Author: Martin

Orange Internet Max – The Port 25 Trap

Here’s a blog entry about something that leaves me quite speechless: A couple of months ago, Orange France started to offer mobile Internet access via their prepaid Mobicarte SIMs. For 9 euros a month, Orange says they grant full access to the Internet (no, not the Web, the Internet!) from mobile phones with their Internet Max offer. The fine print says may limit the speed after 500 MB a month. Further they say that eMail via SMTP, IMAP and POP3 is limited to 10 MB per month. And finally they say that VoIP, Peer to Peer and Newsgroups are not allowed. Tethering to PCs is also not allowed and will be billed separately. No word about how much is charged separately or what happens after the 10 MB per month eMail limitation. 

So I activated the option on my prepaid SIM and have used it for a couple of weeks now. As per the description, all the services I use on my mobile phone such as web browsing with OperaMini, the default web browser, eMail (POP3 and SMTP), A-GPS ephemeris lookup, etc. work well.

Then recently, I discovered that every now and then my prepaid account seems to leak a few cents. But why? After experimenting a bit I found out that every time I send an eMail via SMTP some cents vanish. To verify I repeatedly sent eMails over the course of several days, deactivated and activated TLS encryption, but each time the result was the same. Sending an eMail with a 200 kb file attachment resulted in a charge of 3.50 euros!!!? Did I pass that 10 MB boundary? Unlikely, since I only sent and received few eMails from activation time until I first noticed the behavior. And even if that is the reason, why did the system not send an SMS to warn me? It can bill me but it can’t send me a warning?

This sort of service behavior is one of the reasons that keep users from using the Internet on their phones. Imagine I had used a post paid SIM with the offer and would only have discovered this behavior a month later.

Hello dear readers at Orange France! If you read this and have any idea why this is happening I’d be very interested to hear from you. Or maybe this is an issue of the billing system? In that case I am sure there is someone who could fix it. Could I also get reimbursed please?

Carnival of the Mobilists 133 at Vision Mobile

This week I am probably the fastest Carnival of the Mobilists reader, as I was traveling  at 300+ km/h with the high speed train from Avignon to Paris while reading the posts on my Nokia N95 with OperaMini. The carnival this week is about as fast paced as was that train, so make sure to check it out at the Vision Mobile Blog. There’s definitely no better place to find out what happend in the mobile space in the previous seven days. Enjoy!

Uplink Downlink Ratios

I’ve observed my network usage over the past couple of days to see how much data I would transmit and receive over the course of a week while traveling. I’ve noted that there is a big difference between PC and mobile device use in terms of uplink/downlink ratio. With the PC, which I mostly use to access my eMail and for web based services, the ratio is about 10:1. The ratio on my N95, however, is close to 1:1 as I upload pictures, blog posts and eMails. Especially picture uploading with Shozu has a major impact on the ratio.

Other statistics say that 90% of the data traffic in mobile networks is from PC’s and I think that also reflects my behavior. As a consequence, the uplink traffic generated by mobile devices is still an order of a magnitude smaller compared to overall downlink data traffic.

With faster uplink speeds becoming available the ratio could change once it becomes feasible to upload high quality video material from mobile devices in a reasonable time. That’s about the only application I can imagine that could have a real impact on uplink use. Until then, however, the uplink will remain rather unused.

Place and Cost

I am at the European Telecommunication Standards Institute (ETSI) in Southern France this week and every now and then I have to give a call to some experts back in Germany. Interesting how a 5 minute call to the same number is priced depending on which calling option I use:

  • Using my French SIM card in my N95: € 3.50 (70 cents a minute)
  • Using my German SIM card in my N95: € 2.90 (58 cents a minute)
  • Using the N95 VoIP function via the Wifi network: € 0.09 (1.79 cents a minute)
  • Using the VoIP client on my PC via Wifi: € 0.00 (call is VoIP end to End)

In the end I mostly use the N95 VoIP option over Wifi as for some calls some privacy is needed which is not not provided in the meeting room where the PC is located. I could move the PC but the € 0.09 is a good tradeoff for the convenience.

I titled this post “place and cost” because it shows how cost dramatically drops when different access methods are available and compete with each other. In places with less competition like the car, the countryside, etc.) mobile operators take over and option 3 and 4 are no longer possible. Unless of course, the operator offers a reasonable 3G data plan which make VoIP calls affordable again. One might argue it is more expensive to operate nationwide mobile networks with good coverage compared to DSL networks but I doubt the difference is € 0.09 to € 3.50.

S60 As A Platform

Recent news that Nokia would buy Symbian and put it together with its own S60 user interface into the new Symbian Foundation has sparked quite some interest. One reason for this move is that the operating system and the user interface is more and more seen as a platform which is better to distribute to as many players as possible than to use it as a differentiator. Differentiation should come from the applications running on the platform.

Recently, due to a one day outage of ProfiMail on my N95, I became aware of just how dependant I have become on my N95 from software that is not directly from Nokia, i.e. that didn’t come in the box when I bought the device. Together with OperaMini, Profimail are the main applications I use on my mobile device. Should both companies decide to leave the business (o.k. very unlikely but just imagine for a moment) I would be without a real alternative since both programs communicate with the mothership in order to function.

Sure, there are other browsers and other eMail clients but these two are definitely unique and I couldn’t replace them easily with others for my purposes. On the one hand this is good news for Nokia since third party programs have become a strong pillar in the overall value chain and thus promote the versatility of their platform. But on the other hand there is also a certain vulnerability as their own products are not where the competition is in a number of important areas, at least for my purposes.

The Mobilized Internet and the Mainstream

This week, the winning post of ‘krisse’ in the Carnival of the Mobilists has spawned some interesting thoughts over here. In the post, ‘krisse’ reports about entry level phones such as the Nokia 5000, which are around 100 euros without a contract, now come with OperaMini pre-installed. With a screen resolution of 320×240 pixels, the viewing experience is as good as with much more expensive feature phones. He didn’t say anything about how fast the browser runs on the phone but I assume processors have become fast enough even on S40 phones for the purpose.

So while Nseries devices and the iPhone might push the mobilized Internet revolution from the top, they won’t bring the real breakthrough as they are too expensive for a broad audience. But with phones for 100 euros now supporting feature rich mobile web browsers, that’s a different thing entirely. I would say that such phones are used by the majority of people in Europe, North America and many Asian countries.

From a hardware price point of view, mobile Internet access for the masses is now possible. Problem solved. From a software point of view, Opera Mini and other browsers have also reached a level of maturity that make them mass market usable. Hardware and software, however, is not all that it takes. In addition, I think the following things need to be put in place:

  • Prepaid data plans, either ‘fair use’ or a reasonable price per megabyte. Such plans are in place now in many countries now, but one can argue about the many ‘if’s, ‘buts’ and ‘must nots’ though. If marketed well and if they are simple enough to understand without a law and computer science degree, such offers should reduce the fear of only knowing one month later what mobile browsing sessions have cost.
  • Training of sales people: Absolutely essential! The average normob (normal mobile user) doesn’t want to figure it out himself. Currently, most sales people in shops are just clueless. This has to change.
  • Autoconfiguration / Pre-configuration: Devices must work out of the box, normob’s don’t configure anything. Again, a chance for operators to stay valuable in the value chain. 
  • Advertise compelling services: Also, good progress seen here nowadays with Vodafone and others advertising Facebook, Google and eBay on mobile devices.

Any other requirements I have missed for mass market mobilization of the Internet?

Carnival of the Mobilists Over At The Mippin Blog

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I was a bit sad over the weekend when I cleaned out my my RSS feeds as about half the blogs I’ve been reading over the past year have gone quiet. Hope you guys are coming back at some point. On the positive side other people are setting up new blogs to post to the world. And the best place to find both long timers and newcommers is the Carnival of the Mobilists, a compilation of the best writing around mobile of the past week. This week, the Carnival has stopped at the Mippin Blog. So head over and enjoy!

Symbian Foundation Blogs and History

For those of you interested in what’s going on with the Symbian Foundation, I think the following links might be of interest:

The History:

The Future:

Great opportunities to take a look behind the scenes with some of the people who will shape the future of Symbian. This is how company blogs should be!

Thanks to Michael Mace over at Mobile Opportunity for the pointers!

HSUPA Deployment Status

In the past couple of months I’ve seen in the news that some mobile operators have started to deploy HSUPA (High Speed Uplink Packet Access), the uplink brother of HSDPA in their networks in selected areas. Today, T-Mobile announced that their nationwide HSUPA network roll-out is finished. And nationwide roll-out doesn’t mean just a couple of base stations, it means several thousands.

I guess it wasn’t too difficult to do since HSUPA is mainly a software update. Also, base station backhaul capacity has already been increased for HSDPA. The uplink part, which is usually increased as well in symmetric links such as E-1’s can now be put into good use.

This time, networks are a bit ahead of the mobiles. Except for data cards, I haven’t seen a lot of HSUPA mobiles yet. All right, Nokia and co. it’s about time now and I can’t wait to transfer my videos to YouTube right from the mobile:-)

Canada’s AWS Spectrum Auction – Will It Encourage Competition?

I recently became aware of the current spectrum auctions in Canada to bring another wireless operator into the domain for what is hoped to create additional competition. I did some quick background research on the auction below there is one important piece of information missing in the article: Which frequency blocks are auctioned and which technology will be used? Looks like the bands auctioned are similar to those of the U.S. AWS auction, i.e. paired spectrum 1700 MHz / 2100 MHz.

O.k., so no WiMAX here since I don’t think there is a profile for such a paring yet. I guess the likeliest technology to use in this band is UMTS and LTE. This band is standardized as band IV in 3GPP. In my opinion it’s going to be difficult to create a lot of competition for incumbent operators with this frequency band mainly because there only seem to be two more operators using this band globally:

•    T-Mobile U.S. for their 3G network
•    A carrier in Japan

Compare that to the hundreds of UMTS networks globally using 2100 MHz band I. I am a bit afraid there won’t be a lot of devices supporting this band, as the market for mobile device vendors such as Nokia is very small.

After many years, Nokia is finally releasing 3G Nseries and Eseries phones for band II and V (AT&T in the U.S., Telus in Canada and Telstra in Australia). I wonder what the chances are that they produce a third version for the AWS band IV of future phones!? Or, what would even better, devices that support all these bands!? Well, at least carriers don’t have to lock devices since they can only be used in their network anyway…

A controversial topic. What do you think?