Reality Check | Ephraim Schwartz » TAG: Wireless

February 12, 2008 | Comments: (0)

Make way for mobile broadband

TAGS: Wireless

Five reasons why adopting cellular data access for laptops will be big for your business

Mark my words: The enterprise will be moving away from relying on Wi-Fi hotspots in favor of mobile broadband connectivity.

Say you're a salesperson making an office visit to sell a doctor on a new drug, and the doctor says, "I need a lot more information before I consider this."

Balky Wi-Fi access and bulky brochures may not help you get it done. But if you have cellular data access via a PC Card, USB stick, or technology already embedded in the laptop, you have nothing to fear.

And the industry is already moving in this direction, as Verizon has deals in place with almost all of the major laptop OEMs, and Lenovo just announced a deal with Ericsson.

But it's more than just what the industry is doing that suggests a transition to mobile broadband connectivity. It's what cellular data access will do for you.

Return on investment
In the above example, the salesperson in the doctor's office plugs in a USB stick that is both broadband cellular modem and storage device: connect, click, click, download, detach, and hand the stick over to the doctor to upload the drug specifications to the office's computer system.

Or an insurance agent inspecting damage to a house needs more than just a handset, which is too small to comfortably depict the forms the agent must fill out. Instead, the agent uses a tablet PC.

With built-in broadband, instead of heading back to the office at 3:30 to upload the files, with a WAN card -- stick or embedded -- the agent can stay out in the field longer and upload the forms on site.

Performance
Verizon CDMA is moving beyond 3G EvDO (evolution, data optimized) to EvDO Rev. A, which will give users faster upload performance.

Whereas 3G provides 700Kbps download throughput, Rev. A will provide about 1.4Mbps. Upload will increase from 500Kbps to 800Kbps.

As for 4G, dubbed LTE (Long Term Evolution), you can expect it in about two years. It will dramatically increase the upload performance of data over cellular to peak speeds of tens of megabytes per second depending on the amount of spectrum available.

Price
Making it even more practical to use WAN instead of Wi-Fi are continually dropping prices for cellular data.

Mike Willsey, director of enterprise marketing at Verizon Wireless, says the basic business plan for data has gone from $79.99 per month for unlimited Web browsing to $59.99.

From a device perspective, so-called air cards were and still are in some cases $150 each. However, promotions are becoming standard, and Verizon Wireless, for example, is now offering a USB stick with storage for free.

Expectations
For better or worse, mostly for better, the evolution of high tech in business has always been driven from the bottom up. Here again in wireless, mobile phone users who have instant access to e-mail, data, and limited applications want the same capabilities on their far more expensive laptops. After all, it just doesn't seem right that a piece of hardware that probably cost five times more than a handset should be less capable.

Web 2.0 and SaaS
We are all witnessing the end of packaged applications and the emergence of hosted Web 2.0 apps and SaaS (software as a service). As the enterprise adopts this model, again driven from the bottom up, the need for capable devices that can do serious computing while in the field makes wide-area connectivity in a laptop a must-have.

Again, Wi-Fi won't do, and please don't send in your comments about how WiMax is the inheritor of the wireless mantle for road warriors. In this "I need it now" world, ubiquitous or, shall we just say, national broadband WiMax is just too far away.

Unless there is a dramatic change in the direction of technology, which is always possible in high tech, I predict that in two years the enterprise will adopt cellular data for laptops in a big way.

The only caveat to this prediction that I can think of is, if Web 2.0 grows fast alongside desktop virtualization, you may not need a laptop. All you would need is a large screen, a keyboard, and WAN connectivity. Heck, you won't even need your own operating system.

Posted by Ephraim Schwartz on February 12, 2008 03:00 AM

January 22, 2008 | Comments: (0)

WiMax multi-hops to hyperconnectivity

TAGS: Wireless

Technical advances keep expanding the horizon for WiMax -- if only carriers could get down to delivering on its promise

While two key WiMax spectrum owners, Sprint and Clearwire, haggle over bringing broadband wireless to the masses, thanks to companies like Nortel the technology itself continues to evolve in a worthwhile way.

Eventually, the spectrum players will sort out their differences -- after all, WiMax means money in everybody's pocket. In the meantime, wireless users can salivate over what the next generation of WiMax, 802.16m, will bring.

To put 802.16m into perspective, I spoke with Nortel Fellow Wen Tong, leader of advanced research in wireless technology at Nortel, and the holder of dozens of wireless patents. Wen produced the industry's first 348Kbps 3G pre-standard over-the-air prototype and was one of the inventors of the turbo-coding interleaver, a key 3G technology that made transmission over the air more robust. This technology was subsequently adopted by both the 3GPP and 3GPP2 standards groups.

One of the most exciting changes that will come about as WiMax evolves over the next several years is hyperconnectivity -- "what we at Nortel define as the state in which the number of devices, nodes, and applications connected to the network far exceeds the number of people using the network," Wen says.

To understand what that is, think of it this way: Right now telecommunications companies measure connectivity on a per-head basis, Wen tells me. "One head, one phone."

In the future, hyperconnectivity will mean multiple devices with multiple connections, video, phone, IM, and m-to-m (machine-to-machine) connectivity -- the last of which will bring that long-sought lights-out datacenter that IT pros have been talking about for years.

Performance will be around 1Gbps for fixed wireless and 100Mbps for mobile.

But enough about the future. I asked Wen to take us through the steps we need to take to get there.

Today's cell-phone towers are separated by about a kilometer. Because they sit on a lower frequency, that distance is sufficient.

But WiMax will find a home at a higher band, 2.5Mhz. At that frequency, network providers will need more sites.

IEEE 802.16m will resolve the problem. For your information, .16m will replace the current standard, .16e, but not for at least two years. And as always, the standard won't be fully enabled out of the gates. Once the standard is in place, it takes several years to optimize it.

IEEE 802.16m brings a couple of major and fundamental improvements to WiMax that within the next five years will lead us to hyperconnectivity.

No. 1, .16m provides twice the spectrum efficiency of .16e, meaning more data can be pushed through the same hardware configuration. Not the same hardware, mind you, but the same configuration, meaning that retooling isn't required when deploying the technology.

To quantify the performance difference, Wen explains that WiMax is currently capable of delivering 1.2 bits per hertz, per second per sector -- meaning that a 10-megahertz sector bandwidth will deliver 12Mbps.

Double the efficiency to 2.4 bits per hertz, per second per sector, and you will get about 24Mbps.

The second fundamental change in technology brings a huge improvement in voice quality for VoIP users -- and a business benefit for carriers as well.

Using the cellular grid means that the closer you are to the cell tower, the better your performance. And the farther you are, well, the more out of luck you will be in getting a signal.

Rather than require additional towers to fill the gaps, 802.16m will tap "multi-hop technology," deploying small, Wi-Fi-like nodes in between cell towers where WiMax antennas reside. The signal will then hop across each node, a capability that will be integrated into .16m devices.

This capability will "unify the data rates across the nation," Wen says, without having to increase the grid.

The technology will require AC or battery power, but backhaul and network support will not be required.

"It is an intelligent digital repeater to help packets multi-hop," Wen told me.

For those of you, like me, who want to call this mesh, it is not, says Wen.

Mesh is peer-to-peer. In this configuration, a cell tower is still needed as the gateway to the network.

Once this technology is deployed, carriers will be able to support more voice conversations per sector.

"If you can't grab more voice," Wen says, "you would have better quality on each call."

But it will more likely be a combination of the two -- more conversations, better quality.

Today, 5MHz of spectrum can support 60 to 70 voice calls. With multi-hop, that same band could support 3 times that capacity.

This is the kind of capacity that can truly provision VoIP as the standard way to carry voice without dropped calls, static, and all the other annoying attributes VoIP currently carries with it.

When we get to IEEE 802.16m, wireless will truly be an integral part of our consumer and business world. And if you consider the fact that in 20 short years wireless has become the communication method of choice for more than half the world's population, further advancements in this area will go a long way toward eliminating the digital divide.

Posted by Ephraim Schwartz on January 22, 2008 03:00 AM

November 27, 2007 | Comments: (0)

iPhone, What is good for U.S. is not good for Europe

TAGS: Communications, Mobile devices, Telecom, Wireless

When the iPhone launches tomorrow in France and across the rest of Europe there will be one distinct difference between that market and the U.S. market. Europeans will be able to buy an unlocked iPhone from Orange, the France telecomm carrier.

That’s the law in most of Europe where the option for an unlocked version must be available.

Of course, consumers will have to pay dearly for the right to have a warranted, unlocked iPhone. Some, like techno savvy users here, may want to just unlock it themselves.

An unlocked iPhone in France is expected to sell for 650 euros, $964, U.S. and for a whopping 1,000 euros, $1,484 U.S., in Germany.

With a two-year contract, locked, iPhone buyers will see a saner, but not inexpensive price tag of about 399 euros, about $592. U.S.,plus the monthly voice and data charges that start at 49 euros per month, about $73 U.S.

Orange says it expects to sell about 100,000 devices in the first month, a not unrealistic number according to Vincent Poulbere, senior analyst at Ovum.

However, Poulbere says there’s a great deal of competition in the European market, especially for similar devices that are more highly subsidized.

“There won’t be any queues at the stores to buy an iPhone,” said Poulbere.

The European market will share one similarity with the U.S. market, said Poul-bere, users can expect a price reduction at some point in 2008, especially if a new model is introduced.

With the exchange rate extremely favorable to European shoppers some may get creative and fly to the U.S. buy an iPhone here, take it back and hack it so it can be used in Europe with a local SIM chip.

Technology is fun, isn't it?

Posted by Ephraim Schwartz on November 27, 2007 08:42 AM

August 01, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Spectrum: A lesson in private vs. public good

TAGS: Wireless

As high tech begins to permeate every part of our lives, all indications point to the fact that it will come up against many of the basic principles and beliefs upon which we base our society.

The most recent example happened only this week, when the FCC announced its rules for auctioning off the 700MHz spectrum.

The upcoming auction, as well as the debate over whether the government should require that any 700MHz spectrum purchaser provide open Web and Internet access through this spectrum to subscribers of competing networks, highlights the eternal debate over the public good versus the right of private enterprise to be unfettered by regulations.

Those on the corporate side will say the recent FCC decision "to require so-called open access" and to prohibit "those companies from blocking or slowing wireless and Web content from competitors" is anticompetitive.

The ruling, claim the opponents, takes away a company's biggest weapon against its competitors: product differentiation.

Consumer groups, on the other hand, say the airwaves and the spectrum that runs through it belong to the public, and the public -- not private enterprise -- should be the beneficiary of its development.

We've seen the same argument from both camps many times before. It is typically put forth by the pharmaceutical industry. Here the argument focuses on the the public's right to less expensive generic drugs.

The major drug manufacturers claim if they cannot charge a high price or if the government requires that they relinquish their patent to allow competitors to create a generic version of the drug, they will be unable to continue the costly research required to create new cures for diseases.

Of course, the outstanding argument comes from the mid-20th century, when Dr. Jonas Salk refused to patent and make a profit from the polio vaccine.

But this isn't about a crippling disease -- it is about wireless devices and communications.

In the case of wireless technology and this latest challenge, I don't believe there is an easy answer. But I think it is a good idea to frame the discussion around what is really at stake so that we can gain a deeper understanding of the issues that face us.

Posted by Ephraim Schwartz on August 1, 2007 10:59 AM

July 03, 2007 | Comments: (0)

iPhone: Fool me once, fool me twice...

TAGS: Wireless

The drunken night with iPhone is over, and now as we wake up next to our new love, the sober reality is not as good looking as we thought.

As we learn more about the device and its battery shortcomings, as night follows day, bad press is following good.

I wonder if David Pogue of the New York Times and Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal knew now what they didn't know then, would they still have given the iPhone a thumbs-up?

The latest is the fact that replacement batteries must be installed by Apple, which will take three days for turnaround. But more importantly for a multimedia-savvy device, a warning from Apple that they are not responsible for maintaining any data, like contacts and phone numbers, on the phone. In fact, all the stored data may be wiped clean.

While the $500 to $600 price tag may be high, it appears obvious the only solution is to buy two -- probably Apple's real goal!

Seriously, as an enterprise solution the iPhone appears to be a non-starter. Certainly, other than a C-level executive, there are not many companies that will outfit a large sales force with such an expensive, and more importantly impractical device.

Years ago I spoke with a large financial services company that was putting at that time very pricey flat panel displays on the desk of each financial adviser in the company.

Yes, it was a very pricey move, the executive told me, but company image was also important and the flat panels made a statement about the company that outweighed the price.

So, is the iPhone equivalent to the flat panel display in terms of an upscale image? Yes, but, at least those flat panels were as good as the cathode ray tube monitors.

While a company may want to project a certain image by buying iPhones for its sales force -- and no doubt many on staff will buy the phones and demand support -- will IT be willing to put up with the necessary support required?

Who in sales can be without their cell phone for three days?

And Apple advises to back up contacts and data before sending in the phone for battery replacement. Obviously IT will have to do that for the non-technical staff. Perhaps IT will have to figure out a way to replace the battery in-house.

Will Apple train and designate someone at each Apple store to do the upgrade while you wait? Or at least, if not while you wait, avoid the hassle of having to mail it in? Have you ever seen what happens to a package marked "Fragile" in the Post Office?

It appears to me the iPhone is sitting on a very dangerous precipice. Either it can fall one way and become the status symbol it wants to be or, if a few more gotchas are uncovered the iPhone will become a laughing stock with buyers looked on as gullible consumers who weren't smart enough to spot a troubled device when it was right in the palm of their hand.

Posted by Ephraim Schwartz on July 3, 2007 10:45 AM

June 26, 2007 | Comments: (0)

iPhone JVM, Flash hacks could face Apple roadblock

TAGS: Wireless

Mobile operators took center stage this week in San Francisco (PDF file), talking very frankly at times with the audience, which consisted mainly of developers and snoopers like me.

I will tell all in later post about the presentations, which touched on everything from Sprint WiMax rollout next year and Microsoft explaining its "open operating system approach" to Symbian's near lock on the smart phone market worldwide.

But first, during the break I had to ask the presenters and attendees a question which probably annoyed them no end.

Question: "Do you think the iPhone can be hacked so that developers can put a Java Virtual Machine and or Flash capability on the device?"

The unanimous answer was, "doubtful."

The iPhone is targeted at Web developers, not mobile developers, said one developer attendee.

Jared Peterson, director for Sprint Application Developer Program, said Apple could in fact build into the system a way of preventing a Java VM from running on the iPhone, if they wanted.

Peterson also defended Apple to the extent that he said all the vendors say their platform is open to developers but "there are limits." He pointed out the goal of making sure a developer's application for location-based services doesn't impinge on privacy.

I also buttonholed a fellow from Visa, who told me he meets with all of the operators, device makers and operating system designers but hasn't met with Apple yet. That seemed to be the story with everyone at this conference.

Apple is playing it so close to the vest you might say they think they can go it alone, albeit, with the help of one small operator, AT&T.

I suspect, however, with the direction of mobile applications tilting heavily towards rich media content, Apple will have to change its tune (pardon the near pun) and open its infrastructure up if it wants to add more substantial content to its very glitzy packaging.

Posted by Ephraim Schwartz on June 26, 2007 02:33 PM

June 12, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Apple iPhone in the enterprise

TAGS: Wireless

The iPhone may help make a market for dual-mode devices, but the technology may not be ready for the market

No doubt the Apple iPhone will create a stir regarding the kind of services and applications dual-mode devices can deliver. But the success of dual-mode -- cellular plus Wi-Fi -- in the enterprise may depend on the willingness of cellular carriers to share their networks with Wi-Fi providers. One source tells me that both T-Mobile and Cingular, now AT&T, will drop any VoIP phone call originating from a handset if Skype is the service provider.

This kind of anticompetitive behavior won't last long, but at the moment, if true, it is worth considering, especially as carriers themselves begin dabbling in VoIP. T-Mobile, for one, is currently test-marketing its own VoIP service in Seattle.

If blocking VoIP calls sounds far-fetched, consider that Frank Hanzlik, managing director of the Wi-Fi Alliance, told me other carriers have VoIP capability but don’t want that fact known. He refused to mention which carriers.

Before standardizing on a dual-mode phone, enterprises should also consider the true ubiquity of the network. Uptime in airports and coffee shops is not the same as door-to-door coverage and would preclude using any serious business application on a dual-mode phone.

I spoke with Mohan Natarajan, vice president of engineering at Firetide, about this concern.

Firetide, and other mesh-networking companies, can greatly extend your Wi-Fi capabilities by deploying mesh nodes throughout a city. At present, Firetide has 3,000 nodes in a 50-square-mile section of Singapore, giving users 70Mbps access. Here in the States, however, mesh hasn't caught on, except in the public-safety sector, for which Firetide has deployed mesh networks in Dallas and Phoenix.

Wi-Fi traffic management also remains in its early stages. Wi-Fi Alliance's Hanzlik says resource management standards -- IEEE 802.11k and 802.11v -- are now under review and that nothing should be expected in terms of approvals before the end of 2008.

How to handle power output in a heavily trafficked Wi-Fi environment is the crux of the traffic management problem. Firetide's Natarajan compares the problem to having 10 pairs of people in a room all shouting at one another at once in order to be heard above the din. IEEE 802.11k and 802.11v will address this issue by modulating the power so that, as in our example, the 10 pairs of people learn to talk in an audible whisper and everyone gets heard.

Natarajan also says handset providers must make their devices more intelligent to help reduce network latency. Right now, network providers look into packets to identify whether they are streaming video, voice, or data. Enabling the devices to notify the network about the type of data being sent will cut down this latency and make for better SLAs.

Of course, there is also the ever-present problem of security, as the iPhone no doubt will mean yet another device with lots of storage capability being brought into the office without corporate oversight.

Companies need to create policies that prevent unauthorized personnel from connecting to the network, whether via a USB stick or Bluetooth, and downloading data, says Bob Egner, vice president of product management at Check Point, a pure-play security provider.

"The iPhone is just the tip of the iceberg," Egner says.

Luckily, the iPhone, like other handsets, identifies itself to the network, making it possible to enforce data upload and download policies. But that does nothing for the single most important vulnerability the enterprise faces when it comes to these kinds of devices: lost or stolen equipment.

"The greatest need is for encryption on these end points," Egner says.

Yet another unresolved issue facing enterprise adoption of dual-mode devices is the lack of a standardized handoff specification between cellular and Wi-Fi.

An IEEE study group is looking at handover issues. Currently, UMA (Unlicensed Mobile Access) defines the handover mechanism for GSM used by T-Mobile, British Telecom, and Orange. But there is a camp that favors SIP-based solutions, if for no other reason than they want it all IP-based.

The Apple iPhone will probably do one other thing for the handset market, and that is increase the capabilities of the display.

Apple decided not to take the mainstream path and is instead tapping LTPS (Low Temperature Polycrystal and Silicon) technology for its display.

Brandon Turk, project engineering manager at Coherent, which owns 80 percent of the LTPS market and provides this technology to Apple's display vendor, notes that LTPS has three qualities that make it superior to the more generally used Amorphous Silicon technology.

LTPS can reduce power consumption by more than 20 percent; it enables pixel densities surpassing 200 pixels per inch, giving users a brighter display, which is a challenge in the 1- to 5-inch form factor, Turk says; and LTPS gives a display designer flexibility in locating the integrated circuits and flexible printed circuit, which in turn allows for a thinner, larger form factor.

But if every handset manufacturer followed Apple's suit and shifted to LTPS, could an industry essentially owned by one manufacturer -- Coherent -- be able to handle it? Turk thinks so, but I doubt it.

I've covered display technology for years, and I can tell you there are always cyclical delays in that part of the industry, as screen form factors change in size and shape, let alone an increase in demand.

At the end of the day, the iPhone looks to be an exciting product with a great interface, but don't count on its dual-mode technology to change the way you do business. Not for a while anyway.

Posted by Ephraim Schwartz on June 12, 2007 03:00 AM