mass something like texting being second nature to be able to sell and make money on these services.

I don't expect to be able to post bond via my phone anytime soon, but hey, anything can happen, right?

R Rated Ringtones?

Hm. i never thought of that one. i have been involved in discussions around rating MMS content before, but never thought about rating ringtones.

and i'm not sure where rating ringtones gets us, because it's not necessarily someone who is young who would put a fart ringtone on their phone, but someone with extremely bad taste. and it's not the phone owner that has to suffer - they are the ones that think it is funny - it's the other 100 people in their train car that have to suffer.

but anyway interesting article.

[Orlando Sentinel]

ATT/Cingular EDGE getting slower

Our network admin Joe Kottke mentioned this awhile ago, that EDGE service has gotten really slow here in Chicago....and now I agree with him. I don't know if it has anything to do with the Cingular merger, since I think the networks were merged awhile ago, but my 6620 is now dog slow using both the internal browser or as a bluetooth modem to my PC...wonder what's up with that.

perhaps when i'm connected on the train tonight i'll run DSL reports on it and see just how slow it has gotten.

Applications vs WAP Applications - the Web 2.0 Mobile Edition?

Something I'm starting to see a little of here in North America is a trend for operators to recommend mobile "applications", that is executable pieces of code be it J2ME, BREW, whatever be games and entertainment, and all other applications be implemented as born-again WAP Browser applications on their new speedy networks. the Mobile Web 2.0.

I don't profess to forsee the future here as which mode is better, because it will depend on the application, and I think there is room for both client non-game applications that run on the phone and WAP 2 applications (which include WML and xHTML) - but what i do think is totally wrong is that operators think subscribers will pay for WAP applications individually like they do applications.

I don't think subscribers are conditioned to think this way. People generally expect Browser applications to free, and supported by some other revenue model besides subscription (porn being a notable exception here) and people are used to paying for games and other applications that "execute" as a client in their environment.

I think the market will decide which mobile applications belong where, but if the operators continue to force this categorization and get subs to pay for WAP applications, i think they'll be in a heap of trouble. I think subs will pay for the on-ramp to high speed WAP, but after that they'll expect the charging experience to mirror that of the PC Browser experience - free free free.

The fastest, most open pipe will win in the end. why is this so hard for operators to see?

san francisco wi-fi

so...i'm in san francisco in a hotel that does not have wi-fi - but that doesn't matter because there are 39 wi-fi networks my laptop can find, yep 39 - about half of them open. i'm about a block away from the Sony Metreon and am using it's wi-fi to do this post.

in general - i've been to a couple other restaurants in different parts of the city in which i had no problem finding an access point. and i think the mayor is mulling over citywide wi-fi here....cool.

at CTIA...

I'm at CTIA in San Francisco today - just to do some meetings and browse the showfloor. The floor is pretty small - kind of the size of the normal back room at the other CTIA shows...

I did see a really cool demo of Qualcomm's MediaFLO™ which downloads content at offpeak hours and delivers a browseable high quality media experience with no waiting. Pretty slick and the video quality looked great. Not great for breaking news, but great for catching up.

I think this kind of thing will merge with what podcasting evolves to.

google sms

very cool. finally, google SMS queries officially supported via 2-way shortcodes.

many 3rd party developers including myself have developed this service over the years ( as much as 2 years ago) - but it's good to see this deployed as a cross-carrier service by google. you just send your query via SMS to 46645 (GOOGL) on most phones, and you will get a response via SMS. for certain things, this is a better experience than using the your WAP/xHTML browser.

i actually tried to search for an indian restaurant the other day here in san francisco via xHTML (on a modern phone on a fast network)and it took forever. via SMS, it was much faster.

these services have been around forever in the Europe (and here as well via the individual carriers) but i think it's a better way to drive adoption via the portals..

seymore butts goes mobile [via avn]

razorfish mobile gets into Porn. are they related to razorfish? a spinoff, i hope. funny.

read all about it

p.s. is there really a porn star named seymore butts? c'mon, hasn't that name been taken>

data-only GSM carriers

Did you know there were data-only GSM carriers in the US? most people don't - but for applications where messaging or GPRS data is used for industrial applications, and voice plans are not needed - you can often do better by deploying with a data-only carrier.

one such carrier is telemetrix who provides the backbone for a few interesting industrial uses - one large fast food chain uses them to control the temperature and lighting in all their warehouses by SMS, for example. you can actually get a SIM from them that roams on T-Mobile US.

why don't the big 6 carriers offer data-only plans? i think the answer lies in how they are judged on the public markets, which is largely ARPU based. ARPU is much higher for voice than data, apparently, so they haven't been quick to offer it. i'm sure these deals have been done on the enterprise side of things, but i can guarantee you that is not a swift process you want to endeavor.

Philly Considers Wireless Internet for All [via eweek]

Philly Considers Wireless Internet for All

i'd really like to see more municipalities viewing wi-fi as a public utility like this. i'm not sure what the carriers would think of this (although a subcontract bid would certainly be possible) but i suppose they could still offer premium services like VPN and such.

AT&T EDGE service is, well, pretty damn fast

i just got back from a business trip - in which i had to use multiple internet connections in various places. i'm finding that hotel internet connections are getting more and more flaky, and this case the hotel conenction was down most of the night, so i fell back to my AT&T Wireless EDGE connection via bluetooth Nokia 6620 - wow - this was fast enough to actually use. as where plain GPRS was fast enough for email and some basic browsing, EDGE was fast enough to do all that, normal browsing, and even downloading from iTunes. i must say, i was impressed.

now if only nokia could get their asses in gear and put EDGE on a 7610, instead of the behemoth 6600, we could all be happy. EDGE on the 6230 is a nice option as well, but series 60 is growing on me.

at&t wireless has an unlimited data plan

i had to go get a nokia 6620 for a project we're working on - and was very happy to find out that at&t wireless now has an all you can eat data plan for $24.99! for EDGE even! ...this is $5 cheaper than t-mobile's unlimited GPRS plan, which makes me think i might switch my main line over to AWS, assuming it's not too cumbersome. of course AWS becomes cingular soon. i just signed a new 1 year contract on this line...but i wonder if this pricing will stay around through the merger.

mobile asses has a business model

warning: explicit links below click at your own risk, not necessarily office friendly

an unnamed colleague pointed me at this site, and whether you like or dislike the content, it's about the best example you are going to find in the public domain of a "Vertical Moblog" - totally dedicated toward one purpose, and able to charge premiums to users for premium services.

mobile asses

i only bring this up, because porn and gambling are leading indicators for business models of a technology at large. if your business model works there, it will work other places. AOL won't tell you this, but AOL makes a ton of money off people who have an account for no other reason than their illicit chat room. Operators won't tell you this, but a "really healthy percentage" of traffic going over their gateways is illicit content (i've seen it)

so although you see things like Vodafone blocks access to porn i know for a fact that other operators won't be so quick to move unless they get threatened with lawsuits. in fact, voda is really figuring out how to allow this content in a way it can make more money off it legally. they aren't ignoring the illicit markets.

that's all an aside...the good news is that a good vertical moblog can find a business model.

mms under pressure

i've noticed more and more that MMS is coming under pressure, such as articles by the always upbeat [sarcasm] Guy Kewney - which aren't without merit; their thesis being that MMS was made for P2P, and pictures sent via the MMSC which are converted to a least common denominator format will not fly in a megapixel and beyond cameraphone world.

either via the RSS feed on this site, or by going to my public flickr page you can see my tests.

a megapixel photo from a Nokia 7610 sent via Email, T-Mobile US MMSC (Ericsson brand), and a Private MMSC we own (NowSMS brand).

they get resized before getting to Flickr...and it's interesting to note that most moblogging sites are getting by just fine with email parsing instead of true MMS.

I control the config of the Private MMSC - and what i saw surprised me a little: the MMSC isn't resizing the pictures, the Nokia phone is! The MMSC didn't need to do any resizing at all, since the email client doesn't send down a limiting UAProf.
An inspection of sending an extended size from the Sony Ericsson K700i was also interesting - it wouldn't let me MMS pictures bigger than 640x480 (VGA) - the menu option is turned off!

Now i have to look at the MM1 (the protocol for sending MMS from the phone) to see if this is a standards limitation, or just a choice made by the device manufacturers to keep support headaches down (since many operators turn off image size conversion on the MMSCs - but either way, it's an interesting decision. why not allow megapixel phones to MMS megapixel images? the MMSCs can definitely handle bigger pictures - with one of my companies I'm working on a system right now that allows 5 Megapixel images to be sent to MMS phones without a problem, and the MMSC is doing the heavy lifting here.

Especially with CDMA just rolling out MMS (really) with many > 1 megapixel phones, it will be interesting to see how this shakes out.

There are a couple companies that have developed superior technology on the client that are compatible with MMSCs Cognima Snap mostly in the GSM world and dotPhoto's Pictavision mostly in the CDMA/BREW world that are much better at pushing images around from client to server on phones. these companies have been forced to be compatible with MMS systems mainly for billing reasons but the underlying technology is generally a little smarter than MMS.

a few caveats when you read this stuff:

a) it's naive to think hardware manufacturers won't upgrade MMS capabilities are more devices roll out

b) A2P MMS is still an untapped market that doesn't suffer from the problem that companies like Cognima market - sending pics and video to the phone via the MMSC is still the best way to do such things, in my opinion, because the MMSC just handles so much heavy lifting of dealing with the UAProf.

nokia licenses NTP patents to secure RIMlike email services

i had previously reported that the biggest reason nokia and sony ericsson hadn't gone forward with their deals with Research In Motion, makers of the Blackberry, was that RIM wouldn't indemnify the other manufacturers against their patent lawsuit issued against them by NTP.

so this story in the National Post, Research In Motion adversary NTP Inc. licences patents to Nokia is good news for RIM because now Nokia can launch these services on the Nokia 6800 without worrying about getting sued from NTP.

We'll see if SE does the same thing. The pictures of the P900 with a RIM keyboard look pretty cool. The P900 combined with RIM push email technology would be pretty much near perfect.

transcoding proxies getting popular again

today opera announced the availability of a proxy service which they say can accelerate mobile browsing by 2.5 times, and reduce the amount of data transferred for those browsing with their version 6.31 browser. they offer this as a subscription service for EUR 4 an lower with longer terms, and the "value proposition" is that this will lower your mobile data bill by more than the subscription price.

this was the same value proposition behind WAP, and it's interesting that it's being translated to HTML/XHTML as well. Opera is already hands down the best mobile browsing experience on Sybian UIQ and Series 60 alike, so i'll be interested to see how this makes things better, as the browsing experience with opera is already pretty damn good with optimization on the client only.

i also find it interesting that transcoding proxies are gaining popularity again. 3-4 years ago, these were all the rage in taming the "mobile internet" and were sold mostly by openwave to every operator around, and then to enterprises. it's popped up again in enterprises in nokia's Nokia One Business Server and of course there is the google proxy (read down) which comes in WML, cHTML, and XHTML flavors (i don't know whose they have installed, if not home grown). the same technology has been at the heart of RIM Blackberry forever as well. doing heavy lifting on the server makes sense, except that of course you are funneled through a single point of potential failure.

we're also doing this with FeedBurner SmartFeed, which essentially is a transcoding proxy for Atom to RSS Clients, and will soon combine the functionality of our MobileFilter, which optimizes RSS/Atom for mobile devices, as well as do many other "Smart" things.

All ideas that have been around for quite awhile, now being put to good use as these emerging technologies finally are moving up the take-up curve.

frustrated with US carriers

i got an easter card today via yahoo! greetings from my cousin in sicily with some cute dancing pulcini hatching from their easter eggs, which was cool, but what caught my eye was the possible responses to the card, one of which was "Invia una cartolina al cellulare di gina" which means "send a postcard greeting to gina's cellular phone".

cool. when you click on that, you get a bunch of choices that would allow me to send to her cell number she had registered in my yahoo. i went on to look at the other services such as the java games available at mobile yahoo! italia. this is remarkably easy for yahoo to support in italy. click, send to your GSM number.

compare that with something like this at the yahoo! us portal and see the "will this work on my phone?" sidebar. enter carrier. enter phone brand. enter phone model. i wonder how many people go through the motions after choosing "verizon".

ug. what a pain. but it's what we have to do to create a usable user interface for the masses here in the US.

i have clients that are struggling with this right now. they want to offer mobile services to their subscribers that happen to have mobile phones, but there's always this dichotomy between GSM/CDMA and a separate dichotomy between J2ME/BREW that needs to be accounted for in every offering, making development expensive, and customer support onerous.

there are number of companies, startup and otherwise, that are trying to bridge that gap here, in my opinion, not having a lot of success. the carriers depending on who you talk to, haven't decided whether inter-operability will help them or harm them - but the reality of situation is that non inter-operability between the wireless carriers is hurting both the carriers and the companies providing services on the carriers' network, and slowing adoption of wireless data services here in the US.

the death of m-commerce and other thoughts

kevin laws has some interesting observations on the death of m-commerce titled whither m-commerce? which for the most part i agree with.

i've long said that the carrier that just provides the fastest wireless 3G pipe will be the winner, with the subtext being that the simply operate as a wireless ISP.

the one thing i don't agree with in kevin's article is that verizon will be the carrier to break this open, which is truly a shame. i concur that verizon has the best voice and data network in north america - but the problem is VzW wants to control every bit that flows over their network to handsets. this is at odds with their 3G wireless PC cards, which essentially do make them a fast wireless ISP.
why the difference in control of smartphones vs PCs?

one company here in north america that has followed the european/asian model with some success is zingy and notice that they are not compatible with verizon. the reason for this is that other carriers such as T-Mobile, Cingular, and AWS make it much easier to use the open wireless protocols that exist (e.g. SMPP and MMS) to deliver applications via "backdoor" means, and for the most part the carriers are fine with this. I've been trying to get clients to think along these lines, as it does provide a real opportunity here in the US, and a much more open channel for marketing outside of the BREW platform, which is a current darling among application developers because of the grand revenue split that exists.

however now that the BREW catalogs are getting saturated, BREW carriers are starting to be very picky about who they let onto their networks, and demanding a lot of the application developers that have established themselves there. so although BREW has been the gravy train of application developers for the last year, the pendulum is starting to swing.

so yes, IP-based applications that bypass WAP and the walled gardens are surely where the money is in the coming year in wireless. and yes, verizon has the best network to support this. let's hope they see the light and support the applications that can break open the business models for 3G in north america.

one lawsuit down, one to go for RIM

via cnet, RIM, Good Technology settle suits
Good Technology has signed a settlement and license agreement with Research In Motion, bringing to an end a series of lawsuits between the BlackBerry developer and the start-up.

RIM is also appealing a decision that they cannot sell in the US because of patent infringement on NTP.

A few days ago, i posted on P900 to get RIM capabilities and wondered why a similar deal with nokia hasn't closed and i think the answer from nokia has been "RIM won't indemnify nokia against their lawsuits" and i've heard the same thing is jeopardizing this deal with sony ericsson.

in laymens terms, RIM won't pay Nokia or Sony Ericsson for any losses or damages they incur by licensing the technology, especially for instance if the companies that are suing RIM also sue the other two companies.

quick CTIA thoughts

i was down in atlanta at the CTIA conference this week...and was much more impressed with this show than the fall version in vegas. a TON of people down there, pretty much every hotel room was soaked, and in general a lot more interest than i've saw last year. i'll take that as a good sign!

This was in infrastructure show, so there were lots of companies that made cell towers and even the little huts they sell to farmers built right on the show floor. it makes one really think of everything that has to go into the mix to make wireless work.

but there were also plenty of software vendors, operators, and device manufacturers. below is a snap of siemens now famous marketing stunt...they give out inflatable pool rafts that are in the shape of a phone, complete with buttons and a screen and all - but the gimmick is, they only hand them out in the inflated state! so there's lots of people standing around trying to deflate these things, or carrying around inflated rafts. very ingenious!

the best new device i saw was the nokia 7610 a megapixel camera, and i think they finally got the size right for a carry-around all the time smartphone. i wish they made the 6600 and 6620 (which i also tried) in this profile. the "messed up" keyboard didn't bother me...but i'm right handed.

on the CDMA side of things, i really liked LG's successor to the vx6000, the LG vx8000, with a 1.3 Mega Pixel camera, up to 10X zoom, and 1X EV-DO.
phoneyworld has a picture..i have a nice glossy brochure...no pics on the LGUSA.com site as of yet.

best party...Sony Ericsson and Ericsson rented out one of the music halls and had a show with Switchfoot and Train - both of whom i've never though much of recorded, but were great live!

cross carrier MMS for fun and profit

i'm currently doing a project for a client deploying an MMS application on a carrier's network...however, carrier, let's call them carrier A does not allow us to test using the MMSC on their network...but obviously we can use the data network to throw packets wherever we want, and with some creative uses of third party gateways, we can send MMS on carrier B's network without too much trouble.

so we are using carrier A to deliver MMS on carrier B's network for testing, and neither carrier knows we are doing this. fun stuff! essentially, we've implemented cross-carrier MMS without all the messy billing stuff. it's not that simple, i know, but pretty cool anyway.

wow. joi ito's GPRS bill

i'm not sure what to make of this...but this is impressive. here, joi ito talks about his $3500 GPRS bill from roaming and using GPRS around the world.

i'd love to see how that's broken down, joi. which companies are the most expensive to roam on TMO with? i guess when i've used GPRS in travel (UK and Germany) there was always a TMO corporate presence there for roaming, so it was affordable...in fact, i never noticed a spike in my bill.

nonetheless, joi makes some good points.

okay, sorry for the lack of original content here the last week or so. ton of stuff to do. about to depart on a trip to the west coast...where i always get some quality writing done. on tap, some new device reviews and my thoughts on motorola's device strategy.

nokia releases midp2.0 SDK for series 80

nokia recently announced that it would be following up the release of it's first symbian series 80 device, the nokia communicator with the nokia 9500. it's planned for Q4 04 and could be the first device to feature EDGE, wi-fi, and bluetooth all on the same device. the specs look great except for using an MMC card instead of SDIO. hello? 128 MB limit? still time to change that? please?

the first commuinicator was a huge brick, yet still a cool device. unfortunately it was useless because it hit the market TOO soon, and lacked GPRS, so all connectivity was through CSD dialup at about 9kbps. I had one of these back in the day, but coudn't really use it because of that limitation. the one time i visited nokia to do an MMSC interoperability test, everyone in their GSM group in dallas seemed to have one of these, so if you ever see sales numbers for the communicator, make sure to subtract the number of people working in las colinas. an interesting place. half the people in that office are texans, half the people are finns. talk about culture clash. i wonder if many sauna deals go down there. i digress.

the series 80 MIDP SDK supports the MIDP 2.0 spec, and is more than just a new skin on the old nokia java SDK. the setup supports some pretty complex networking, testing of the messaging (WMA 1.1, JSR-120) and bluetooth APIs (JSR-81), the mobile media APIs (JSR-135), the FileConnection APIs (JSR-75), the Nokia UI extension API, and of course running the core MIDP 2.0 class libraries as well.

running our MIDP 2.0 RSS Feed Reader unmodified seemed to work fine in the emulator, although I could see re-working some of the presentation for this class of device. for one, this device just begs for color. gotta put that on the list.

the implementation does a good job of automatically mapping your commands to the two extra softkeys in the middle on the right hand side, the rest are available via the menu button as on many other devices. keyboard navigation seems to work as one might expect. looks promising. let's hope platformRequest() works in the first release.

P900 to get RIM capabilities

if i were to list out the top 5 ways to get and respond to email while on the go (and the respond part is important) , the list would look something like:

1. RIM Blackberry
2. Sony Ericsson P900/P900
3. Palm OS over CDMA/GPRS (various phones Treo 600, Samsung i500)
4. Microsoft Smartphone
5. Nokia Series 60

so the announcement from SE and RIM at 3GSM that the P900 will get a RIM email client only makes both those platforms stronger in my opinion. very cool. The RIM is a great email solution without many applications, and the P900 has plenty of applications without the full email experience of the RIM so seems like a good move to me as it will get licensing revenue for RIM and a better platform for SE. i really hope they go forward and bring this to market and this is more than just one of those press releases to get the competitive juices going and stock prices to move (and trust me, there's a lot of those).

nokia and RIM made a similar announcement last june to provide this capability on the Nokia 6800 a while ago for att Wireless, but i'm not sure anything ever materialized. Nokia seems to be placing their chits on getting to market first with EDGE and 3G/WiFi combo devices. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

new release of palm midp 2.0 sdk

palm has released a new version of their MIDP 2 implementation, available at their PluggedIn website.

new features include:

The toolkit also includes a packaging utility to convert JAD and JAR files into the Palm OS PRC format, developer documentation, and a readme with the latest fixes and known issues. Some new highlights of this release include support for platformRequest() for opening web pages (http://,https://) and sending emails (mailto:), OTA/AMS/JAM support, and Comm serial port connections over IrDA and Bluetooth. The OTA supports means you can now install JAD/JAR natively over-the-air without conversion to PRC. Game API performance is also significantly improved.

OTA support is key. Explicit support for platformRequest() is also of note.

I'll run the BD3 FeedReader source through the conversion and let you know how it works. We plan to support this on the Tungsten C and Treo 600 when this kit is released.

people are browsing on their phone?!

we all know WAP sucks, and WAP is dead. and yes, WAP is pretty useless for browsing the "mobile internet".

that doesn't mean that people aren't browsing; as the browsers are getting richer and better on phones, it seems people are starting to browse again using them, just not using WAP! XHTML looks really good, and the new mobile browsers mobile browsers are doing a much better job in rendering regular old HTML for the mobile profile. Opera on the Nokia 6600 and P800/900 looks damn good, an the build in browser on Microsoft Mobile (Smartphone) is totally usable as well. boy did openwave miss the bus there. there is really no need for WAP anymore on these new phones with better processors and better bandwidth. the newly announced nokia 6620 is going to be even more usable on the EDGE networks of AT&T and Cingular.

P900 Opera

6600 Opera

6600 Opera, Full Screen Mode

i wouldn't bring this up, except that in looking at our webserver logs, i'm starting to see more and more people using these browsers to, well, browse, enter comments, download MIDlets, whatever.

here's one from a P900

"GET /steve/archives/000279.html HTTP/1.1" 200 16741 "-" "SonyEricssonP900/R101 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.0"

ah, now here's an interesting one:

"GET /steve/archives/000155.html HTTP/1.0" 200 12398 "-" "Nokia6600/1.0 (3.42.1) SymbianOS/7.0s Series60/2.0 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.0 (Google WAP Proxy/1.0)"

what's the "Google WAP Proxy"? what's a WAP proxy?

well, if you do use your wap browser and start at http://www.google.com/wml - they have what is referred to as a "transcoding proxy server" or a "transcoder" serving up your pages. what this does is sniff your device, and then take regular old HTML and turn it into WAP, XHTML, or whatever on the server side before sending it down to the device.

most telecom software infrastructure companies sell these things, but the need for them is going away. we saw this market evaporating a couple years ago a the last place i worked, and my product management team did all we could to kill further product development in this area and refocus it in other more forward looking areas.

that was still the right choice, but it's cool that google has this piece of soviet-era technology, and interesting that people are actually using it, especially on a 6600.

first semester grades for J2ME MIDP 2.0

I've ranted in the past about J2ME 1.0, about how awkward, slow, and buggy applications were that were written using this mobile platform from SUN, and being wideley adopted by mobile device manufacturers. however, owing much of my technical past to Java related technologies, there was no way I was going to give up hope that J2ME could be improved and get closer to native technologies on devices.

J2ME has started sophomore year with a second version of the MIDP profile that has made its way onto phones from Nokia and Sony Ericsson, and now Motorola. SUN keeps a list of their licensees which happens to be a little out of date as of this writing. The P900 is indeed available, and i now have some experience in using it by writing a RSS Feed Reader which uses some of the new features of MIDP 2.0, most visibly the ability to launch the platform's default browser given a URL.

So what do I think? The results are mixed. (NOTE: these grades are for the J2ME support, not the phones themselves - here's my review of the P900 in general...Nokia 6600 generic review coming soon)

Sony Ericsson P900: C+

SE does a pretty good job of installing and executing MIDP 2.0 apps. I was able to run the BD3 Feed Reader in testing mode where it fetched RSS feeds, parsed, and processed the XML every 5 minutes for 3 days straight - and as long as all the resources that were opened were closed, the memory footprint stayed pretty much static. this was a surprise. I don't think I ever saw MIDP 1.0 apps run with this stability on any platform. Performance is also much better than on the P800, which has a MIDP1.0 VM and an otherwise equivalent 155 Mhz ARM processor.

On the downside, there's still a long way to go in making J2ME apps on the P900 look more native. they can start by using the MIDlet's icon rather than a generic icon for every MIDlet in their menu. I've seen this asked on the SE forum a bunch of times and no one from SE ever answers it. Secondly, there's still a lot of features of the P900 that can't be touched from J2ME, even with extensions. Although I guess this lowest common denominator thing is part of the play of J2ME portability, they could do a lot better job in perhaps providing a toolkit with widgets and such that make more sense on the P900 in a stylus based environment.

It took them 2 firmware releases to get some of the kinks out, and get the entire spec implemented. Lucky for SE, they allow users to update their own firmware.

There's no list of known issues, so many programmers are muddling through what works and what doesn't at http://www.sonyericsson.com/developer.

Nokia 6600: C

On the good side, Nokia does a good job of making J2ME apps feel at home on the 6600. For the first time on a Nokia device, J2ME apps are first class and appear on the top level menu like any other Symbian C++ application instead of at the back of the bus in a special "Apps" folder as on all other Nokia phones.

On the down side, the list of known issues in the nokia 6600 MIDP implementation are atrocious. Nokia uses SUN's Monty VM in their implementation so some of these things are perhaps not their fault, but it definitely shows a lack of testing and a rush to market. Understood but not totally forgiveable in this market. I don't know if the P900 uses this VM or another VM.

There are other things that definitely are their fault from a lack of testing. A prime example is not implementing the MIDlet.platformRequest() method which is new and has prevented my feed reader from running on this phone. Calling this method with the right parameters is supposed to either make a phone call or launch the default browser. It currently crashes the 6600 - and unless Nokia provides a way for users to update their own firmware, it's going to leave a whole lot of phones that don't really support MIDP2.0. Couldn't they have gotten a programmer to pull an all-nighter and gotten this right? The sun was probably up all night anyway in Finland since this was released in the Summer.

Some of the other bugs are pretty bad too, especially since they cause memory leaks - but at least they provide workarounds.

Conclusion:

I don't want this to be negative because I want to see a LOT more of MIDP2.0 out there on devices. There are some necessary features which i haven't tested such as the messaging API as well as the JSR-82 bluetooth exensions, which both these phones implement.

That said, SUN used to require a lot more testing of their licensees than they seem to now, and I would expect this software to be a little better. I think both implementations are better than the freshman 1.0 equivalents, but let's hope for a much improved second semester!

palmOne to support midp2.0

if you dig around on palm one's developer site - http://pluggedin.palm.com/regac/pluggedin/Java.jsp you can find that palm will be supporting MIDP2.0 J2ME on their latest devices including the Tungsten C,W and the Treo 600.

i've already generated a .prc file from my MIDP RSS Client using the palm toolkit and it went smoothly - however it doesn't look like palmOne will have the native ARM version ready until "next spring" so that this can actually run on devices.

specifically: "An updated version of WebSphere Micro Environment is scheduled to be available next spring from palmOne. It will be implemented as a native ARM application, will be CLDC 1.1 and MIDP 2.0 compliant and will be available for both the Treo 600 smartphones and the Tungsten handheld devices. The runtime license for Treo 600 smartphone users is expected to be available from the Software Connection for $5.99."

Q: does that suck that they are making legacy users pay for the runtime?

A: yes, that does suck.

ah well, no one likes to work for free.

att wireless launches EDGE nationwide

the following was snipped from an announcement sent to att wireless developers. i am actually pretty surprised that they launched nationwide where their existing GPRS coverage is. note the speeds they quote are for the PC Card Modem. the phones are limited by processor speed so using a phone as a modem will provide somewhat slower results. the clipping:

EDGE: Now Available

why operators don't like j2me for brew

i've seen quite a few posts on how cool it is that j2me is available for BREW via the esmertec JVM. in addition, the first response i've gotten when talking to developers about doing BREW apps is "can't you do that with j2me on top of BREW?". indeed, there are tons more j2me developers than BREW developers, and very few java developers would want to "regress" to the world of using C and C++, even if it's the right tool for the job.

operators that have chosen BREW hate this. they don't like the idea at all of j2me on top of BREW. why? one reason is they've already made the choice of BREW over j2me, mostly for the revenue system that is in place, but also because of the testing and verification system that is in place as well. the apps they get generally perform and run without fault.

however, the bigger reason is they see a huge loss of revenue. why? because to load a JVM on your brew device is 500K, which means you can load a lot fewer apps on your device, which means the potential subscription revenue is lowered by 25% in some cases. they will discourage you as a developer from even thinking about using j2me on top of BREW, at least until this overhead of th JVM is standard packaging on the device, and does not eat into the subscribers app memory.

there are two ways to look at it. one is the argument above. the other is that opening the catalog of apps up to j2me will provide scores more of potential apps they can sell, and even if it's only 75% of what they could have gotten, perhaps more sub's phones would be closer to capacity.

what do i think? honestly, the right tool for the job right now on BREW devices is native BREW, and learning the SDK even with C is not that hard, as it's pretty limited anyway. when some of the bigger BREW smartphones come out that have the JVM embedded in the firmware, then i think this will be palatable for operators. the bigger thing i worry about is consistency and testing. because j2me has no verification process, well, there are a lot of unverified j2me apps i've run across with memory leaks and some obvious bugs. this is a headache for me, and a bigger headache for operators. there are some companies such as tira wireless that are trying to introduce verification for j2me to operators, but i'm not sure how successful they've been. it's probably time for SUN to learn from the good things inherent in the BREW model and propose something here. hopefully, their acquistion of PIXO is what they are framing in this light.

i really don't like that qualcomm requires BREW developers to gain a verisign certificate, get their phone unlocked, etc before being able to develop on the device. that's a huge barrier to entry for many developers - so i think they need to do something in this area. making j2me part of the standard BREW SDK instead of a bolt on would go a long way.

educating america on SIM cards

matt brings up a good point in his P800 review here on which i will elaborate - most americans who use a cell phone don't know about the SIM card, and GSM operators in the us should be making a point to tell them about it!

if you are here, you probably know what a SIM card is, but in case you do not, the SIM (subscriber identification module) is a chip that fits inside a cell phone that carries a unique identifier which allows a carrier to tie a phone number to the card. a subscriber can use the SIM to store his or her address book, as well as other pieces of data that may be used by a phone.

the power of the SIM card is that you can move it from phone to phone and keep the same phone number and address book. you can have multiple phones and use them for occaisions as you see fit. you can upgrade to a new phone easily and sell you own phone on ebay. you can trade phones with your sister for the day.

this is a huge competitive advantage GSM providers have over CDMA providers, and T-Mobile and ATT Wireless do nothing to promote it! most of their subscribers know nothing about their SIM or what they can do with it. with as much money that is spent in the cell phone accessory market ( faceplates, cases, glow antennas ) for subs to personalize their phones, it seems like this would be a no-brainer to market this capability.

in europe, a SIM card is part of the culture and people treat their SIM like their drivers license. in china, the are even using SIMs in CDMA devices. will the us CDMA providers adopt this standard? probably not until it's well tested in the rest of the CDMA markets like china and korea.

so yeah, we realize you make more money on an additional line than on a handset - but in the wake of wireless number portability, couldn't you the GSM operators in north america perhaps get someone to stay by making this capability known ?

nokia goes pen based with series 90

this is really just a pointer more than anything else, but forum nokia has released the inital specs and concept SDK for it's series 90 user interface for the symbian OS.

they have obviously chose not to go with using UIQ to compete on it's pen based offerings - that is their devices that would compete head to head with the likes of the p900. In the past nokia has stayed away from pen based devices, except in asia where they sell the 6108.

for those of you who are confused on who owns what in the symbian world - here's the lowdown:

symbian, ltd is the company that makes the underlying operating system and is owned by Ericsson, Nokia, Panasonic, Psion, Samsung Electronics, Siemens and Sony Ericsson.

UIQ is a wholly owned subsidiary of symbian, ltd, and makes the pen based user interface layer for symbian OS that is licensed for use on devices made by the likes of Sony Ericsson and BenQ. They otherwise concentrate on advanced user interfaces for the Symbian OS, and are located in Sweden.

Series 60, Series 80, Series 90 is the keypad driven user interface on top of symbian OS that is owned by nokia, and is found on such devices as the nokia 3650, n-gage, and the nokia communicator. Series 60 has been licensed to sendo which they have included on their Sendo X device. Sendo has made their own enhancements to the series 60 OEM core.

still confused? some analogies: UIQ and series 60 are to symbian os as gnome and KDE are to the linux core. nokia licensed series 60 to sendo like palm source licensed the palm os to sony for their cleo devices.

each user interface as well as the underlying OS has it's own developer program, as well as the developer programs for the devices that use them. yes, this makes it confusing for developers as well. good natured object-oriented MVC design can help developers target multiple platforms and devices at once, but man, does it need to be sorted out. there's a lot of activity by the various developer programs to do this, but for everyone's sake i hope it gets streamlined soon.

notes from CTIA wireless IT

finally, back from vegas and a week of CTIA wireless IT. this was the first conference i have been to in a long time where i wasn't a speaker or running a booth - so it was good to sit back and soak up what was going on as an outsider! now that i'm back i've had a day or so to digest the show and here are some general observations:

attendance was lower than in the past
i've been to this show for the last three years, and this was probably had the lowest attendance of the three. perhaps there were as many attendees, but certainly fewer businesses on the show floor. perhaps because there has been a shakeout of many of the smaller companies that have presented in the past (there certainly weren't as many "science fair" booths, if you know what i mean) but also a lack of presence of many of the bigger companies. notably missing with any force were nokia, ericsson, motorola, and microsoft. they were all there but with a way dialed down presence from what we've seen in previous years.

symbian kicked ass
okay, another way to say it would be symbian put a lot of marketing dollars toward this show, which was probably a smart move to start to displace palm (or is it palm one? does anyone remember the difference? that might be the worst name change since when Borland tried to change their name to Inprise) in north america, and try to hold off windows mobile 2003 from really establishing a foothold here.

but seriously, symbian executed well. their educational sessions were all well attended and informative, and their booth on the floor had a constant sea of people trying out ALL the symbian based handsets. they did a great job of bringing in their partners such as UIQ for the UIQ user interface, nokia for the series 60 and series 80 user interfaces, and sony ericsson for the official launch of the P900 handset. also interesting was a presentation by macromedia on bringing flashcast to the symbian OS. i played with the demos of this "channel based" platform and found it interesting.

deployment of location based services is still a mess
probably the most well attended, standing room only, presentation was a panel discussion on location based services sponsored by the wireless lbs challenge. there were a lot of good points bounced around, but in the end, there were a lot of annoyed developers who weren't happy about hearing that most of the operators in north america (save nextel, who has LBS for developers deployed today) won't be allowing developers to access networked based location information for another 12-24 months. this jives with operators i have talked to as well, who want to sort out all the privacy and billing issues associated with the LBS before allowing developers to have access.

the companies that will be in the forefront of pioneering such applications this year will be the ones that purchase the network wholesale from operators and manage all the billing and liability separate from the customer, or that go ahead and use other means for obtaining LBS information. an example is wherify wireless which purchases network with LBS capabilities from Sprint PCS, and takes the operator out the equation of managing the customer.

in the end, there were lots of questions about how to even satisfy the requirements of this contest, and a lot of lame suggestions about being forced to use bluetooth GPS machines and such, it's the application idea that matters, etc. the winner gets $100K, so perhaps that's incentive enough.

what's that? eric told me to read the fine print. oh. that's a $100K of navtech software licenses. well, that might do it for some folks.

smartphone designs are getting better
both the sony ericsson P900 and sierra wireless voq seemed to get a lot of attention and praise from many of the people i talked to. keeping the device small, but increasing its usefulness seems to be the message the device manufacturers are starting to present, rather than trying to stuff whatever they can into crazy designs. the P900 is 20% smaller in mass than the P800, but with more functionality, which is a good trend.

reviews coming soon: Sony Ericsson P900, Motorola MPx200

att wireless updates mMode look

this morning i received a service sms message from att wireless telling me they will be soon updating mMode with a new look and feel. mMode is att wireless' WAP/XHTML based font end to purchasing applications and setting up content, and i think you'll have to admit, this new look and feel is a bit better than any other WAP stack you've seen of late.

we typically haven't liked WAP at all for applications, as it was pretty much impossible to accomplish anything in the past given the shakiness of the network and low quality of the server based applications that ran on network, not to mention the differences in phones. some operators such as U.S. Cellular chose to launch without WAP for their 2.75/3G data services, and Verizon charges a monthly fee for access to a service that pales in comparison to their BREW based content offering.

att seems to be learning from their japanese cousins, and continuing to execute their mMode strategy with surprising results. a theme i am seeing here is easier access to content, fewer "clicks" and bringing innovations like location based services to the forefront. as much as we dislike WAP, mMode demonstrates some best practices in north america. good for them if they succeed in making this useful in time for their nationwide EDGE launch by the end of the year.

fewer clicks is good. colors not as boring, good.

the new home screen.

more of the new home screen. search, messaging and history all up front. good.

big names in content, easy access to the favorites. most people regularly visit 4-5 sites on a regular basis anyway.

"My 5 Nearby". this is all there in the current mMode, albeit buried.

in short - this is good. att realized what they were up against, and rose to the challenge in designing around the user experience.

i bounce around between phones and operators quite a bit, and i have been finding myself going back to mMode more and more these days to purchase things like J2ME games with my att ewallet (because it's easier, no credit card involved) - and then even transferring these games over to my t-mobile phone, who doesn't offer this level of content.

hopefully the full launch of this preview delivers. i like to be pleasantly surprised.

3's motorola a920 users revolt!

this petition to get hutchinson 3g to unlock cababilites of the motorola920 is the first example i've seen of subscribers really getting miffed an an operator for trying to control what can and can't be done on their network, and the device that the user owns!

3 has locked the phone so that third party applications cannot be installed on the device, only internet sites approved by 3 can be browsed, and sockets to things like imap and pop servers cannot be opened through their gateway. amazing. bluetooth for a fee? what!? i can see why people are a little upset, especially if they paid the full £399 (that's $666, the number of the beast).

i've said this before, i'll say it again. the 3G provider that thinks of themselves like any other wireline ISP is the one that will win. don't try to control the content that flows over your network. don't try to restrict the apps that use your connection (within the law). just provide a fast, reliable, wireless pipe.

perhaps those things are at odds given the state of the market today. build this into your business models and figure it out. if you don't, you will lose to the operator that does.

vodafone and orange to resell o2 wi-fi in UK

the UK mobile market is different in so many ways from the market in north america. notably, you very rarely see marketing for "5000 anytime minutes" or any marketing regarding minutes at all. residents seem to go with the voice service that that has the best coverage at home, office, and on the tube - and differentiation is offered via the data services available. voice is just a commodity, and the coverage map is what it is, improved as much as possible over time.

it doesn't really surprise me that vodafone and orange have chosen for now to get into the wi-fi game by partnering up with BT as a way to get their subs access to wi-fi. this means they see wi-fi as a commodity for their subs and not a differentiator - and allows voda and orange to concentrate more on differentiating their 2.75/3G data offerings they'll certainly be launching in the near future.

i think rob price of t-mobile has a point though - offering premium wi-fi access at carefully planned business meeting spots might be a better strategy than offering it places where lower bandwidth access on the mobile will suffice, especially in a geographically concentrated area like london.

at any rate, it's fun watching this market develop!

Airline phones to accept GSM SIM cards

i think this is a pretty brilliant solution offering by Altobridge, which allows airline passengers to use their existing SIM card for in-flight telecom services. I'm sure this will be billed at a much higher rate than a terrestrial call, but if it can later offer a wirless bridge to in-flight calling, i think that will be an appealing offering for some. personally, i don't see a lot of people using seatback phones, partly because it's awkward, partly because it's too expensive, and partly because if you've ever used one, it seems to take 2 or 3 tries to get your credit card to work.

the counterpoint to this service will be Wi-Fi availability on planes and the rollout of MoWLAN phones. all of this is in the future, and partly this will be driven by consumer preferences for voice vs data on the plane. i know i'd rather send a quiet email on the plane instead of bothering my fellow passengers, but there are always people that prefer to make that call.

t-mobile rolls out wi-fi at kinkos

wi-fi net news is reporting T-Mobile Rolls out Kinko's Stores, Discusses Roaming which i think is pretty big news. i think tmo gets bashed a lot for not opening up their wi-fi network, but i'm going to defend them. we'd all like to take our wi-fi card and have it work wherever there is a commercial hotspot, and have roaming charges billed back to whomever we bought our plan from - but in these days of the wi-fi wild west, t-mobile is very carefully building a wi-fi brand by making exclusive deals with top notch wi-fi necessary hang outs. borders, starbucks, and now kinkos.

i've been doing a lot of meetings in starbucks these days, and i am amazed at the number of people working or holding meetings in sbux using wi-fi. the other day, at the "streets of woodfield" starbucks, a large mall suburbia near chicago, i counted 10 separate meetings where at least one person was using wi-fi, and in a few cases, two or three. the borders cafe near where i live is crammed with students studying/IMing or whatever from their wi-fi laptops.

kinkos is the logical next step - knowing you can access anything from your home/business network if you needed to in case you forgot something. what's next? a few more key exclusives, and then a key roaming partner.

openness and roaming will come. tmo knows they have to roam, but right now the costs of customer service i'm guessing would way outweigh any roaming revenues...and if their customers had bad experiences roaming on other wi-fi networks, who would they blame? most customers don't understand the network infrastructure of roaming! they'd blame tmo and change to to another provider. it's a war for subs, and tmo is playing it smart here. pete thompson wants more subs on his network, not fewer, but he certainly doesn't want to lose anyone yet. everyone knows cross-carrier services are good for everyone - but you have to look at it at a point in time: right now.

as an aside, tmo's GSM/GPRS network is perhaps the most open of any of the big six national carriers. they allow messaging and roaming capabilities that none the others allow and even purposefully block. in my experience, it is far easier to develop an enterprise app using t-mobile than any of the others right now - so it's hard to attack them for running a closed network; i think it's just the contrary.

tmo's voice network...yeah, they got some work to do there.

okay, now i'm starting believe in VoWLAN breaking out soon

seems like the last 4-5 years were all promised to be "the year of Voice over IP (VoIP)". now there is just too much momentum and too many investment dollars being poured into the problem for this not to happen in 2004. well funded companies like kineto wireless as well as existing pushes by cisco means that some large companies will start biting off on this tech starting late this year.

even though wi-fi is proliferating more in the home than in enterprises, MoWLAN will flourish first in the enterprise because of the cost of equipment and support, and move to the home sometime after. we still think that cable companies have the biggest opportunity right now to package this for home use, as their IP penetration grows every day.

a good synopsis of the state of the market can be found in infoworld. and no, we didn't steal the subtitle.

Motorola and 3 unveil new Symbian UIQ device

yesterday, motorola and 3 announced a new addition to phones available for Hutchison's 3G service in the UK which will run the Symbian 7.0 pen based interface, which has been dubbed the Motorola A920, and will support the video messaging service that has been launched by 3 that will feature premiership highlights.

3 is under a lot of pressure from it's investors to increase subscribers, so prehaps this will help. it's widely rumored that with the returns not coming fast enough, that Vodafone or T-Mobile will snap up 3 to further their own 3G efforts. 3 currently has only 155,000 subscribers, and shooting to get to 1 million by the end of the year, so hopefully this will include some aggressive pricing. the residents of london i have talked to have said the handsets are just way too expensive to take the plunge, and the service isn't cheap either.

Interestingly enough, it's reported that Motorola is also in talks to sell it's share of Symbian to Nokia and Psion. Psion is looking to buy a 4.8% share while nokia is looking to buy an additional 13% share of $471 million USD company. What's behind this move is anyone's guess but motorola says it still plans to license symbian for it's phones, so perhaps they are just wanting to spend more time on their handset offerings and applications, and less time on the operating system.

UPDATE
seems like guy kewney has the answer to why motorola is doing this. see here.

good news for wi-fi on mobile devices

with all the hype surrounding deployment of wi-fi as a competitor to 3G services, the one thing that has always stood in the way is wi-fi chip power consumption and the lack of exponential innovation in battery life. on most consumer devices employing embedded wi-fi chips, battery life has been pathetic. the ipaq 545X series pocket pc devices last maybe 2 hours with wi-fi turned on, the palm tungsten C a little longer as it turns it on and off as you are using the device - but to get a combo wi-fi phone device to be palatable to the market, we will need to see a usable battery life of 24 hours at least.

if wi-fi has 1/100th the power output of a GSM transmitter, this physics would seem to work out - but up until now, most wi-fi circuitry has been engineered for the laptop profile, where bigger, mightier battieries exist and AC power is part of the equation of use.

that's why i'm excited to see announcements such as this announcement from broadcom and philips as well as similar announcements made by texas instruments earlier in the year. we might just see those usable 3G/combo devices sooner than we had hoped.

are operators ready for MMS interworking?

for the most part, we've all gotten use to texting to people we know who are subscribers on networks other than our own; in fact, in many cases we never know what network the receiver of our message is on, nor should we. just like a voice call, right?

unfortunately, this is not the case for MMS. right now, in order for me to send an MMS to another person's phone i have to a) know they are on the same network b) know they have an MMS capable phone and c) know they've signed up for the service. "c" is especially annoying. as i do carry a camera phone on most occaisions, i have tried more than once to snap a picture and send it to a friend who i know is carrying a sony ericsson t68i, capable or receiving MMS, but i get an SMS back saying "the subscriber you are sending this message to is not capable of receiving the message, it will appear as text". 2 minutes later i get an SMS back with "what was that"? and sending MMS from, say t-mobile to an att wireless GSM MMS capable phone, fogettaboutit.

this is all revenue being left on the table and operators know it. even in the in-network case i reference above...the target subscriber should be given a taste of MMS (say they get 5 for free) and then be texted a link from which they can provision themselves over a wap connection or by replying to the SMS or MMS. at very least, the MMS should be routed to their webmail inbox automatically for viewing, with an SMS notification sent.

in Hong Kong, when cross carrier SMS messaging was allowed between the six carriers at one time, Hutchison alone claimed its SMS traffic increased by 5X off the bat and is still increasing. with MMS currently drawing higher margin revenues than SMS, this is definitely a case where operators working together will benefit the whole, and the quicker intercarrier MMS is implemented, the sooner we all can enjoy the benefits.

inter-carrier MMS has been demonstrated before, in both GSM-GSM and GSM-CDMA scenarios. there have been standard high-level messaging protocols (MM1, MM3, MM4, MM7 ) definined by the OMA and referenced by 3GPP that have made this possible, although i know from working with the myriad MMSC vendors that the production availability of these protocols has been on a "Just In Time" basis, often with development teams scrambling in the background to meet an implementaion deadline or lab test.

now, the GSM Association has published their MMS Interworking Guidelines, which as the title suggests are the preferred mechanisms for operators to get this working in a secure and efficient manner. the thing that stands out to me after reading this document is, this is not trivial!

that is, MM4 in itself is pretty trivial, and one would probably have little trouble getting 2 MMSCs with ESMTP provisioned to pass MMS messages between themselves, but when you impose the carrier environments on top of this, some of the complications start to become apparent.

first all the carriers have to be connected somehow, and in a secure manner. Security of messages is not a primary concern. Spam is a primary concern. the easiest ways in which MMSCs can be setup to communicate also make it easier for spam MMS to get propogated on the network, and in this case, the end user would to pay for receiving the unwanted mail, which in addition to being a nusiance causes all sorts of billing problems. GSM recommends that instead of setting up new VPNs between carriers, they instead use the existing GPRS Roaming Exchanges, which would require an upgrade, but make the task much easier. The fallback is to create secure VPNs, which would seem to be necessary for GSM-CDMA messaging.

the second thing that complicates things is Mobile Number Portability. They highly discourage keeping static tables of which numbers belong where, as it simply doesn't scale - so they suggest some other ways to deal with how to route the message either by phone number or email address as subs start to move around from network to network.

finally, as different operators have different billing models for MMS ( some charge per message, some charge for the bandwidth consumed, some both! ) there's no clear way to settle intercarrier message costs. my guess is that some 3rd parties will pop up to connect the carriers and settle the bills, all for a well deserved chunk of the pie.

one thing is clear - with only 2 percent of the deployed handsets being MMS capable, operators need to come up with some creative ways to tease users into upgrading, with usability of MMS->SMS being key. there are definitely transcoding techniques such as using wap push i've seen that can help convert some of these users, as well as using combinations of SMS and web based email to get people interested. This uptake has to happen in parallel with internetworking of MMS for operators to get the ROI they've put into their MMS infrastructures.

as a shameless plug, our consulting company offers services in helping operators sort out MMS issues such as this.

att wireless claims EDGE will be 110-130Kbps

In an email sent out to registered developers with att wireless, the company claims "The AT&T Wireless EDGE network promises to be the fastest, national wireless data network. With average data speeds of 110-130 Kbps, it will be twice as fast as any other national wireless data network", which is footnoted by saying those speeds will be for PC Card EDGE modems.

Cingular launched EDGE service in June only in indianapolis on one handset. I hope that att looks at a wider launch, given the small footprint of their GPRS service. since EDGE is an upgrade path from tdma, of which att has a pervasive footprint, it certainly seems possible.

i expect a similar announcement from t-mobile coming soon.

wi-fi for laundromats: do we really need specialized offerings for this?

wi-fi planet is reporting that a company called Serynade is marketing wi-fi kits directly to laundromats (story). wi-fi in laundromats is a great idea, but there's about 20 other places that are a good idea as well, and is a laundromat so different from say, a coffee house, that they would go to a specialized company that has done dozens of other laundromats? perhaps if the billing system takes quarters.

T-Mobile, Verizon, and SBC need to get on the ball and start offering connection kits wherever they can in a seamless manner. you figure SBC could package this as an easy add on to their DSL blitz. maybe they do, but i haven't seen it!

interesting 802.11g vs b findings

matthew gast, who wrote the great o'reilly book on 802.11 has done some tests on 802.11g,b, and a - and interestingly, 802.11g is only 5 times as fast as b when the entire network is running g, and backwards compatibility is turned off. otherwise, it only is about twice as fast. this is a little bit disappointing for me, because i don't see anyone being able to run a homogeneous 802.11g network for quite some time, as the devices with built in b are just starting to appear.

read about it here.

att wireless wifi pricing

wow. a colleague just pointed out att wireless' GoPort pricing. it's the prepaid cellular model applied to wifi. you buy packages of connect sessions, that they hope you probably never use, and the unlimited monthly package is amazingly expensive given the few places you can use it.

most business travellers who can expense this type of thing will probably pay for it anyway, and i would expect there to be a lot of one-shot purchases from people stuck in an airports, but this will have to gravitate toward being free. in some airport lounges wifi is already free (such as the star alliance lounge in toronto) - now if only they would install more power outlets in airports.

truckstop wi-fi = truckstop porn, rv wi-fi = ?

a few years ago an entrepreneur i know had the idea to install "truckstop porn feeds" at truckstops across the US and Canada. sounded like a goldmine to me. operators were receptive to the idea as well. after all, i've had MNO employees tell me that over 80% of their mobile browsing traffic over 2.5G networks is illicit content, and i have definitely seen marketing plans that aren't shy about how to raise their ARPU.

that was before wi-fi. i am actually a little surprised where greenfield wi-fi operators are starting to run backhauls to. places i wouldn't have expected. truckstops and RV parks just to name a few.

i suppose there is a market here. if indeed 20% of truckers are carrying around a laptop, it makes sense for them to park, jack-in (i said in), send email or IM to their families, browse, and hit the trucker chat rooms. RV parks seem to hit a separate demographic. are there really that many people waiting to get connectivity to their RV while parked? i'm not opposed to the idea but i'd really like to see someone solve the problem of urban WIMAX and Wi-Fi handoffs in dense areas where there seems to be a lot more opportunity.

the truckstop model states we'd be looking at a monthly fee of $30-$35 to support the service. i'd like to see the percentage of truckers that carry mobile phones ( to they still use CBs good buddy? ) and have to ask why mobile operators aren't tackling this as well. either there's bigger fish to fry, or the greenfield operators are just a temporary stopgap until they can sell roaming agreements to the bigger fish, just like what happened in 1G and 2G cellular. seems like a safe bet either way for the little guy, as long as they can make the economics work during the gap.

verizon rolls out push-to-talk

there are a lot of things i like about nextel. first things first: they are profitable. second, they're phones seem to work places no other phones can reach. if you are going on a boat a mile offshore, bring a nextel phone. third, they know their market.

part of knowing their market is push-to-talk (PTT). you can always count on a building contractor or an IT technician to be carrying a nextel phone. small groups that need to communicate with the push of a button for a very fragmented, asynchronous conversation. PTT is a replacement for texting for professions where working with your hands is necessary, and you just need to get your boss or employee on the phone with the push of a button.

being proprietary works for nextel. if you want to be in the loop, you gotta have a nextel phone. this reduces their churn and allows them to charge much higher rates than most other operators. other MNOs want to change this by building their own loyalty groups, and churning users away from nextel to a network that "offers more".

verizon today announced this capability making them the first north american operator other than nextel to do so.

i predict that verizon, sprint and others will not enjoy similar success as nextel with PTT. nextel has spent years cultivating the market of PTT users, and their implementation is built into the hardware, software, and protocols used on the network. although verizon is using motorola's CDMA PTT infrastructure, i don't expect the implementations from other carriers to be as slick. i've heard that sprint's implementation is much more just like an always on IM buddy list that will dial quickly in the background. i don't think it will feel the same, and although the marketing will try to convince the public otherwise, i don't think consumers will be fooled. we aren't going to see lots of nextel subs churning to other networks because PTT on competing networks.

text messaging and IP data on collision course

i'm starting to see more and more applications using IP over GPRS or 1X as the bearer for messaging applications. a lot of these are doing more than just text messaging, including full fledged IM, chat, push-to-talk and what's equivalent to P2P MMS. the marketing behind this is clear..."hey! it's a lot cheaper to do this over GPRS than it is to use messaging!" When you compare the 5 cents/SMS and up to 50 cents/MMS to the 1 cent/K for GPRS data, it's easy to see why there's a plethora of startups trying to close this gap. A good example i've seen lateley is coojo which allows IM, chat, and sending pictures between symbian series 60 phones, with more phone support to come. They support yahoo messenger, MSN messenger, and ICQ - which is orthoganal to the private IM messaging offerings we are seeing by some operators (e.g. Vodafone Messenger).

i imagine that once such things start to become OEM packaged onto devices this will accelerate even more. The point being, if operators are going to continue to bank on SMS and MMS messaging revenues they might paint themselves into a corner.

That said, as a subscriber - i couldn't be more in favor of all-you-can-eat GPRS pricing such as what's offered by T-Mobile in the US (incidentally, they offer unlimited text messaging as well). i want to treat my GPRS connection like any other internet connection, such as my DSL connection. The biggest improvement in the mobile model over the ISP model is being able to charge purchases to my mobile phone bill. I like not having to enter a credit card...so i think this is the right model. Make GPRS free, take a piece of the transactions i charge to my bill. just don't charge me for the bandwidth to download as well.

direct p2p for phones

i like things like the webgate CoMobi which is a client that facilitates direct connection between two mobile devices, not unlike what an IM client might do. things like this are becoming the backbone of push to talk on GSM networks but it can be used for so much more. of course, all this could be done with messaging, but i can see the possibilities here.