Category: Uncategorized

I've been in France over the past couple of weeks and during that time I've noticed that Opera Mini on my Nokia N95 behaves very slowly in Orange's 2G and 3G network. Over Wi-Fi at home everything was as snappy as ever. I changed between HTTP and Socket connection in the OperaMini settings but it didn't help much. At times, it took more than 10 seconds before the request for a new page was even processed. Web browsing on the PC on the other hand with a full web browser was fast as ever over their 3G network. So maybe it was just my imagination? No, it was not, I just returned to Germany and Opera Mini now reacts as fast as ever in T-Mobile's network. So what is going on, I am really puzzled!? I can't imagine Orange would specifically throttle OperaMini, as it's exactly the kind of program they should like for mobile web surfing, as it compresses the pages before downloading. A real mystery to me. Oh how I would like to connect a network analyzer to Orange's network to figure out where the packets get stuck. So hello, anyone from Orange, there's something wrong, please have a look, especially in the metro!

This is post two on my reflections on what happened in 2008 and looks at the mobile devices I bought/used this year that made a difference:

3G USB Dongles

Many people rightly say that 2008 was the year of HSPA with cheap 3G USB dongles appearing on the market and, depending on the country, people have started using them extensively during meetings, at home, at the airport and at Starbucks 🙂

My HSPA history dates back to March 2007, when I first used a Sierra Wireless PCMCIA 1.8 MBit/s category 12 HSPA card. One and a half years ago I wrote that the 500 MB offer TIM had at this time was sufficient for me. Well, one and a half years later my expectations have changed. With prepaid offers for several GB for a couple of Euros, I use about 200 MB a day now when traveling abroad for up- and downloading large files and Voice over IP. So the 500 MB would be gone in 2 or 3 days now. I've also upgraded my hardware and instead of the 1.8 MBit card, I now use a 3.6/7.2 MBit/s Huawei E220 USB dongle which has proven to be rock solid in all of the networks I have used this year. There are newer and smaller models on the market but I made some bad performance experiences with one in networks other than for the one it was originally sold and had to return it to the shop.

Dongle Docks

In the previous post I've noted that a lot of people are looking for information on how they can share their 3G connection with other people. It's possible to do that with Windows XP and other OS'es but it's a bit of a hassle to set it up. So I am quite happy that in some countries, one can now buy 3G to Wifi bridges such as the Huawei D100 for a reasonable price. Makes 3G network sharing with other people of your family or during meetings child's play.

The Nokia N95

Having been quite happy with my N93 I waited for quite a long time before I upgraded to the N95 earlier this year. But at some point the memory limitations of the N93 were just not bearable any longer. I didn't look back for a minute since then with the N95 being vastly superior to previous models. I use the built in SIP VoIP client every day over Wi-Fi and the improvement over previous (non Nokia) models is stunning. Nokia has 'forgotten' to include the SIP clients in some Nseries models this year but I remain hopeful that the N97 will have it again.

Prepaid SIM cards

The best mobile devices are not a lot of use without a network subscription. So I am quite happy that this year, the number countries in which operators have decided to offer mobile Internet access via prepaid SIM cards has markedly improved. The Prepaid Wireless Internet Wiki has grown to an impressive size in 2008.

So, those are the devices that made a big difference for me this year. If you like, leave a comment which devices made the difference for you in 2008.

Another year comes to its end and like many others I feel the need to reflect a bit of what happened during this year in my personal world of wireless. I've decided to look at it from a couple of different angles and put each in a separate post.

One of the things that keep amazing me is the top 5 most read blog entries. For some of them I would have never thought they would make it to the list, but people out there in the Internet seem to think different:

• Number 5: My how-to on Wifi Network Tracing using Wireshark and a Linksys WRT54 wireless router, written back in January 2007

• Number 4: An introduction to SC-FDMA, the modulation and coding scheme for the LTE uplink

• Number 3: My 4G Technology Overview

• Number 2: Nokia Smart Maps review. When I look at the Google searches that lead to this topic I often find the word "crack" and "license key". Hm, not quite what this post was about…

and

• Number 1: A practical guide to sharing a 3G connection with others

The list is quite interesting from several points of view:

• None of these posts is from 2008.

• The first post from 2008 has landed in 8th place and was on voice services over LTE.

• The topics are very diverse. So despite this blog being a niche blog, it seems to serve quite a number of different niches.

• I've written follow up posts in 2008 on most topics on the top 5 lists. For Wifi network tracing, I've written a post describing how to use an eeePC for the purpose, I've written extensively about 4G topics, air interface technologies, etc. but still, these older posts got more hits than those. I wonder if the Google search algorithm has something to do with it.

So, in case you can remember, which was your favorite post on this blog this year?

The year draws to a close but before going on a holiday brake, the Carnival of the Mobilists makes one last appearance, this time over at C. Enrique Ortiz' blog 'About Mobility'. As usual, it features lots of interesting recent blog entries from the mobile blogosphere and is, as always, a great read. So, make the jump and enjoy!

It looks like the fire in French operators about mobile Internet access has pretty much vanished for the moment. Last year at this time, there were posters such as this one everywhere, advertising how one could use a mobile phone to access the Internet. Nothing of the sort can be seen in the streets of Paris this year.

Also, no 3G USB dongle advertisements, most likely due to the lack of interesting pricing compared to those in countries such as Austria, the U.K., Sweden, Italy, Germany, etc.  Also, no iPhone advertising, no eeePCs with 3G dongles, just an E71 mobile e-mail advertisement by Bouygues.

Together with Orange's recent announcement that they will hold out on LTE for the moment, quite a bleak picture. But with their current data pricing, it's unlikely they will get any kind of real load on their 3G networks anytime soon anyway. Looks like French operators have gone into some sort of combined hibernation once more while the rest of Europe is moving forward at a rapid pace.

Am I too pesimistic?

Each year, mobile Internet access from PCs and other non mobile phone devices gets better and better and as I write these lines, I am sitting in a railway station in Paris, connected to the Internet via a 3G USB dongle at multi-megabit speeds. I travel a lot and depending on the country I am seeing lots of people doing the same these days. While at the beginning of this trend, the distinctively red Vodafone PC card adapters were dominant, today it's mostly 3G USB dongles and I wonder how many people still bother looking for suitable Wi-Fi to connect.

It's definitely a trend and operators in many countries are experimenting with it. So how will this trend continue? Dean Bubley over at Disruptive Wireless has worked on a detailed report on this and has published it this week. Here are some of the findings which I think are right on the mark:

• 3G USB dongles will continue to be more successful for some time to come than built in 3G connectivity. From my experience in countries such as Germany and Austria, getting online is as simple as walking into the supermarket, picking up a 3G dongle and SIM card for a couple of euros. Unfortunately, it's not everywhere like this. In other European countries, like France for example, the situation is quite different, with operators still resisting the general trend. Built in 3G cards on the other hand are unlikely to get as cheap as Wi-Fi chips for quite some time to come so the PC/notebook industry is probably reluctant to add 3G capabilities to notebooks by default in the same way as Wi-Fi.

• 340 million devices non mobile phone devices connected via 3G by 2014. An interesting number considering about 4 billion devices online by that time and unequal distribution of such devices mainly in developed markets. But given the falling prices and prepaid billing models by day, week and month, buying an inexpensive dongle for occasional use will definitely drive the numbers.

• Dean estimates about 45 million WiMAX users by 2012. I think that's probably in the right ballpark as well. After lots of activity around alternative WiMAX operators in Europe 18 months ago, this has pretty much died down in the meantime and I think the window of opportunity has been pretty much lost. After all, 3.5G HSPA is now available in Austria, for example, for 9 euros a month with a traffic limit of 15 GB.

• Impact of the Credit Crunch and the Capacity Crunch. Indeed, having more users on the network will of course drive bandwidth requirements and operators will have to monitor their networks closely and invest in upgrading the backhaul capacity of existing base stations and add additional ones in high traffic locations. The extend of this, however, has yet to be seen. I've done my own calculations on when we might see a general capacity crunch and I think it is still some years off. In the meantime, technology is developing and backhaul is getting cheaper. So it remains to be seen if the demand curve going upwards and infrastructure and backhaul prices going downwards can be brought into a healthy balance for everyone.

Lot's more to be found in Dean's report and if you are lucky enough to work for a company that appreciates the value of such research I encourage you to give your business intelligence department a call and ask if they have this report available.

DVB-H seems to be a roller coaster technology, quite different adoption rates from country to country.

In Germany, DVB-H recently flopped as the business model of setting up a single DVB-H company that resells the services to mobile operators did not spark a lot of interest if not to say outright opposition from network operators and had to close down recently.

In Austria, DVB-H was introduced a year ago and according to this report (in German), A1 and 3-Austria have only been able to get a couple of thousand subscribers so far. DVB-H service costs 6 euros per month.

In Italy on the other hand, the same report says that DVB-H has attracted one million subscribers to date, some of the channels are available for free, and on average, subscribers watch for one hour a day. To me, one hour a day seems to be quite a bit much. But I can confirm, every now and then I see someone in the streets of Rome watching a football game on his DVB-H mobile, quite easy to spot the antenna sticking out and to hear the typical sound of a football game.

For those interested in further background info on mobile TV, here's another blog entry on mobile TV I've written earlier this year on DVB-T on mobiles (the big twin brother of DVB-H) and 1seg in Japan.

Like in UMTS, China is determined to go its own ways with LTE as well. Instead of adopting FDD (Frequency Division Duplex) LTE like the rest of the world, China Mobile wants to deploy TDD (Time Division Duplex) LTE. One of the reasons stated for this is to have an upgrade path from TDD UMTS (which, to the best of my knowledge, is not yet deployed on a broad scale in China). I am sure Chinese companies and joint ventures have put a lot of work into TDD UMTS over many years and yet, it hasn't made it anywhere. So why should TDD LTE be different?

In fact, I see the same problems with TDD LTE:

• Economy of scale: China is a big country but in order for the technology to be a success, other countries have to adopt TDD LTE as well. As with TDD UMTS, I think that this is unlikely to happen, I don't see an incentive.

• Devices: Same issue as above. For a limited market, only few vendors will be tempted to develop mobile devices. One way out of the dilemma could be dual mode TDD/FDD devices. But what is the chance of this happening?

So without a real need for an upgrade path, why TDD-LTE? Unlike with UMTS, Chinese companies like Huawei do not have to catch up to the rest of the pack, this time they start at the same time and with an advantage.

The center gap, a glimmer of hope? In many countries the center gap between the uplink and downlink channel of UMTS and LTE is unused. Some operators in Europe for example have even bought TDD spectrum in the 2.1 GHz band during the UMTS auctions back in 2000. So maybe those bands might trigger some operator interest for TDD LTE!? 

As always, comments are welcome.

LTE is a great technology but it has one Achilles heel: No built in telephony solution that will work when network are first rolled out. I've blogged before about the different alternatives for voice over LTE before, such as IMS, Voice Call Continuity, CS Fallback and a Study Item how to connect a circuit switched MSC to the LTE radio access network. While the last one is only a study item and not standardized yet, the first three are standardized but either complicated or, in the case of CS fallback, not a long term solution.

Looks like some operators are not very happy with the state of affairs and have looked elsewhere for help. At the recent LTE World Summit in London, Motorola and China Mobile have both said that they are considering GAN over LTE as a further alternative. GAN is used today in some 2G/Wi-Fi phones for Voice over Wifi at home. What it basically does is it establishes an encrypted IP tunnel between the mobile and the GAN controller at the border of the operators core network, and then tunnels both signaling and speech data to the MSC. Furthermore, the mobile and GANC are able to perform handovers between the Wi-Fi connection and GSM for ongoing calls. In effect, GAN hides the access network (Wi-Fi in this case) from the operators circuit switched core network.

The solution proposed by Motorola at the conference, GAN would do the same for LTE. After all, an IP connection is an IP connection, the core functionality of the GANC does not care if the interface to the user is Wi-Fi or LTE.

On his blog, Zahid has a slide of the Motorola presentation that shows how the network setup could look like. The figure shows an interface between the Mobility Management Entitiy (MME) and the GANC which I think is probably for handover co-ordination. When the MME detects that a handover is necessary to UMTS or GSM, it informs the GANC which can then ensure that an ongoing voice call survives the handover.

The advantage of this approach over the evolved MSC approach, which only exists as a 3GPP study item so far, is that the current circuit switched network infrastructure does not have to be changed. Even though the changes required for the eMSC are minor in comparison to IMS and VCC, they still need to be standardized and implemented by the major infrastructure manufacturers. The GAN approach on the other hand requires some modifications in the mobile and the GANC only, which could well be made without waiting for 3GPP.

>From a design point of view I think the eMSC would be a much more elegant and native approach to the issue. But in practice, elegance does not always win if it is more complex, or as in this case, meets reluctance in the standards bodies.

So, let's see if this 'dear 3GPP, we either do it with you or without you' announcement will change the attitude of some players.

Thanks to Zahid Ghadialy for his coverage of the LTE World Summit

Once a year, Nokia hosts a 2 day conference to demo to the world what's in store from Nokia for the next 12 months. This year, Nokia World takes/took place in Barcelona this Tuesday and Wednesday. I haven't been there in person, but Nokia and WomWorld have made sure that those not on site could also watch the keynote speeches and product introductions via the web. Well done, Nokia, not a single glitch, no capacity issues, the live-streams performed flawlessly at 800 kbit/s.

You've probably already heard or seen about the new Nokia N97 introduced there so I'll just link to the keynote video where Anssi Vanjoki introduced it and a link to YouTube with first impressions of the look and feel as well as how the OS looks like and behaves for a general overview. Very insightful and I guess that's going to be my next device, if I can wait until it is released. Forecast 2H09. A long wait…

Here are the bits an pieces of hardware and software enhancements that I think will make a difference:

• Form factor: I like the idea of a small QWERTY keyboard hiding under the screen as well as the 3.5" 16:9 touch sensitive display. Thinner than my current N95 and not as wide as the iPhone makes it perfect from a handling point for both one hand and two hand operation. It's still more of a bar than a PDA shape.

• I expect it will still work with my Bluetooth keyboard for real fast typing which now gives three input methods, i.e. touchscreen, mini keyboard, and full bluetooth keyboard. The right input method for every location.
• 5 megapixel camera and flash. O.k. nothing really new here, the N95 has got that, too for two years now but it's still miles ahead of the 'toy cameras', as Anssi calls them, in competing products.

• A-GPS and electronic compass. While A-GPS gives you the location it can't tell the phone in which direction the user is looking while he stands still. That's an issue for street navigation, especially when you've marked the place you want to go beforehand, leave the metro station for example, your location is shown on the map but you have no idea in which direction to walk at first. It happens to me often enough. The compass should help with that. I'd be interested how that compass works from a practical point of view. Does anyone know?

• Also, the compass will be great to get more information about things you see together with Nokia maps. Though I think not yet in the product, Nokia is thinking in the right direction here, to send the location and orientation to a sever in the network, which then return information about what you are seeing like Wikipedia entries, map overlays, etc. So far I always assumed that such services would require the user to take a picture of what he sees which is uploaded to a server and then analyzed. With A-GPS and compass, things are much simpler, no need to analyze a picture.

• Nokia Maps enhancements: Quite a lot of announcements of what will happen here over the next year. Route overview for navigation will be included, something I am really missing today, terrain mode looks very nice, and 3D representation of sights. Also, Nokia has promised to include user generated content in Nokia maps, something I've been waiting every since I first used GPS and Nokia maps. Also, they are planning to include the location of other users in Nokia Maps so you can see where your friends are, if they wish so. And finally, synchronization between Maps on Ovi and Maps on the phone for planing trips on the PC and then downloading locations etc. you have marked to the phone automatically.

• Active idle screen enhancements: Widgets on the idle screen, customizable by the user to see his latest e-mails, what's going on on facebook, weather forecast, RSS stream, contacts, meetings, etc.

Nothing announced today is a revolution, but, I think these things are a powerful evolution over the current already great N-series devices and will definitely keep the competition going in the smartphone sector. Now, Nokia, let's just get this device and the new software out there as soon as possible. I can hardly wait.