Back in 2007, network operator '3' in the UK announced that they are no longer asking for roaming charges for voice or data between their networks worldwide. A great offer even though the times I tried, their interconnection was hopelessly overburdened. Looks like the offer is no more as they 3UK has started introducing international roaming charges again since July. A great pity… Strangely though, '3 Like Home' is still offered by 3 Austria!?
Author: Martin
The Battery is Part of the Mobile Experience
This might seem obvious to most but I just realized these days how important the battery is for the mobile experience. I recently bought a netbook (see here and here) and while most experiences are positive, a battery lifetime of only 2 hours just doesn't do for me in many cases especially when I am traveling. Even if it is enough, connecting the netbook back to the mains all the time for recharging is also a hassle. So I bought an extension battery pack which gives me 6 hours of autonomy in addition to the 2 hours of the standard battery. An incomparable experience! Now even while traveling for a whole day, sitting in the train, waiting at the airport and on the plane, I don't have to worry about the netbook running out of power. Very nice!
Orange sells Prepaid 3G Sticks at Paris Airport
I had an interesting surprise when I passed through Paris airport recently. Orange (France Telecom) has put a vending machine in the airport hall where people can buy prepaid SIM cards with different kind of phones and also prepaid 3G Internet access together with a 3G stick.
The Internet offer with the 3G stick (locked to the network operator I suppose) is around 30 Euros. Oddly enough from an outsiders view, usage is paid by time and not by volume. 2h are included in the starter pack.
Unfortunately, prices for further online time are very unattractive. 3 euros buy 20 minute of online access, an hour costs 8 euros and 6 hours cost 25 euros. Online activities can be interrupted and all but the smallest pass are valid for using during a timeframe of one month. Compare that to the 1GB for 15 euros offer which is valid for a year from A1 in Austria. Quite a difference.
Smartphones: Units, Revenue, Profits – Update
Back in October 2008, I wrote about a blog post of David Wood, who is part of the Symbian leadership team, where he said that while smartphones only account for 10-15% of sales units, the sales revenue is between 20-25% and profits may even exceed 40%. Now Moco News reported similar numbers being given by Deutsche Bank analyst Brian Modoff in an article in the Wall Street Journal.
His numbers are as follows:
- Apple and RIM together only have 3% of the mobile phone market share but make 35% of the total profits.
- Nokia manufactured 46% of the mobile phones sold last year (I heard 38% somewhere else) and made 55% of the profits. Note: It would have been interesting to see the split in profits between their smartphones and the rest of the phones they produce. Do they give these numbers in their quarterly reports?
That makes me wonder why there is so much profit in smartphones vs. the rest!? Granted, their price is much higher than that of ordinary phones and thus if the profit percentage is similar, the profit per device is also higher. However, that can't explain it all. Less competition then maybe? Also a bit doubtful as the smartphone market seems to be quite competitive with manufacturers like Nokia, Apple, RIM, HTC (G-phone, WinMob), etc. vying for market share. What do you think?
Please don’t use your Typekey ID for Comments
Every now and then I get an interesting comment for which a typekey id was used as a commenter id instead of an e-mail address. While that is perfectly all right in theory it unfortunately doesn't allow me in practice to reply to you by e-mail in addition to leaving a comment of my own below the poast. That's a bit unfortunate as most people probably won't check back on the blog to see if I have left a response. Therefore, dear readers, please put an e-mail address in the id section of the post if you would like to receive a response in case I have any 🙂 The e-mail address is only shown to me so there is no need to worry about spam. Thanks!
Linux 3G Dashboard from Vodafone Betavine
Here's a quick update on my experience with my netbook, Ubuntu and 3G connectivity. As reported previously, the 3G connectivity manager built into Ubuntu works (most of the time) but doesn't have some important administrative functions included such as network and network type selection and some general observational functions such as current network name and signal strength indications.
At least the later functions are included in the Linux 3G Dashboard from Vodafone Betavine, which works great with my Huawei E220 USB 3G stick. The screenshot on the left shows how signal strength and the network name is displayed in the lower left corner of the dashboard. Nicely done!
What's still missing is a network selection dialogue and to be able to lock the USB stick to 3G, which sometimes helps to stay connected in bad signal conditions. It would be nice to see this in a future version. Also, having the possibility to select a different connection profile on the main screen would also be nice, especially for people (like me) who travel a lot.
To install the dashboard go to this Vodafone Betavine project page, and download and install all packages from the download section.
Always-On LTE Roaming
I've been thinking a bit about LTE and international roaming lately and just realized that mobile network operators need to come up with a new billing scheme compared to current systems. Here's why:
2G and 3G devices only request the establishment of a data bearer (a PDP context in 3GPP talk, or getting an IP address in Internet talk) when an application requests it for the first time. Thus, from a billing point of view, nothing is charged until that point. With LTE, however, the device gets an IP address right when the device registers with the network after startup. In effect, the 2G / 3G packet call becomes history with LTE. While in the home network this can probably be managed quite well from a billing point of view, I wonder how network operators will proceed for roaming. After all, most users will probably not be too happy to be charged just for switching on their device.
For LTE USB dongles, this might not be a problem as the user can decide whether to plug it in or not. For notebooks with a built-in LTE modem, however, or an LTE capable smartphone, things are different. A user of an LTE capable smartphone probably wants to use it abroad as well, even if it is only for voice calls and the offline organizer functionalities without being charged if he doesn't actively use the Internet. I wonder how this will be solved in practice!?
I could imagine several solutions:
- The device detects the roaming scenario and asks the user whether to attach to LTE and get an IP address and warns the user that this might be a chargeable event.
- The device detects the roaming scenario and doesn't attach to the LTE network. Instead, a 2G or 3G network is selected where getting an IP address right away is not required. The question then is how the user could trigger this later-on. In case of a smartphone it could wait till an application tries to access the Internet and then reselect to LTE once the connection is established. That won't work for LTE capable notbooks, though, as there are always applications crying for IP connectivity…
- The home network detects that the user is roaming and blocks initial access to the Internet. Then, via a web based landing page, the network informs the user that different rates will apply if he proceeds. The problem with this approach is that the user has to open the web browser first before his other applications can get access to the Internet.
- A certain amount of data traffic while roaming is already included in the subscription. When going beyond this amount, access is blocked until the user is informed (e.g. via SMS or a landing page) that further Internet access will be billed separately and the user has given his consent.
Hm, it all doesn't sound convincing yet. Better ideas, anyone?
Prepaid 3G Internet Access In Switzerland
Switzerland is the latest country for which I have bought a local SIM card for prepaid 3G Internet access while traveling there. Getting the SIM was quick and I was online in less than 5 minutes.
Zurich airport seems to also be a big shopping mall these days and all mobile network operators have a store there. Swisscom has an offer for prepaid 3G Internet access, which, even if it was unintended, is especially interesting for travelers. With the introduction of the iPhone by Swisscom, they also launched a new prepaid tariff which caps Internet charges at 5 Swiss Francs a day. While that is quite a bit if you use it every day, it looks like an acceptable price for occasional use, at least to me. The SIM card is also available separately and can be used with any other device as well.
So after getting into the store, it took only about 5 minutes to get the prepaid SIM. The shop assistant was aware of the Internet tariff and actually what it could be used for. Congrats, I am not quite used to that. Many shop assistants have no clue and will even give out false information such as "it will only work with our phones"…
Their provisioning system is also quick, the SIM card was activated instantly and the tariff option also worked right away. That's how it should be and not like in other countries where activation of an option takes half a day. Kudos to Swisscom, I had a very good customer experience.
Here's a link to the prepaid 3G Internet access Wiki with more details of how to configure your 3G device for the SIM card. Enjoy!
The 2.1 GHz situation in Vienna
Back in April I ran some tests in London to see how many 3G frequencies were used by the carriers there to get a feeling of how much capacity is offered today. To my great surprise, only one of the network operators had deployed more than one 5 MHz carrier frequency. Recently, I was in Vienna and since the country has many affordable 3G Internet offers that lots of people already use, I was wondering if the situation was different.
It turned out that the situation was pretty similar. Except for T-Mobile, who had two 3G carriers deployed in the center of Vienna, all other operators only used one carrier frequency. Network throughput during the day and in the evening in the A1 network were always good (above 1.5 MBit/s) so the current low capacity build-out from an available carrier perspective can handle the traffic well. To me, that sounds like good news!
Nokia N97 Review Part 5: Nokia Maps and the FM Transmitter
I've used Nokia Maps in the past a lot for car navigation with my N95 so obviously it is a must work application on the N97 as well. So when I recently drove from southern Germany to Vienna I used the N97 to guide me. While a beta of Nokia maps 3 is already available for some time now, I preferred using the installed Nokia maps 2 to test the stability of the N97. No issues, the GPS works well, a first fix only takes a couple of seconds due to A-GPS support and the route planning and execution works flawlessly. Great!
I like listening to podcasts while I'm driving and in the past this has always been an issue as the built in speakers of my N95 aren't loud enough to overcome the background noise while driving. The N97 has an FM transmitter to send the audio signal to a radio which could be a great solution to the problem.
In practice it's a bit difficult to use as the transmission power seems to be very low. To make the radio detect it I had to hold it very close to the radio. Once detected, the N97 can be removed a bit and the audio signal is still o.k. for an audio (voice) podcast. For music however, there's a bit too much static. I changed the length of the external car antenna a bit which improved the sound quality a bit but still, there is some static in the background. While driving I lost the signal after an hour or so, probably because a radio station came into range which used a nearby frequency. While driving, it's impossible to re-tune the FM transmitter and radio due to the proximity required for the radio to find the N97. This makes the whole thing a bit impractical.
So if possible from a technical and regulatory point of view, the FM transmitter should have a higher power output, the current level is just too low.