When you pay per night for a hotel room it usually contains the electricity, the water, the soap, new sheets for the bed and lots of other things. In most hotels, however, guests still have to pay for Wi-Fi Internet access, which often dissapoints afterwards because its slow as the DSL link of the hotel is far underdimensioned. So far so good (or not) but why is everything free while Wi-Fi is still not? How about putting a couple of rooms in place without a TV but where Wi-Fi or Internet access via an Ethernet cable is free? I'd be the first to take such a room as I almost never use the TV and in fact it's just taking up space unless you can use it as a second screen for your PC. So the hotel saves the cost for the TV and also the monthly fee they have to pay for each TV set to national broadcasting authorities. That should more than pay for the Internet connection and maybe even leave some money to invest in some more backhaul capacity. Yes, probably not an idea that will spread like a wild fire, at least not for now. But I keep hoping and expecting.

I can't quite remember when I last depended on 2.5G EDGE to connect my notebook to the Internet, must have been a couple of years ago, perhaps back in 2008, as 3G has become pretty ubiquitous at the places I went. But recently in Thailand, where 3G has not yet quite arrived and the hotel Wi-Fi agonizingly slow at times, it was much better than the alternative. Fortunately, the 2G network at the place worked really well and with throughput speeds of around 250-300 kbit/s, I was actually quite surprised that I could actually get my work done with little pain. Not as fast as with a 3G connection by far, but the delay times before pages started to be displayed and emails downloaded were still bearable. So what's the message here? Perhaps it's "don't write it off just yet, 2.5G still has some uses now and then beyond small screen web browsing".

Here's a picture I recently took in Bangkok Thailand of an advertisement for mobile access to web 2.0 services such as Twitter, Facebook and e-mail. The price of the mobile is advertised as 1999 Bath, that's around 50 Euros. When taking the phones features into account that seems an unsubsidised price to me. 3G hasn't quite arrived in Thailand yet (well, a little perhaps…), but the mobile web is already there.

It has become a bit silent around WiMAX in the past year or so with Clearwire being the only major network operator deploying the technology and making the news. WiMAX is also deployed in South Korea in the form of WiBro and some smaller networks exist elsewhere. What I didn't know so far was that Japan also has a WiMAX network on here. Here's a picture I've taken on a recent visit to Tokyo in an electronics store that sold WiMAX 3G dongles and notebooks with built in WiMAX cards. The main argument: The theoretical peak data rates are faster than those of the HSPA networks of the competitors. I wonder if that matters in practice?

Not many posts this week on the blog due to me being at the University of Oxford for my Beyond 3G course and the Future Technology Conference on Friday. This year, there'll be a live video feed of the Conference for those of you who want to join remotely. For the details, just send an email to technology at conted.ox.ac.uk with "Please send me the link to the ForumOxford live webcast." and you'll get it promptly. And you can follow the conference on twitter by searching for #ForumOxford.

Once upon a time there was the big "digital" promise of clear sound and video because it's either a 0 or a 1, so gone should be the days of static that makes it difficult to understand people on the other end of the line, mirror images in TV signals and 'snowy' images. Well, and it can be very good, until somebody thinks its a good idea to compress that voice signal somewhere in between you and the other side or to compress that digital TV signal just too much so compression artifacts pop-up left and right in the picture all the time. Especially for international calls around the world I am sometimes quite amazed at how bad the voice quality is and how much money network operators ask you to pay for the pleasure. So much for "everything gets better with digital" 🙂

Just a quick update for those of you having a spontaneous streak: I'll be at the University of Oxford this week from the 13th to 15th October for the Forum Oxford Future Technology Conference on Friday and of course for my Beyond 3G course on Wednesday and Thursday I give in partnership with Ajit Jaokar and John Edwards. Also, Tomi Ahonen will be there for the conference and his Mobile as the 7th Mass Medium course on the 12th and 13th. In other words a week full of exciting discussions and learning on mobile. Prices for the courses and the conference are, I would say, very reasonable. If you can't come during daytime but would like to meet anyway, drop me an e-mail, I'm sure there's an opportunity for an after-hours pub session somewhere in town. My email address is gsmumts at gmx.de.

And now as a little follow up some somewhat more general telecom observations from my recent short visit in Tokyo.

Mobile Phone Use: According to this reference, Softbank launched the iPhone in Japan back in 2008. And indeed, every now and then I saw someone with an iPhone. To me it semt to be far fewer people though than in other countries. Most people seem to prefer the brick style and long format clamshell phones that immediately give away someone as a Japanese tourist abroad. Other than iPhones I didn't see many touch based phones, it didn't seem to be in fashion (yet?).

3G Notebook Use: 3G USB keys are not yet marketed as agressively as in some European countries where you can buy them for a couple of euros with a prepaid SIM inside and daily, weekly or monthly packages available. But even though they seem to be quite popular here as well. While sitting in a Starbucks (yes, no Sushi…), I saw many people coming and going with notebooks and a 3G dongle of some sort for Internet connectivity. No free or paid Wi-Fi at the Starbucks…

WiMAX: And, quite surprisingly, South Korea doesn't seem to be the only place where WiMAX has been deployed on a larger scale in an industrialized country. There's seems to be a WiMAX network in Japan, too and I saw some pretty heavy marketing for WiMAX to Wi-Fi boxes and notebooks with builtin WiMAX connectivity in electronic stores.

The Fraunhofer FOKUS institue in Berlin must be one of the most busiest applied research centers when it comes to producing interesting conferences in the mobile domain. In just a couple of weeks, from November 4th to 5th to be precise, they are hosting the Media Web Symposium on Mobile Applications, Social Media and HybridTV. Lots of industry players are going to be there and everything from Android Programming to the Wholesale Application Community (WAC) is going to be discussed. Here's the schedule for those of you who want to take a closer look. If you plan to attend, I've been given the a registration code ("WirelessMoves") for 5x 30% discount to pass along. First come, first served.

What do I do on a short stopover in Japan? Right, I check out the 3G networks there. After all, NTT DoCoMo was the first network operator to launch UMTS (FOMA). Also, they have no GSM network to fall back to so they need to think a lot harder about 3G indoor coverage and ubiquitous coverage on trains, etc., so voice calls don't drop. In addition, if the 3G network works well in Tokyo with its high population density there's no excuse anywhere else. And indeed, the network worked very well during my stay and the setup was unlike anywhere else.

On the way from the airport small screen web surfing on my mobile worked just fine and I never lost the network. Also, I never lost the network indoors. In a shopping mall I always had a strong signal and only one cell, so it's likely there was dedicated indoor coverage and no repeater bringing in the signal from outside.

At first, it looked like DoCoMo had only one carrier on air in the Ginza district, as no inter-frequency measurements were configured by the network. But when transferring data, the UE was immediately put on another carrier frequency while it was in Cell-DCH state. I observed two additional carriers. Here, the UE was kept for around 10 seconds after the last piece of data was transferred, a value seen in many other networks as well.

When no more data is transferred, the mobile is returned to the initial carrier and kept in Cell-FACH state for around 90 seconds. Not very energy efficient and much longer values compared to those I've observed in many other networks which range from 10 to 30 seconds. (Hello Fast Dormancy!)

If still no data was transferred during that time, the network sets the connection in Cell-PCH state for around 2 minutes after which the connection is put into the idle state. Again quite a surprise for two reasons. Why a 90 seconds FACH phase when the networks puts the connection in Cell-PCH afterwards? And why only 2 minutes in this state afterwards? I am sure they have their reasons but I can't quite figure them out. Most (of the few) other networks that use Cell-PCH I have observed in Europe so far quickly put the mobile to the Cell-PCH state, for example after 5-10 seconds in Cell-DCH state and a further 5-10 seconds in Cell-FACH state. Afterwards, mobiles are kept there for long durations, 30 minutes not being uncommon. Some networks even use the URA-PCH state if a mobile moves between cells during that time to reduce the amount of required signaling. Quite a different strategy.

Ah yes, and then there are voice calls. I made a couple of calls and they were all handled on the basic carrier.

Softbank also has a 3G network in Japan and it would have been interesting to see what they are doing. Unfortunately, no roaming agreement was in place so my mobile would not roam on that network. Well, next time then…