Category: Uncategorized

Base station antennas might look like a pretty simple thing from the outside and at one point that might even have been the case. However, with ever more frequency bands being used by network operators simultaneously at a single site, antenna casings that actually contain more than just a single antenna, or single sets of antennas due to diversity and MIMO, are becoming more common.

The picture on the left for example shows a quad-band base station antenna for simultaneous use of the 800-900 MHZ band (GSM, LTE), 1800 MHz (GSM, LTE), 2100 (UMTS) and 2600 (LTE), UMTS in 2100 and LTE in 2600. And another thing I've seen being presented at MWC right in front rather than in the back is 6-sector antennas with 65 degrees opening angle per sector instead of the 120 degrees three sector antenna configurations used today. Quite an impressive array of feeder cables at the bottom… Very good if that goes hand in hand with base station miniaturization as each sector requires its own "cell" and dedicated resources down in the base station.

There are a couple of companies at this year's MWC who are proclaiming "war" on others. A war of platforms, a war of tablets, etc. etc. Quite frankly, I find such wording totally inappropriate. Here's what Wikipedia says on the term:

"War is a behavior pattern of organized violent conflict, typified by extreme aggression, societal disruption, and high mortality."

I can't get rid of the feeling that those proclaiming "war" are in reality afraid that they are not the winning team, they are not getting enough attention and thus have to use such extreme terms to create attention. In war there might be a winner and a looser, perhaps just losers so I don't think such an analogy makes sense.

In the mobile industry there can be more than one winner and competitive coexistence and competition is something to strive for as a single platform dominance means stagnation.

It's been interesting to read the commentary on Nokia's recent decision to abandon its own OS strategy and deliver itself into the hands of Microsoft. It might work out for Nokia or it might not but what I find quite astounding is that the discussion pretty much stops there. But what about the larger scope? After all, it's not that Nokia has replaced A for B, no, they have done much more than that.

Last week, they were all about open source and open ecosystem, a concept that I fully embrace because I don't like to be put in a walled garden, cage, or whatever people call it. The cage might be golden but it is still a cage. I want to make my own choices and I want to decide myself what I do with a device I buy. Also, my personal data is mine, so cloud services around my personal data are also not my cup of tea.

So with Nokia turning to Microsoft, they turn away from "open" and towards "closed walled garden ecosystem". How much that will help to boost Windows Phone is up for anyone to guess at this point and I am happy for WP to succeed but I am quite unhappy that in the same instant, an "open" ecosystem goes away. That leaves the smartphone arena with at least three closed and one open operating system, a balance that I don't quite find comfortable.

Agreed, Nokia said they will keep Meego as an experimental platform which could mean anything from killing it in a month or so or keeping something in the back hand just in case their current strategy (once again) does not work out. But I think that keeping something in the back of your hand won't work with the rest of the industry working feverishly at their products.

I can live very well with niche products, I run Ubuntu on my netbook for example. But on mobiles I am not sure the same thing will work, things are just moving too quickly  on mainstream mobile products for niche products with a limited amount of effort put into them to keep up for the moment.

Which will make my choice for my next mobile device rather obvious. Yes, it will be an Android device then. When I first wrote about Android it was to inflexible and too cloud oriented for me. By now I think I can customize it to my liking with a bit of effort, i.e. to work outside the Google cloud for email, calendar and contacts without making too many sacrifices. And with OperaMini now available on Android it is perhaps also possible to keep data roaming costs down as well depending on how much other chatter there is from other applications. I will report.

 

Great, I even have my own MWC announcement this year! Quite a number of people have asked me in the past if my books are available in e-book format as well. So far that has not been the case but I can understand those wishing to read it in an electronic format as it does have it's advantages. But here is good news for you, my latest book "From GSM to LTE" is now available in Apple's e-book store and a PDF version is available via the publisher as well. It admittedly looks, feels and reads nice on a pad 🙂

This year, there's free Wi-Fi at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona at a couple of places and I couldn't of course resist to see if the company attaching it's name to the offer is any better at providing connectivity in this form and shape than those who have tried in the past. Unfortunately and not quite unexpected its not. The connection runs at a couple of kbyte/s and often there are interruptions of several seconds. Perhaps suited for the desperados but not for serious use. In contrast to that my 3G connection is running fine in the same crowded space. As in the previous years, the network operator I am using has deployed three carriers. On all three the signal is very strong and EcNo ranges are in the high -9 to -12's. But still, I get instantaneous and sustained data rates of 1.5-2 MBit/s. Refreshingly usable.

I’ve been using Skype for many years now for voice and video calls and occasionally both I and the called party are connected via UMTS to the network and things are working very well. The problem with such connections usually is that both ends are behind a Network Address Translation (NAT) router, so direct connections between two PCs, for example for screen sharing via VNC, does not work. As the NAT gateway is on the network operator’s side on both ends, neither party can configure port forwarding to establish a direct connection. But recently I found at least a partial solution. Unknown to me for many years, Skype includes a screen sharing option that lets a user share the full screen or individual windows. Works great in practice even over two UMTS links. The only thing that is missing is the possibility to not only watch what the other side is doing but to be able to use the mouse and keyboard as well. That can’t be to difficult to implement but Skype hasn’t done that yet. So I hope we’ll see it in the future.

Time flies and it's almost time again for the yearly trip to Barcelona for the Mobile World Congress, which I still fondly call the 3GSMWorldCongress. To further promote the recent launch of my latest book which gives a solid technical introduction to all technologies between GSM and LTE, with WiMAX, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth on top and to meet up with readers and friends, I'll join my publisher John Wiley at their MWC Booth in hall 2 (2A.100) on Wednesday between 9 and 11 a.m. So if you want to have a closer look at the book, browse a great collection of other interesting telecom books or just chat with me, just come over and say hello. Looking forward to meeting you there!

I travel a lot and keeping in touch with family and friends back in Germany and Europe is important to me. While in Europe, voice roaming charges have fortunately come down to a level in recent years to make calls back home, even longer ones, pretty much headache free. Still not cheap, but not expensive enough to look for a more complicated alternative. Outside of Europe, however, things are still different.

When I am in the US, for example, the price per minute for a voice call back home is a staggering 1.49 euros a minute. That is almost 90 euros per hour! That's a bit much so I have found myself the following alternative that you might be interested in if you plan to travel to the US as well:

I went to an AT&T store and got myself a prepaid SIM card, which is now free by the way, and activated the 2 dollars voice+sms a day option. This includes all national calls to US numbers. Since my calls all go abroad that doesn't help much by itself. To add the international calling ability I use Rebtel for many years now. They are giving me national numbers in the country I am that I can call for fixed and mobile numbers abroad. The call to those numbers are part of the 2 dollars a day offer. And from there Rebtel charges a cent or two per minute to a fixed line destination or around 12 cents a minute to a mobile. So for one hour of calls a day to fixed line destinations I pay 2 dollars + 60 x 2 cents = 3.8 dollars. Compare that to 90 euros a day if I dialed direct and sum that up over a week…

And for Internet access on the move or in overcrowded meetings, my D100 Wi-Fi/3G router with a US band capable 3G stick + an AT&T prepaid SIM card with one of their data options serves me good as well. Skype calls are possible, so I can enjoy better voice quality when calling other Skype users when I am stationary.

For more tips on how to save on communication charges while traveling, have a look here.

Here we go, a month after the first announcement and my latest book is finally shipping worldwide! After being printed in the UK it has made its long voyage to North America and other corners of the world and is now available for immediate delivery. Sales at Amazon seem to go nicely, Amazon has almost run out of stock again but new copies will be delivered swiftly. So if you are interested to find out more, here's a link to my initial post and here a direct link to Amazon.com. As you can imagine I am very happy that it is finally available globally and I am looking forward to receiving your feedback. I will also be at my publishers booth at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona next week so if you happen to be around I'd be happy to meet you there. More about that soon.

One of the first train companies to introduce Internet access over Wi-Fi on board its high speed trains was Thalys, connecting Paris with Brussels, Cologne, Amsterdam and a couple of cities in between. When I first tried it back in 2009, performance was great, almost unbelievable. A year later in 2010, however, the offer was significantly downstripped, actually to the point of being of little use. When I complained at the time by email the response after many weeks was that it was a temporary problem and actually there is not much Thalys could do since it is managed by another company. Yes, yes, it's always the others that are at fault. No date was given when the service would improve again.

But Thalys keeps advertising the service, so now in 2011 I gave it a try again and found that the service has still not improved. Most of the time during the trip, the connection was so slow that web surfing was practically impossible. A few times, speeds increased to a usable level but only for a minute or two before the connection slowed to a crawl again.The only good use I could find was to send and receive short emails where it doesn't really matter how long it takes. What a shame because my initial experience shows that this is not a technical problem as things can work if enough bandwidth is provided via the satellite link. So Thalys, either fix your offer or stop your advertising that creates expectations your service can't meet…

Sincerely, a disillusioned customer