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While traveling, I recently spent some time on a University campus in the US and sat in the Library reading room for a few hours. When I observed the students there for a while I noticed that none, not even a single one of them used a mouse with their computers. Instead, they were all using the touchpad of their notebooks while I was the only one in the reading room who actually had a mouse at the side of this computer.

Continue reading The Mouse – An Endangered Species?

When I was recently at the Ohio State University for a few days I noticed the following interesting statistics about their Wi-Fi network:

Quite impressive numbers, especially when setting them into perspective:

Continue reading 11.000 Wi-Fi Access Points At Ohio State University

Time flies and it’s already 3 years since the previous edition of my book became available. Time for an update and I’ve worked hard over the course of the past 12 months to ensure my introduction book on wireless networks continues to reflect the latest state of how the technology is deployed and functions in practice. A lot of things have happened in the past three years so I had to adapt the title a bit and the third edition is now called ‘From GSM to LTE-Advanced Pro and 5G‘! So what’s new?

Continue reading From GSM to LTE-Advanced Pro and 5G – My Latest Book Is Now Available!

I recently came across this interesting post by Michael Thelander over at RCR Wireless in which he describes how 3GPP meetings and the people attending ‘tick’ from his point of view. Regularly attending industry meetings around the world on a quarterly meeting myself I’m glad that these meetings are a tad more relaxed in most aspects than what Michael describes in his post. I’ve heard similar stories of 3GPP meetings from other people in the past so I don’t think he’s exaggerating.

One thing he doesn’t mention is how well Internet connectivity works when hundreds of people attend such meetings. From what I’ve heard, 3GPP meeting organizers take special care to select venues with high speed Internet connectivity (and I don’t mean a DSL line with a few Mbit/s) and bring their own kit to manage the traffic. Still, I’ve heard people saying that often, Internet connectivity is a challenge during meeting weeks. Let’s see Michael’s post was titled ‘part 1’, so perhaps he’ll mention something on this in future posts.

It is actually quite shocking to see a comparison of how much mobile data €30 buys you in different countries in Europe. Let’s take a look at two examples: In Germany, according to the statistics of Rewheel and my own experience, €30 buys you around 6 GB with the cheapest network operator and far less with other network operators. On the other end of the scale is Finland where less than €30/month gets you a ‘all you can eat’ flatrate subscription!

Continue reading How Many GB Do €30 Buy You? – And Other Interesting Stats

Last year I was excited by a new add-on my fixed and mobile network operator of choice started offering: For 10 euros extra I could make calls from everywhere to everywhere in the EU, the US and Canada – fixed and mobile. Also, my monthly data bucket was extended from use in the EU to the US and Canada as well. Looks like the offer might have been a bit too successful as it has now been quietly discontinued for new customers.

Continue reading 1 Step Forward 2 Steps Back with My Mobile EU/World Option

Recently, I reflected a bit over how fixed and mobile networks have evolved in the past 30 years, i.e. since the mid-1980s. For the first time I realized then that during that time frame, networks have been totally turned inside out.

Continue reading Change of Times: Data over Voice to Voice over Data

Hurricanes have hit the Caribbean pretty hard this season and in many countries, mobile networks have been severely damaged. One consequence of that on the Dutch part of Sint Maarten island is that local operator UTS has decided not to restore GSM services at all due to the heavy damage. Instead, they want to migrate their remaining GSM subscribers to their 3G and LTE network. Interesting, this is the first time I’ve heard about a natural disaster as being the reason for ending GSM service.

Back in the 1980s the BASIC programming language was a must have feature on any home computer. Initially conceived in the mid-1960s it was swiftly adapted even for the first personal computer, the MITS Altair 8800 that became available in 1975. The freely available Tiny BASIC could fit into 2-3 kByte of memory and thus made it ideal for machines with only a few kilobytes of RAM and ROM. With additional features, BASIC then really took off in the 1980’s as the programming language for the masses on computers such as the Commodore 64, the Apple II and uncountable other platforms. They pretty much all had in common that programs were entered with line numbers and programs could be listed on the screen while programming and debugging. Editing code was nowhere near as easy as it is today but one could at least see a TV screen full of code at a time which helps a lot when coding algorithms with many variables and loops.

An interesting fact that is perhaps a bit forgotten is that BASIC also made it to much more restricted devices such as calculators that only had a single display line. The Sharp PC-1401 calculator that was released at the beginning of the 1980s is an interesting example. Being semi-conscious about such devices I was quite surprised when a friend recently showed me an even more restricted device that came with a BASIC interpreter but only had a single row of 7-segment digits instead of full ASCII characters and a non-ASCII keyboard.

Continue reading Basic On An SBC With A Single Line 7-Segment Display

In the first part of this series, I emphasized that in 3GPP Release 15, a major focus is to get a first incarnation of 5G into the field that complements 4G LTE. Instead of today’s approach where a device is either connected to GSM, or to UMTS or to LTE, i.e. only to one technology at a time, things will be different in 5G. Due to the higher frequencies bands used and other reasons (see part 1) it was deemed better to enable mobile devices to connect to LTE and 5G New Radio (NR) simultaneously. This is referred to as Dual Connectivity EN-DC. So how will this work in practice?

Continue reading 5G – Part 3 – Dual Connectivity (EN-DC)