Author: Martin

Two companies have made some interesting network usage statistics available recently. In the chart in this post, Verizon states that in December 2008, they transferred around 4.000 terabytes of data through their network. Ed Candy of Three in the UK reported 1.000 terabytes for the same month in his presentation during the Forum Oxford Conference. Incredible numbers, but how much is that on a day to day basis?

Let's do some maths. 1.000 divided by 30 days is 33.3 terabytes per day. Further divided by 24 hours of the day, by 60 minutes and 60 seconds, this amounts to around 3.85 GBit/s. During busy hour, traffic on the Internet is around twice the average as per the DE-CIX Traffic statistics shown here. That would bring peak traffic somewhere near 8 Gibt/s.

Let's further divide that number by how many cell sites an operator has. In the case of Vodafone Germany, it's around 13.000, so let's assume Three in the UK has around 8.000 to make the number low. A throughput of 8 Gibt/s divided by 8.000 cell sites is 1 MBit/s. As a cell has usually three sectors, that number has to be divided by 3. Hence, the average sector throughput during busy hour is around 0.3 MBit/s.

That's an average value of course. In conference presentations I have heard that cells in urban areas carry a lot more than the average. That's both good and bad news. The bad news is that capacity limits will appear here sooner. The good news is the number of base stations that have to be upgraded once the capacity of the current buildout is reached by adding a carrier or to add more base station sites is limited.

So the numbers quoted in the presentations seem quite realistic to me and also indicate that there is still quite soom room left to breathe capacity wise.

I know, toy mobile phones have been around for quite a while to prepare the kids for their first real one… But now, there are even toy Blackberries. See and click on the picture on the left I have taken in the supermarket around the corner. You can never start early enough…

Recently, Opera announced the launch of their new "Unite" service, which transforms their web browser into a combined browser / server so users can't only consume content stored on the net but also put their own content such as pictures, videos, etc online without loosing control. Content opened to the net can be for private use outside the home network, it can be shared with friends or with the general public.

I am happy to see Opera going in this direction as I am one of those people who like to keep control over my private data and store them at home rather than on a server somewhere in the cloud while still having access to it no matter where I am. I've recently given a talk on the evolution of mobile networks at the University of Oxford (slides see here) and I think such Anti-Cloud services will be an interesting way for converged fixed/wireless network operators to make money with in the future.

Opera is not the first to think about such services. Nokia for example has launched a prototype of a web server for mobile phones to share content and interact with other people already three years ago and I'm a glowing fan of the concept. The downside of both concepts is that the device which offers the content is not always available, be it because the notebook is not always switched on or because the mobile phone every now and then ends up in places without network coverage or runs out of battery power. This is where I see fixed/wireless network operators come in, as the web server could run on the home gateway (think DSL modem + Wi-Fi + Femto + services) which is always switched-on and always available.

I wouldn't be surprised if Opera would be looking in this direction as well, their browser suite is already today not only available on the PC and mobile phones but also on game consoles etc., so they are definitely not new to embedded devices, development and deployment.

For more thoughts on Unite, here's what Ajit Jaokar over at OpenGardens thinks about it.

So far there are three places where services and applications run/hosted/placed in the network:

• In the core network of the mobile operator, think voice calls and IMS
• On the Internet, think web based applications like Google Reader, Yahoo maps, etc, etc.
• On the device itself, think Microsoft applications on PCs, Java and native applications on mobile devices.

When services and applications are connected, they usually interact with some other part of the network. A web browser for example is only useful because there are web servers on the Internet providing content. Some services and applications are also hybrid. Take Opera Mini for example. The browser is split between a light-weight Java application on the mobile device and a compression proxy somewhere on the net.

And now a fourth place for applications and services is emerging, on femtocells and home gateways. Services under development are automatic multimedia file transfers from/to mobile devices when they enter the femto area, forwarding of messages left by friends on Facebook and elsewhere for when the user returns home, automatic notification of parents when kids have returned home, etc.

Ip.Access is pretty outspoken on the topic and has announced a Femtocell Applications Live Event in London on June 23rd over at ForumOxford.

Yesterday, Ajit Jaokar over at Open Gardens published a thought piece he called "The Paradox of Open: What we can learn on Open from Apple and Microsoft". He argues that despite Apple and Microsoft having closed mobile operating systems they are successful. The conclusion he reached was the following:

"I believe that: A 'closed platform' works provided you have an 'Open ecosystem' BUT an Open platform (open source and / or open standards) without an ecosystem (open or closed) does not work."

An interesting statement I agree with and would like to extend a bit to show further influences:

A couple of days ago I met with a friend who's had an iPod touch for some time now and is a glowing part-time developer. When I asked him why he picked up programming for the iPhone / iPod touch and what he thought about the development environment, he said that:

• he picked it up because Apple is doing great things
• because he likes the UI and how easy it makes things for users.
• the development environment for the iPhone is not so nice with the license you have to get and all the restrictions that are put in place with developer codes, distribution, etc.
• he only works on it because the product on which the application will run is so great. Otherwise he would not bother.

So I think in the end it doesn't really matter if an OS is open or closed. If it is not liked by users for whatever reason and is not easy to use and there is a better alternative available, then nothing will come of it.

Speaking of ecosystems: I think for a free and open source OS it is much simpler to get an ecosystem in place because the community can help vs. a closed source OS where the burden of fostering an ecosystem lies in the hands of the company that owns it.

A good example is Nokia's Memo platform for their tablet devices. It's for the most part free and open source and yet, only few users have bought one. In my opinion the handling and UI is just nowhere near the iPhone or similar touch devices yet.

In other words: Part of the ecosystem, a part that one can't touch, is the success of the product, its ease of use and in turn how many people use it. So Open alone is not warranting success on its own. In that respect I am not sure if there is a paradox with Open? As always, comments are welcome.