WirelessMoves

Once upon a time, when business people traveled abroad, they were probably highly lucrative for mobile network operators because they were less afraid to use their mobile phone abroad for making phone calls back to their home country compared to ordinary users who would get a regular invoice every month to pay on their own.

These days, most business travelers carry a Blackberry or similar device to receive their e-mail while on the move. I guess that few of them disable the feature while abroad and just use the device just for making voice calls.

On the one hand it seems like a good opportunity for mobile network operators for additional revenues as data roaming is still quite costly to say the least. So that's a good thing, no? On the other hand, however, I wonder how many voice calls abroad are replaced by the e-mail capability and if the extra data roaming revenue actually compensates for it!?

So you business travelers out there reading this blog, how many voice calls abroad are replaced by your Blackberrie's e-mail capabilities?

April 12, 2010 is a date to watch for one of the biggest spectrum auctions to start in terms of MHz and frequency bands Germany has ever had (source in German). There was lots of speculation on who will qualify to bid. It was feared that too much competition would drive prices once more beyond anything that could reasonably be earned later. In the meantime, the number of companies that are allowed to bid by the German regulator went down from six to the already existing four mobile network operators. Still, competition might be intense, especially in the 800 MHz digital dividend band where only 2 x 30 MHz are available (1x for uplink and 1x for downlink, 790 – 862 MHz). Not enough spectrum for 4 operators there, as 2 x 10 MHz is seen by many as the smallest bandwidth that makes sense from an economical and also from an end user speed point of view. In addition to the digital dividend band there's the spectrum in the following bands to be auctioned off (source in German):

• 2 x 15 MHz of bandwidth (1710-1725 and 1805-1820 MHz) to in the 1800 MHz band that is so far only used for GSM but open now also for other technologies.

• 2 x 20 MHz in the 2100 MHz band, which is used for UMTS today. The bandwidth was already auctioned off back in 2000 but the two companies that had the spectrum never launched a  network. Bidders in this domain will use the extra spectrum to either increase their HSPA throughput or put LTE in the additional spectrum. There's also 5 MHz of unpaired spectrum to be given away, let's see who's interested in that!?

• And then there is also the IMT-2000 extension band in the 2600 MHz range with 2 x 70 MHz of bandwidth, most likely to be used for LTE.

Lots of combinations so it will be interesting to see who wants what, who wins what and who will do what with their acquired spectrum.

If you are a frequent international traveler you probably know the following scenario: Plane lands or you cross a border, you switch on the mobile or loose the home network coverage and it takes ages before the mobile decides which network to use. And then, as you roam through the country, you'd loose network coverage of one network, the mobile goes to the next and another "welcome" message interrupts the peace.

You can of course set the network search to manual but again, it takes ages before the mobile comes up with a list of networks to choose from. So here's what I'd like: I'd like my "own" auto mode which I can tell which network I would like to use in which country. Then, when the plane lands and I switch on my mobile, it will select only the network I have previously selected and only this one. Quick and no manual interaction required.

Macro network offload has been one of the hot topics at the recent Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. 3G and LTE femtocells are one interesting way to move voice and data traffic from cellular macro networks to fixed line connectivity in homes and offices. Another equally interesting possibility is Wi-Fi and it has some advantages as well.

Wi-Fi is the air interface of choice today for office- and home networking and is widely supported on smartphones as well. However, it still misses some features for the purpose:

First, what's still missing are intelligent clients on mobile devices that automatically switch over to Wi-Fi whenever available. In an ideal case the IP address and all open TCP and UDP connections would be kept when switching between the 3G / LTE macro network and Wi-Fi. For seamless switching, an IP sec tunnel or similar would be required on the Wi-Fi side. It would also be a good remedy for the inherent security issues of non-encrypted hotspots. Not impossible but also not straight forward to implement either.

Another thing that is missing is voice capabilities over Wi-Fi. One the one hand this would help to offload further traffic from the macro network. On the other hand, Wi-Fi networks could be used as an extension in areas where the macro network can't reach.

And finally, what comes to my mind is that Wi-Fi networking is very diverse. While the phone could be pre-configured for a network operator's Wi-Fi and the private Wi-Fi at home, using a wireless network at a friends house or at another office requires some user interaction. Not the best thing to make this work.

While built in intelligent “switching applications” are likely to be only a matter of time before they appear, the other two things are a bit more tricky to pull off. On the voice front, VoLGA and its brother technology GAN (Generic Access Network) might hold an interesting answer. Kineto demonstrated their Voice over LTE via Generic Access solution over a real LTE network in Barcelona and since it's based on GAN, it can easily be adapted for Wi-Fi as well. VOLGA for voice calls while the mobile device has LTE coverage, GAN while the Wi-Fi network is near and standard circuit switched voice calls while under 2G or 3G coverage, all seamlessly integrated into the device without too much effort. From application layer down to the protocols, all is the same, independently from the access technology. Only the lowest layers require adaptation. A straight forward solution.

And for using Wi-Fi at a friends house seamlessly, Bzeek might hold the answer. The software from an Israeli start-up company transforms your PC at home into an access point to share your Wi-Fi network with friends.

Interesting possibilities, but agreed, it's still early days when it comes to intelligent off-load.

The battle continues… I can still remember, it must have been 5 or 6 years ago when there was a big debate over which system would win, UMTS or Wi-Fi. It was a strange debate, as even then it was clear that Wi-Fi aimed at homes and hotspots while UMTS aimed for wide area coverage. The whole municipal Wi-fi wave only came and went a couple of years later. Today, Wi-Fi is used ubiquitously in homes and as far as the Wi-Fi hotspots in Europe and elsewhere go, they are held mostly alive by high roaming charges and better coverage where no 3G in-house coverage is available. Also, there are some niche opportunities like for example in trains. I'd say it's a peaceful co-existence today.

As mobile networks are getting more and more traffic these days, the discussion seems to stir up again, this time against the background of whether UMTS femtos or Wi-Fi is better for 3G macro network offloading. In the end, I'm sure peaceful co-existence will prevail. Once femots are nicely integrated together with today's Wi-Fi access points that include an access device (think DSL, coax or fiber modem), the re-merger of fixed and wireless network operators will open the door to femto acceptance in homes. And as far as public hotspots are concerned I think combined devices also make the most sense, especially if the Wi-Fi hotspot operator is also a UMTS network operator.

So even in this area, I see a peaceful coexistence for both technologies in the long run.

David Wood recently wrote an interesting post on why he thinks multitasking on mobile devices is not only nice to have but rather despite still not all smartphones support it today. However, Symbian based devices have supported this for many years and it's one of the reasons why I'm a Nokia N- and Eseries fan boy. But let's put it to the test, which programs am I running simultaneously on my mobile (see picture on the left):

• Profimail to receive e-mail.
• The phone configuration utility. Always running so I can get quickly to some often used functions such as 2G/3G network selection, call forwarding, etc.
• Nokia maps. Especially important when traveling
• Opera Mini
• The clock and alarm application
• A counter application that shows my data usage
• The SMS program
• The screenshot program

And sometimes there's also the music player, the podcast client, the calender, the address book and more running in the background in addition to the list above. Not necessarily because they all need to run but because there is no need to quit them as they don't consume resources while they sit in the background and by letting them run I can get to them really fast and pick up from where I left them.

Returning to the last state is a really important feature for me, especially with the maps application and Opera Mini. In Opera Mini it's a joy to instantly return to it after doing something else and to be able to quickly go back several pages without a new reload. And as far as the maps application is concerned it's great to see where I was last and to have a new GPS fix within a couple of seconds.

Sure, to some degree this can be 'simulated' by saving the state of the application before it is quit. However, returning to the application and restoring the state costs time. But why simulate it when you can have the real thing?

As more and more people use cellular networks not only to make phone calls but also to access the Internet, the desire to use more than one connected device at the same time is on the rise. The problem: Paying a basic fee for each device and then maybe again for Internet access is often financially not very attractive. But even if you cross that bridge and end up with a couple of gigabytes included for one device and another couple of gigabytes for another device, in the end, you might not even use all the data included in one bucket despite having two devices.

A solution for some cases is a 3G to Wi-Fi Router which works well when devices are close together and you want to share access with a group of people. However, it doesn't work so well when on the move and using several devices at once. But here's an interesting solution:

I found out recently that most German operators offer so called “Multi-SIM” cards. All SIM cards, usually up to three, are registered to the same phone number and can be active simultaneously. Incoming calls are forwarded to all switched-on devices and and the call can be accepted or rejected with any of them.

I've had a look at the fine print of one operator and here, Internet use with a single monthly bucket, even simultaneously on more than one device, is explicitly allowed! Some operators want a one time activation charge for each SIM card, but monthly charges for all SIM cards on a single contract range between very modest and free. Very nice! This will solve a big issue for people with netbooks that have a built in 3G adapter and who want to use a smartphone or other wireless device at the same time. Throw a further slim phone into the equation that can be used with the thrid SIM card and the Multi-SIM approach becomes even better.

But that's Germany, are there similar offers in other countries?