WirelessMoves

I recently became aware of the current spectrum auctions in Canada to bring another wireless operator into the domain for what is hoped to create additional competition. I did some quick background research on the auction below there is one important piece of information missing in the article: Which frequency blocks are auctioned and which technology will be used? Looks like the bands auctioned are similar to those of the U.S. AWS auction, i.e. paired spectrum 1700 MHz / 2100 MHz.

O.k., so no WiMAX here since I don’t think there is a profile for such a paring yet. I guess the likeliest technology to use in this band is UMTS and LTE. This band is standardized as band IV in 3GPP. In my opinion it’s going to be difficult to create a lot of competition for incumbent operators with this frequency band mainly because there only seem to be two more operators using this band globally:

•    T-Mobile U.S. for their 3G network
•    A carrier in Japan

Compare that to the hundreds of UMTS networks globally using 2100 MHz band I. I am a bit afraid there won’t be a lot of devices supporting this band, as the market for mobile device vendors such as Nokia is very small.

After many years, Nokia is finally releasing 3G Nseries and Eseries phones for band II and V (AT&T in the U.S., Telus in Canada and Telstra in Australia). I wonder what the chances are that they produce a third version for the AWS band IV of future phones!? Or, what would even better, devices that support all these bands!? Well, at least carriers don’t have to lock devices since they can only be used in their network anyway…

A controversial topic. What do you think?

An eMail arriving two minutes before midnight on a Saturday evening on my mobile phone as a response to a request I had sent a couple of hours earlier made me think of what has become of time, place and cables in communication.

Well, they are all gone. In the old days, not so long ago, a fax was the fastest way one could transmit someone a document. But a fax machine was only observed at business hours, one had to be at a certain place and it was attached to that place by a cable. If the person was not next to the fax machine, chances were good an answer took at least a day or two or even longer, especially when sent at an odd time (such as a Saturday afternoon). Fast forward to today, and communication is no longer limited by time, place or cables. Messages are sent via email from anywhere to anywhere on the planet within seconds, independent from time and also from place.

When I received that email close to midnight, I first thought a mobile email device played a role in the fast response (think Blackberry, Nokia N- and Eseries, etc.) . The header of the email, however, revealed that it was sent from a PC. But not from Northern Europe, as I assumed at first, but from a location in the United States. Another important lesson here: A message is no longer sent to a device sitting at a certain place but to a person and that person can get his/her messages no matter of his/her current location. As long as there is connectivity, that message finds its way.

We have absorbed this new way of communicating pretty quickly it almost seems silly to talk about it since it has become so normal. But once every now and then I stumble upon a company that still wants to do business “the old way”. Pretty difficult in my case, since I don’t carry a fax machine around…

A while ago I started the ultimate usability test by pre-configuring a Nokia N82 for mobile Internet access, as notebook modem, for mobile eMail and for picture uploads to Flickr to see how this would work out in practice with a normob (normal mobile user). While the project is still ongoing, the results so far are mixed 🙂

• Notebook Access: The N82 as a notebook modem has become fully accepted, as it enables use of  the Internet as before.

• Mobile eMail: While for me this is great, the test person’s eMail usage is a bit different. She gets lots of eMails with attachments that can’t really be viewed very well on a small screen. So as a consequence she prefers not to look at eMails at her mobile at all. Not a winner here…

• OperaMini: Used from time to time, but sometimes it takes a bit of encouragement.

• Picture Upload to Flickr: Still not really used. I am still trying to figure out why because to me the upload process looks really simple. Maybe not to a normob, not sure…

• 3G Video Calls: Believe it or not but they are a sure winner to put the location into visual context accross the continent every now and again.

To be continued.

Location: London. I am on my way to the Eurostar Terminal on my way to Paris when I noticed two ads in a newspaper.

The first one addresses reliability: Obviously I am not the only one who thinks reliability and high availability are as important as a fair price. BT thinks so, too and tries to attract customers with 99.99% availability for a business DSL line. Not quite the five 9's carrier grade reliability but still far away from 2.5 day nationwide outages of others…

The second ad addresses the fear of massive bills because of data usage with no or a wrong data plan. T-Mobile UK offers an all you can eat 3G Internet access with the promise that it will never charge more than 15 pounds a month. I wonder if that promisse holds when using the offer abroad… As always, read the fine print. The ad also mentions that the offer includes free use of T-Mobile's installed Wifi hotspots. A good way for T-Mobile to offload traffic from their cellular network in hotspots such as airports and hotels. A humble but good beginning of fixed/mobile convergence.