More Internet on Train: Thalys Starts Pilot Service

A number of train operating companies have started to offer Wifi Internet access in some of their trains over the past year or two like for example in the U.K. or in Germany. Now Thalys, a private train company that links Paris with Brussels and Cologne has started their pilot service for Wifi Internet access on trains. From train to ground data is transmitted via Satellite, UMTS and GPRS. Another company that has understood how to make people take the train instead of the car or plane. Hopefully an example that spreads.

Michael Mace looks at Ovi and Nokia Strategy

My boss today pointed me to an article written by Michael Mace over at his Mobile Opportunity Blog on Ovi, and Nokia strategy. While in my own article on the topic I’ve been concentrating on the potential struggles between Nokia and mobile network operators this move will probably provoke , Michael broadens the scope and puts Apple and the iPhone into the equation. A long article but a worthwhile read since it contains a lot of thought provoking observations.

Interestingly enough we come to the same conclusion in our articles: We both fear that the whole process could lead to another set of walled gardens. More colorful perhaps but still with walls. But then, a mobile phone can have more than one door…

The Cell Phone Network Hack Of The Decade

In 2005, the cell phone of the prime minister of Greece and those of 100 other people were secretly tapped by what in my opinion is the most extraordinary attack on a cell phone network that has been uncovered to date. The July 2007 issue of the IEEE Spectrum magazine has a very good summary of what happened, how the spy program was detected and the consequences. The article is also available online.

Here’s the elevator pitch:

  • Unidentified hackers design a secret patch for Ericsson Mobile Switching Centers and mange to insert the code into switches in the Vodafone Greece network.
  • The code checks all calls and taps conversations made over 100 selected phones. These conversations are in effect duplicated and forwarded to other mobile phones.
  • The hackers make a mistake when they update their spy program and logs are generated by the switch. This tips of Vodafone and Ericcson which then start an investigation.
  • And for the rest… read the article.

It’s one thing to program a virus or trojan horse for a Windows, MAC or Linux box. Secretly inserting code into a GSM Mobile Switching Center which does not run an off the shelf operating system, however, is quite another. It definitely shows why Cryptophones that encrypt a call from mobile to mobile are worth their money. I wonder, how many of those 100 people used one…

20 Years Ago The GSM MoU Was Signed

Both a long time and a short time, but 20 years ago on the 7th of September 1987 the GSM Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed by 12 European nations on September the 7th. It took a bit after that but three and a half years later the first GSM network, today known as Elisa in Finland, opened its doors. Since then the mobile networks are constantly evolving and activities are still accelerating rather than slowing down.

For a long time, mobile networks were considered voice only networks and even SMS was only added to networks at the end of the 1990’s. Since then mobile data services have evolved in only a few years from speeds of a couple of bits per second to multi megabit 3.5G highspeed. Nevertheless, everything is still based on the GSM standards from back then, or 3GPP standards as they have been renamed to in the meantime.

The telecoms industry had a tremendous roller coaster ride during that time. For many people working in the industry the ride did not always go to the better side. After the .com burst at the beginning of this decade, tens of thousands of people in the telecom industry have lost their jobs. Today, unlike the IT industry which seems to have picked up steam again, the telecoms industry with some exceptions is still struggling and the turbulences are far from over. A challenging time for everyone in the industry which takes true determinism.

Looking at the user side it’s incredible to see the changes mobile networks have brought to the life of people in both rich and poor countries. Voice was the first revolution and today few people can still imagine a life without cell phones. Generation-C can probably not imagine it at all. After a number of iterations I can see mobile Internet access now also picking up with people around me and even some skeptics of yesterday are now using a Blackberry or HSDPA mobile data card in their notebook. Generation-C is next, pricing levels are close to become affordable for them!

Good sides, bad sides, but no matter happy birthday GSM!

A Yoigo Weekend

I’ve been in Spain for a couple of days and I am glad that a number of people have told me about Yoigo, a new mobile operator in Spain,  which offers Internet access via Prepaid SIMs. So here’s a report from my weekend with Yoigo and Madrid:

How To Get The SIM Card

Once in Madrid the first mission was to get a SIM card. According to the Wiki, Yoigo SIM cards are sold in "The Phonehouse" shops. So before my departure I checked the web page and located the shop closest to my hotel. Buying the SIM card only took a couple of minutes. The SIM cost €20 euros and included €20  worth in phone calls and Internet connectivity. The price per day for Internet connectivity is €1.20 (€1.36 with taxes) for 2G and 3G access. It doesn’t sound like a lot but if used every day it amounts to about €40 a month which is on par with what other operators offer as well. However, charing daily certainly offers the door to new market segments.

Some people reported that Yoigo only covers a few cities with 3G so far, but Madrid was fortunately part of the list.

Mobile Phone And Notebook Use

Screenshot0013
The first megabyte is billed by the kilobyte and all data traffic afterwards during that day is free. After each data session or phone call a USSD message reports usage and remaining credit. The picture on the left shows the message which reports a cost of €0.00 of a data session established after the first megabyte has been used. Previous reports were not quite clear if Yoigo requires the use of a proxy and otherwise blocks all other ports or if the connection is open and other services like eMail, etc. can be used as well. I can definitely confirm that the connection is open and I used the SIM for both web browsing, eMail and Shozu with the mobile phone and with the notebok to browse the web, check my eMails, Yahoo messenger, for IPSec VPN connections, etc.

Network Performance

Yoigo_throughput
Yoigo does not seem to have 3.5G HSDPA yet, as my phone just established plain UMTS 3G connections. While 3G comes nowhere near 3.5G HSDPA speeds, it’s nevertheless fast enough for most activities (384 kbit/s which equals about 45 kBytes/s). Unfortunately, Yoigo seems to have similar problems like Wind in Italy since I had a lot of IP layer retransmissions due to ‘duplicate acknowledgments" which indicate packet loss. I tried during different times during daytime and also nighttime but the problem persisted. Thus, it’s not a busy hour problem. I can also rule out terminal incompatibility as I saw the same behavior with a Motorola V3xx and a Nokia N93 in combination with a notebook. As a consequence web pages take somewhat longer load and file download performance is around 12 kByte/s instead of 45 kByte/s. Throughput peaks were at around 45 kBytes/s which indicates I got a 384 kbit/s bearer, while the low overall throughput is caused by the frequent retransmissions. The second picture on the left shows a pretty disastrous throughput graph of a file download.

I can’t say if this is a temporary problem or not since I’ve only been in Spain for a couple of days. If I lived in Spain, however, and the problem persisted it would definitely make me go to another operator. So I hope Yoigo takes a closer look and fixes the issue. If you like Wireshark traces of the issue, let me know 🙂

Summary

Despite the less than optimal performance I was quite happy with my Yoigo weekend experience in Madrid. In total I transferred about 60 MB during 4 days which is not much, but I have been on vacation after all 🙂 There are still about €13 of the initial €20 left on the SIM card which will probably be eaten up by the €6 per month minimum usage fees over the coming months. However, I hope that the SIM stays active till next February when I will probably come back to Spain for the Mobile World Congress (formerly the 3GSMWorldCongress) in Barcelona. Until then I hope Yogio will also have upgraded to HSDPA.

Nokia’s Ovi: Let’s See How The Key Looks Like

This weeks announcement by Nokia of the launch Ovi (Finish for ‘door’) to bundle and extend their mobile services has certainly caught the attention of a couple of people in the industry, even though many saw it coming for a while. For now the announcement did not go into the details of the who, when, where and what but that’s certainly going to change in the next months. I think it is a smart move that comes at the right time. Networks, devices, price plans and applications are close to having reached a level of maturity in many countries to offer an easy, affordable and fun way for people to extend their reach and to discover the world in new ways with the mobile Internet.

Nokia’s Advantages Over Network Operators

Nokia has a number of advantages when it comes to mobile services over network operators. First, they develop the devices that the services run on themselves. Thus they don’t suffer from the fracture network operators have to deal with since their strategy is that the services they offer must run on devices of different manufacturers. Take a look at Vodafone Live! for example and the constant struggle to make the menu structure, icons, etc. of phones of different manufacturers look alike. On top, Nokia has a great mobile platform with S60 that is far more capable than the common minimum denomiator of a multi vendor terminal approach. This makes it a lot easier to develop compelling and easy to use services such as NokiaMaps, which will become a part of Ovi.

Beyond the software platform, Nokia has launched great mobile phone hardware in the past 18 months with their N-series and E-series product categories. Most of these devices now include Wifi which I think is key to delivering services independently of a mobile operator. With Wifi the mobile phone, or rather the ‘multimedia computer’ to use a Nokia term, easily integrates into the users home and office environment.  The devices now also include a SIP client which (I think) can become active automatically when the correct WLAN is detected which again circumvents the mobile network operators monopoly and gives users more choice. Nokia didn’t say if VoIP will be part of Ovi but I think it would be a smart move for reasons discussed further below. Integrating into the users home and office environment with Wifi will go far beyond VoIP in future though, as first attempts with UPnP and the Nokia Mobile Web Server already demonstrate today. With the Wifi integration the device can interact with other local devices such as the TV, the computer, the hifi stereo, the network storage, etc. which is not possible at all in a 3G only strategy. Nokia’s cooperation with Microsoft might help further develop this opportunity in the future, too, if Microsoft is willing to cooperate despite their own ambitions with their Microsoft Mobile (Pocket PC) OS.

Economy of scale is also very important. Again, this is an advantage for Nokia since their platform embraces the Internet and can thus be available anytime anywhere. This is also a great tie-in with Wifi integration as some services might only be usable in some countries with still high 3G prices via Wifi at home due to the large amount of data that needs to be transferred (e.g. song downloads). Also, for travelers like me who are used to changing SIM cards several times a month, access to services is independent of operator and place. Mobile network operators on the other hand continue to struggle to recover their investments into their service portals and device adaptations since their user base is considerably smaller. Also, I think their innovation cycles must be a lot longer than what Nokia can do with Ovi since Nokia has to do operator specific adaptations of their software for a myriad of different operators which surely has a huge impact on number of people required and turnaround times.

I think Ovi comes a the right time because 2007 is definitely the year in which the mobile Internet has finally become affordable in many countries. On top, mobile Internet access is now also possible via pre-paid SIM cards in many countries. Early adopters like young people, students, hi-tech travelers etc. have waited for this for years. For Nokia this means that they no longer have to necessarily partner with mobile operators to deliver their services. Users can use pre-paid SIMs or Wifi at home. Excellent and almost unheard of only one and a half years ago! If I were Nokia, I would consider selling such prepaid offers in Nokia stores and on the web as a further kick-starter for devices and services.

The Bitpipe Clash

Inevitably this course brings Nokia even more head on with mobile network operators than before as many still have an interest on doing services themselves. Some might see the change coming and start partnering with Nokia. ‘3’ has made a similar move a couple of months ago and their X-series brand in essence is a co-operation with Internet service providers such as Skype and Co. With Nokia’s Ovi that could be much simpler in the future since an operator would only have to talk to Nokia and not to a myriad of different companies.

How Does The Key Have to Look Like?

I am looking forward very much at how Ovi is going to look like. Having good services is one thing, easy inital configuration is another. Ideally services are both usable from the mobile devices as well as from a PC. It should be possible to configure everything on the PC which is then pushed to the mobile device. Certainly not easy to do in a very very very user friendly way but not impossible. One could for example use SMS push,  Wifi or a plug-in for the Nokia PC suite. Personally I’d prefer web based services with SMS push configuration. No software installation would be required and it would be platform independent (think Windows, Mac OS, Linux,…)

And finally, I hope Nokia will stay committed to the S60 motto of ‘open to new features’ and follow a dual strategy of Ovi as a platform for their services alongside an open mobile OS platform for third party applications that can do the same and other things without the neat integration into one package.

External Antenna For 3G Internet Access Saves Me Again

Hsdpa_antenna_small
I like the countryside, much more quiet and relaxing than cities, especially for vacation. Slight disadvantage one has to live with, though, is that 3G signal quality is often not very strong. I am at the Côte d’Azur at the moment in between Monaco and Menton in a house outside the small villages along the coast. As in previous cases, 3G coverage is non existent at desktop level but quite o.k. only a few feet above the desk. I am glad that instead of a PC card I took my Motorola V3xx HSDPA mobile with me which can be nicely attached to the window. The USB cable makes all the difference in reception quality. Data rates are excellent (*) even in such a cell edge case.

For worse conditions I have a 2m (6 feet) USB extension cable 🙂 For PC card owners I strongly recommend buying an external antenna with a similar cable length before going on vacation.

(*) My connection speed is around 400 kbit/s but not because the radio link could not support more but because my connection is throttled by the operator.

Vacation Connectivity – Part II

In a previous post I’ve put down my thoughts and practical experiences with roaming through Europe and staying connected to the Internet with prepaid GSM/UMTS SIM cards. While it works quite well there is the disadvantage that a different SIM card is required in each country. So I was asked how people can reach me when I change my SIM card every couple of days!? There are several strategies:

1) I have a SIM card dedicated to voice calls. My friends only know this number and the SIM card is in a seperate phone.

2) If I only want to carry one phone I activate call forwarding unconditional on that SIM card to the SIM card I am currently using for Internet access in a country. There is one problem with this approach: Some prepaid SIMs by default forward calls to the voicemail and this call forwarding can not be deactivated. So I always pay for an incoming call no matter whether I pick up or not. So I ususally prefer to carry two phones.

3) I have an ISDN fixed line at home. While I travel I forward calls to the SIM card I use. There is a web interface available so I can change the call forwarding from abroad when necessary

4) Skype is also an option, though I haven’t tried this yet: Get a Skype in number and then forward the calls to a mobile phone number when you are not online.

It’s a pity one has to go through all of this just because pricing models of operators prevent people from using a single SIM card for all purposes. But who knows, one day…