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A couple of days ago, Dean Bubbley over at Disruptive Wireless ran an interesting article on an effort by some 3GPP members to specify a way to use the current wireless circuit switched voice telephony infrastructure and telephony protocol stack on handset over wireless packet switched networks. In essence their approach replaces the circuit switched bearer with a packet switched connection on lower layers while leaving the protocol stack for call establishment in place. A gateway in the network and some modifications in the lower protocol layers on the mobile phone and ready is a potential competitor for voice over IMS. 

I’ve had this work item under my nose for some time but was not sure if 3GPP members were really serious about it. It seems they are and it looks like the Technical Recommendation (TR 23.8799) seems to be pretty much complete although the conclusion is still missing. Also interesting to see that in the Work Item description (SP-070401) Ericsson is listed as a supporting company and that handset vendors are not part of the initiators.

When I look at the timelines for this work item I would say that a practical implementation in the field is at least 3 years away at best. Adoption and ratification of the Technical Report (note, it is NOT a technical standard document yet) is due in June 08. Afterwards they would have to crank out the details. If they are quick then that takes 12 to 15 months in 3PP Release 9 and at least the same amount of time for standards conform ant implementation and the testing afterwards. That would make it 2010 – 2011 for deployment.

To me this whole thing looks a little bit like an IMS exit strategy. If after 10 years of standardization, IMS hasn’t made it out of the lab and into the pockets of people and the CS over PS solution makes it into the field before then it could very well spell the death for IMS. Once this is in the field why would an operator seriously consider IMS afterwards? By 2012 even the most backwards oriented mobile operator will have understood that except for voice telephony they have no chance on the application layer against the global Internet competition in a converging beyond 3G and Wifi network environment.

It’s like opening an additional front on the IMS battleground and would remove it’s ultimate insurance policy, i.e. being the only technology for operators for voice technology in their B3G networks.

But competition is a good thing and it might speed things up one way or the other.

I am looking forward to meet with Polymer Vision Ltd. at 3GSM / Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. The company is a Philips spin-off working on foldable or rather rollable displays. Their approach is to apply organic particles on a thin plastic plastic foil which is then used as a display. A report (in German) on "Der Spiegel" says they will show first production models of a mobile phone and ebook reader hybrid during 3GSM. Here’s a video that shows their technology:

Wired magazine published an interesting article with background information about how the iPhone was developed at Apple and how Steve Jobs managed convince carriers to give him all the freedom to do what he wanted and how he talked them into giving him a share of the bit-pipe revenue. While carriers in the past had nightmares about only becoming a bit-pipe they are now even sharing the revenue with a handset manufacturer. Flexibility or desperation? But maybe they have seen that being a bit-pipe is actually being a long tail enabler?

After having spent the better part of an evening touring friends and family to get their DSL and cable lines back up running I once more noticed two striking advantages of wireless broadband versus the fixed line competition:

• Installation cost: For wireless broadband you go to the next supermarket (in some countries) and buy a bundled SIM card and USB/PCMCIA HSDPA modem. The software is pretty much self installing and you are up and running in 10 minutes. Compare that to the 10 months waiting time of a friend of mine for a cable connection and the 3 hour installation time with 4 technicians retrofitting the cable infrastructure in the apartment building. Also, compare that to the DSL nightmare in many countries when you want to switch from one DSL provider to another. I know few people who managed to get that done seamlessly and far to many who sat on the dry for weeks and weeks before their DSL link started working again.

• Troubleshooting: If there is a problem on the last mile on your DSL and cable link it’s likely that you are the only one that is impacted. Have fun convincing the customer hotline that it’s not your PC or modem that is acting up. If there is a problem with the base station in a wireless network, however, 1000 people will be impacted, red lights will start flashing in the network operation center and emergency repair operations will kick in within a couple of minutes.

I leave it to you to draw the conclusions.

I came across this YouTube video today where Vivian Reding, EU commissioner for information society and media, speaks about the Internet, broadband penetration, competition and freedom of information. In the video she says that broadband Internet access works best in countries that have lot of competition in the market and that she works hard to open up markets and foster competition. Hear hear! I wished the EU would push equally hard for competition in wireless broadband Internet access and mention some of the black sheep 🙂

Lots of problems these days in Kenya, but here’s a bit of a hopeful story: A friend made me aware of M-Pesa a couple of days ago, a new mobile payment system in Kenya. It seems that a a lot of people in this country do not have a banking account due to the high costs. M-Pesa fills the gap with a mobile bank account which is free of charge. Transactions, for which a service fee is charged, are performed via SMS which are sent by a little application which sits on the SIM card. The technology behind it is called SIM Application Toolkit (SAT). As SAT is a 3GPP standard the application can be used with any mobile phone. Money can be sent to M-Pesa  customers and also to non members. Additionally, the application can also be used to top-up somebody else’s prepaid account. According to the M-Pesa entry in the German Wikipedia, the service launched by Safaricom and Vodafone at the beginning of 2007 is already used by 20% of their subscribers.

Now it’s official! The Mobile Monday Global Peer Awards will be held during the 3GSMWorldCongress, aka the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona on Monday, February 11th in the afternoon at the Espacio Movistar. It was a great event last year thanks to the great organization of Rudy de Waele and I am sure he will be able to top himself this year. You can also find the event on the 3GSMEvents Wiki together with other exciting happenings. Registration is required via the event page linked above. See you there!

Later this year will see the auction of bandwidth in the 7000 MHz band in the U.S. for wireless Internet services. Apart from incumbents such as AT&T and Verizon, who are likely to bid in order to secure their interests and current business model, there are at least two interesting names on the bidder list which could have a disruptive effect on the mobile landscape if they manage to get a good portion of the spectrum. Apart from Google who has lobbied hard for open wireless networks there is also Vulcan Ventures that belongs to Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft. I guess his pocket’s are deep enough to do it. From what I read about him he looks like a visonary so I can very well imagine that he could be a disruptive force as well. What do you think?

The more I think about it the more I am convinced that voice service will make or break LTE in the mid-term. While most industry observers agree that the first devices for LTE are likely to be USB dongles and PC cards the real LTE story only starts once the technology makes it into mobile Internet devices and handsets.

While on mobile Internet devices it might be acceptable to have Skype or some other VoIP technology, smaller handsets who’s main purpose is voice service might have a much more difficult time with VoIP. Such devices must also be capable of roaming to 2G and 3G networks when running out of LTE coverage. Especially in 2G networks, VoIP is a no go so voice service must fall back to good old circuit switched telephony. So apart from the question of how VoIP will be done on LTE handsets the much bigger question is how to make the experience seamless over 2G, 3G and LTE.

Sure, there is Voice Call Continuity and the IMS can be configured to forward an incoming call via a circuit switched connection when no suitable wireless IP network is available. However, from what I can see so far it seems that achieving this is much more difficult then rolling out LTE in the first place.

Another alternative would be for a LTE handset to be simultaneously attached to a LTE network for data and a 2G or 3G network for circuit switched voice. This way the telephony application on the handset could be simple. Not sure if that will work in practice though!?

Ideas?

Ever since I started thinking about mobile one of my favorite train of thoughs has been how to check how things are going at home from the mobile device, get the coffee machine going before I come home or to check if the lights are out. It’s no longer speculation now, it’s been done! Check out bwired.nl. Not sure who’s behind this project but the guy has wired is house top to bottom, webcams everywhere, gas and power meter cabled, phone system, GPS enabled PDA shows his location when he’s outside, etc. etc. And on top he has a mobile web site to check things out with the mobile phone. Via SMS or voice server, lights and other things can be controlled remotely. The website shows power, gas, water consumption, streaming videos from the camera, etc. etc. etc. in realtime. Cool stuff. Envy creeping up here…