Communications

More cloud-based telephony services

One thing (of many) that struck me during this morning's session at eComm 2009 was multiple companies going after cloud-based communications platform services.  Three which had their public launch announcements today were Grid.com, Tropo.com from Voxeo and Mobivox.  They're not the first to tackle this area and they each have a somewhat different focus, but there's a clear interest in producing Web 2.0 service platforms that developers can use to access communications services without hassle.

Grid.com is from a couple of developers who were frustrated that they could mash up an application quickly but then had to spend months getting SMS short codes and other communications services.

 

Tropo.com is an offshoot of Voxeo and makes the underlying Voxeo platform services available to Web 2.0 developers.

 

Similarly, Mobivox has launched a cloud services platform based on the platform they build for the Mobivox service.

There is certainly room for someone to get this right.  On the other hand, there must be a dozen companies going after portions of this space.  The first round were telephony calling platforms like CallFire, Angel.com and five9.com focused on allowing developers to access traditional calling, switching and IVR platforms - call centers and business process automation were early targets.  It will be interesting to watch the evolving focus of this new round of entrants.

Wireless Tutorial slides posted

The slides we used for our four part Wireless Tutorial at the 4G Wireless Evolution conference in Miami last week are now up on the web.

History and Evolution of Mobile Radio

Part One covers the history of mobile wireless from the earliest days

to the latest 4G technology.

Part one is also available as a webinar recorded in 3 sections last fall.

IEEE Wireless Ethernet Keeps Going and Growing

Part two covers the IEEE wireless systems:  WiFi, WiMAX and more...

Mobile Broadband: New Applications and New Business Models

Part three covers emerging world of mobile broadband access and some of the applications it enables.

White Spaces and Open spectrum Issues

Finally, part four focuses on Open spectrum and the recent decision by the FCC to permit unlicensed devices to operate on unoccupied TV channels - the so called TV White Spaces.  In the end, there's alot more that will be possible eventually...

Wireless Tutorial - 2G, 3G, 4G and beyond - in Miami today

I'm in Miami for the 4G Wireless Evolution conference which is being held in conjunction with Internet Telephony Expo.  Fanny Mlinarsky and I are kicking off the conference with a comprehensive wireless tutorial starting at 10:30 this morning.  So no pictures of Miami Beach or warm weather until after our all day event is complete.

Where's the money in Communications for 2009 & beyond?

Sorry, no magic answer.  But I look forward to eComm 2009 to provide a lot of ideas in the first week of March.  The speaker lineup is posted and the list is both impressive and diverse.  Like last year, the format is a single track with a veritable firehose of information, mostly in 15 minute and 5 minute talks.

Based on last year and what I know of the speakers on this year's list, it fair to say Lee Dryburgh has done an excellent job of picking interesting and bleeding edge speakers.  I'm also on the speakes' list and I have to say I'm working hard to make sure my 15 minutes lives up to expectations.

Even though this is a terrible time for conferences, eComm has signed up an impressive list of sponsors.  The facility (The San Francisco Airport Marriott Hotel) is larger this year and so there is still room for additional attendees, but early bird prices end this week.  Also the extra 20% off you can get my mentioning my name ends this Friday, so if you are thinking of attending sign up this week.

So here's the deal, if you mention my name you get 20% off.  More specifically, if you enter the promo code "BroughTurner" (case-sensitive) at the appropriate point during registration, you'll get 20% off the registration fee.

Can You See Me Now? Video-enabled call centers...

Some weeks ago, CRM magazine asked for an article on video-enabled call centers.  This idea is a bit futuristic for the US market, but such call centers are actually showing up in Asia and the EU, at least experimentally.

Think of calling a help line and being asked to point your video telephony handset at the control panel of the appliance that's causing problems.  That's becoming possible in some Asian and EU markets where most 3G handsets support video telephony and 3G penetration is well over 50% (and much higher in Japan).

In any event the article,

Can You See Me Now? 
Video-enabled call centers will change the company-customer relationship

is up on the DestinationCRM website.

Best conference bet for 2009 ― eComm 2009, March 3-5, San Francisco

I attended a number of conferences in 2008, both interesting and not so interesting.  One conference stands out, for the range of interesting speakers and the variety of interesting people I met.  That was the first Emerging Communications Conference, eComm 2008, organized by Lee Dryburgh.  Many of talks from this conference are available on Slideshare and as podcasts on IT Conversations.

eComm 2009 is scheduled to take place at the San Fransico Airport Marriott, March 3-5, 2009.  I highly recommend you check it out.

This is not a trade show with vendors hawking today's products and multiple tracks full of vendor product pitches. 

Presenters have been chosen for the quality of their proposals:  is it new?  is it disruptive?  what will the audience learn?  (As an adviser, I've been in on those discussions).  Like last year, the format is one track spread over three days, with 15 minute presentations, 5 minute lightning presentations, panel discussions and social time.  It all adds up to a veritable fire hose of information.

There's a list of speakers here.  Major topics for 2009 (so far) include:

* Mobile Social Networking (MoSoSo)
* Open Handsets & the Open Ecosystem
* Both Voice and Video Evolution
* Convergence of Media with Personal Communications
* Open Spectrum
* Open Communication Platforms
* Leveraging Cloud Computing
* Social Computing
* Towards 4G Wireless
* P2P and Decentralization of Telecoms
* Communications enabling business processes, especially B2C
* New Forms of Contactability and Connectability
* Emerging Markets

And last, but by no means least, if you mention my name you get 20% off.  More specifically, if you enter the promo code "BroughTurner" (case-sensitive) at the appropriate point during registration, you'll get 20% off the registration fee.  This works now, while early bird rates are in effect, and I'm told it will also work right up to the last minute ("late", not on-site registration), although then it's 20% off the full conference rate, and only if the event is not sold out!

I hope to see you there.

A reason why Asia leads in mobile apps and is advancing with Internet apps

A picture is worth a thousand words.  Thanks to Ben Joffe for this picture, which is slide 21 of his presentation, The Digital Silk Road.

Of course, this is a simplification, as it misses China. 

China doesn't have 3G yet but they have more mobile phones than any other country and they are fast to adopt what can work on 2.5G.  For example, the Chinese adopted ringback tones very very rapidly after the application emerged in Korea -- years ahead of Europe or the US.  And, even at 2.5G speeds today, China supports a rich variety of mobile applications.

Likewise, while China's relative proportion of Internet connections above 5 Mbps is relatively small, there are more broadband Internet connections in China than in the US and China is adding new fiber Internet connections faster than any other country in the world.

Coverage comparison for wireless systems at various frequencies

One of the items I've been meaning to add to my wireless tutorial is a discussion of actual coverage areas for different frequency bands.  This matters because, with today's mobile radio technology, lower frequencies cover more distance and do better at penetrating buildings.  That means fewer cell sites for equivalent coverage and thus lower infrastructure costs.

Indeed, a little discussed issue in the US is that Verizon and AT&T own the 850 MHz cellular spectrum and they were the big winners in the recent 700 MHz auctions.  Sprint PCS and T-Mobile USA use spectrum at 1900 MHz or 1700 MHz, so they need more cell sites to achieve similar coverage.  They are at a cost disadvantage.

Signals go even further using the 450 MHz spectrum that's available in some countries.  I've argued publicly that the best thing developing countries can do to bring mobile coverage to rural areas (for example in India), or to remote areas in general, is to make 450 MHz spectrum available to mobile operators.

To get a sense of how significant these effects are, here's a table that Qualcomm submitted to the ITU's Working Party 8F several years ago.  (Thanks to Joe Nordgaard for the pointer).

Frequency (MHz)	Cell radius (Km)	Cell area (Km2)	Relative cell count
450	48.9	7521	1
850	29.4	2712	2
950	26.9	2269	3.3
1800	14	618	12.2
1900	13.3	553	13.6
2500	10	312	24.1

Source: Qualcomm ITU 8/F Submission, June 11, 2001, “Coverage comparison of systems at various frequency ranges, including 450 MHz”

2G, 3G, 4G Wireless Tutorial

Recently I put a lot of effort into updating an earlier wireless tutorial.  Part of the resulting material was presented at the Communications Developer Conference in Los Angeles in September 2008.  Other versions have been used internally at NMS Communications.  Last week our marketing team recorded me presenting the tutorial and, today, the complete Wireless Tutorial:  2G, 3G, 4G and beyond became available as a slide deck and as three recorded segments of audio with slides (.wmv files).  Here's the abstract:

This comprehensive tutorial is designed to benefit both the technical and general telecom audience. Brough Turner reviews the history and evolution of mobile radio, evolving network architectures, services, applications, and business models; considers alternative 4G paths and the potential for convergence of GSM/LTE and WiMAX; and discusses the longer term impact of new WiFi standards on fixed and mobile wireless services. In this wireless tutorial, Brough also covers core network architectures and their evolution to all-IP, new wireless applications and application frameworks, spectrum licensing and more.

This work started as a 3G Tutorial that Marc Orange and I put together back in 2002.  Although the 3G Tutorial has not been updated since early 2003, it has remained one of the most frequently accessed pages on the NMS website.  So clearly there's interest.  Hopefully this new version will be even more useful as it covers the whole range from pre-mobile radio days to the latest 4G proposals.  Here's the outline:

• History and evolution of mobile radio

• Brief history of cellular wireless telephony
• Radio technology today: TDMA, CDMA, OFDMA
• Demographics and market trends today
• 3G, 3.5G, WiMAX, LTE and 4G migration paths

• Evolving network architectures

• GSM-MAP (EU) and IS-41 (US) origins
• Softswitches, VoIP and SIP in NextGen Networks (NGN)
• 3GPP and NGN convergence: releases, features and schedules

• Evolving services

• SMS, MMS, location, rich presence, video
• IP multimedia subsystem (IMS) vs. “dumb pipe”

• Applications and business models

• Killer applications & killer platforms
• 2-sided business models

• Related technology, Issues and Futures

• WiMAX, Backhaul, Bluetooth, NextGen WiFi
• Mobile device diversity / application environments

But there's still more needed...

There is much more I could add.  The current tutorial barely touches on mobile handsets, handset software and handset applications frameworks.  There's also a lot more to say about WiFi evolution, but I don't want to promise an update that could be significantly delayed.  After all, it did take me five years to get around to updating the original 3G Tutorial.   :-)

GSM Association flunks 'Branding 101'

The GSM community can rightly claim some enormous successes.  Today GSM technology provides services for 88% of all mobile subscribers worldwide.  But there are a limited number of vendors selling GSM technology to a limited number of mobile operators, many of whom have government mandated, GSM-specific licenses.  If the GSM vendor community had to sell to consumers or enterprise IT directors, they would fall flat on their faces, because neither the GSM vendors nor the GSM Association (GSMA) have any concept of branding!

Today's email brought the GSMA's newsletter, Mobile Brandband Weekly Update.  Although the newsletter ends with this statement:  "Copyright 2008 GSM Association. GSM and the GSM Logo are registered and owned by the GSM", neither the term 'GSM' nor the GSM Logo are used anywhere in this newsletter!

There are 13 news items, all about 3GSM technology, but here are counts of how often various terms appear:

1   EDGE
7   HSDPA
4   HSUPA
6   HSPA
1   HSPA Evolved
1   LTE

and even though they are all GSM technologies promoted by the GSM Association:
0   GSM
0   3GSM

As I look at years of GSM hype, the diversity of acronyms is unbelievable.  "3GSM" is a good way to talk about 3rd generation GSM, but why actively promote the use of:  UMTS, W-CDMA, HSDPA, HSUPA, HSPA, HSPA+, LTE and so on, without also saying GSM or 3GSM?  This is massively confusing.  What are they thinking?

By comparison, consider the brand recognition achieved by the WiFi Alliance.  People may mention 802.11b, a, g or even n, but they always do so in the connection with the name WiFi.  There is one WiFi brand even though, internally, WiFi has gone through as many or more changes in modulation and protocols.

The difference of course is that WiFi is sold to individuals and businesses around the world.  WiFi vendors can't afford to get this wrong.  Apparently, GSM vendors and the GSM Association can.

Here's a suggestion for the GSMA.  Adopt the terms GSM, 3GSM and 4GSM and stick to them.  If you want to refer to specific protocol versions, do so only in the context of a name that includes the letters GSM.