Cellular – Page 65 – Digital-Lifestyles

Vodafone’s betting heavily on 3G this Christmas

Vodafone live! with 3G enhances Vodafone live! by providing customers with faster access to content and the ability to see more and share more with the use of video. The company’s 3G services will further add video calling, video messaging, a richer music experience, new games, as well as video clips.

A return on investment is critical for Vodafone, who has spent some £8 billion on top of the £14 billion it had to fork out for 3G licenses (Vodafone and its four UK rivals paid around £22.5 billion for the 3G licences). Of this investment, The Observer newspaper reckons that £8 billion has been spent on network infrastructure, with a little more going on R&D, and some £100 million earmarked for advertising. David Beckham will feature prominently as the mobile giant launches a pre-Christmas advertising blitz, promoting video downloads and other bandwidth-hungry services made possible by advanced colour-screen handsets and the higher connection speeds of 3G networks.

The new high-speed service uses a completely different network to the standard Vodafone live! service. The company has built it so that whenever you are outside a 3G service area, you will continue to access all the services, but the speed to access will be reduced. Video calling or streaming content will not be possible and the service will stop if moving off the 3G network. You should know when you’re in a 3G service area because a small 3G symbol will appear on the screen of your handset.

As well as content, 3G service providers will have to distinguish themselves with coverage. For instance, Vodafone claims about 60 per cent population coverage, but much of that will be in London and a few other metropolitan areas. Orange, which also plans to launch its 3G offering before Christmas, said its initial network deployment would be more extensive. Alexis Dormandy, Orange’s chief marketing officer, told The Sunday Times:: “We have a much larger, broader network because it’s supposed to be a mobile network rather than a ‘stay-in-one-place’ network.”

With such a big financial commitment to 3G, it’s vital that Vodafone has to get its 3G marketing right. Thankfully, it will be launching its service with no fewer than 10 mobile handsets (as we’ve covered), a problem Hutchison encountered when it launched its ‘3’ service a year or so ago.

Vodafone

Hantro Claim Better Mobile Video Compression

Finland-based Hantro has made further advances in the mobile video market with its new H.264 hardware accelerated video decoder. The technology can be implemented into regular consumer mobile handsets and promises to enable a dramatic improvement in the quality of video clips.

Hantro’s H.264 player runs on Series 60-powered handsets and is based on the 6100 software decoder and PlayEngine middleware. Running on a Nokia 7610 handset, full-screen video is capable of being played back at a resolution of 208×176 pixels (supports resolutions up to 720×576 pixels) at up to 15 frames-per-second. Unfortunately, the frame rate is still half of that of standard video playback, but it provides an important step forward in the development cycle of technology that will soon become standard on all phones.

H.264 is the latest video coding standard for improved compression over existing standards, such as MPEG-4 and H.263. With comparable bitrates, the increase in visual quality is significant, according to the company, which also means that you can maintain acceptable video quality (comparable to MPEG-4) with up to a 50 per cent reduction in file size. This makes the application ideally suited for wireless transmissions as it expands the potential of applications such as streaming video to mobile over GPRS, video downloads and mobile TV.

For instance, with improved transmission speed and playback quality, businesses could leverage their marketing to potential customers by sending short video clips instead of SMS alerts. By adhering to the existing file size limitations for MMS, the improved compression ratios should allow for approximately twice the length of video clip at the same visual quality to that of MPEG-4.

The software’s multimedia engine provides a high level API for fast application development, a completely modular design, support for both hardware and software MPEG-4/H.263 video codecs, as well as GSM-AMR speech and AAC audio encoding/decoding. Compatible with 3GPP streaming protocols (RTP/RTCP/RTSP/SDP), its core modules and application logic are OS independent, and are therefore easily ported to numerous operating systems and devices, if multimedia APIs are available. It can also encode 4-megapixel JPEG still images, which will further appeal to manufacturers of battery-operated handheld devices.

“We are very pleased with the performance that we have achieved with this product”, said Sami Niska, Product Manager, Hantro. “This software implementation clearly demonstrates the capability of H.264. By providing a short time-to-market, the 6100 software decoder is an ideal solution for device manufacturers and network operators looking to leverage the immediate potential of applications made possible by this new coding standard.”

Decoding H.264 with general purpose microprocessors and digital signal processors (DSPs) is much more complex than that of existing video standards, which can lead to trade-offs in supported image sizes and power management. To overcome this problem, Hantro has also developed silicon designs which, once integrated into a chip, support higher resolutions and will reduce power consumption considerably when compared to software implementations.

Hantro

Nokia Integrate with Ford & Nissan

In many countries, particularly the UK, it is an offence to use a handheld phone or similar device when driving. Most of us know that if caught you get a £30 fixed penalty or up to £1,000 on conviction in court (£2,500 for drivers of goods vehicles, buses or coaches). As a result, mobile phone companies have been revelling in the opportunity for up-selling handset customers. This additional sales opportunity has now been extended to car manufactures, with a recent announcement that Nokia has devised a hands-free communications solution with Bluetooth connectivity for automobiles.

In the first mobile-OEM auto manufacturer partnership of its type to date, except for the CDMA-based ONStar system (but in this case the whole system was branded GM and not co-branded with the GSM radio provider), Nokia’s latest communications device is an integrated vehicle solution that will first appear in Nissan’s Primera. Ford has also announced that it plans to support the system in some of its Focus models. Long overdue, the system integrates into a vehicle’s central console and offers hands-free operation using an N-FORM control system with a large colour display. The system also features a baseplate onto which various mobile holders can be mounted, which should make it compatible with a wide range of mobile phones from different manufacturers.

The mobile phone is operated using the Primera’s N-FORM controls and 7-inch colour display, where you can also browse the built-in phonebook downloaded from your mobile phone, scroll through saved numbers either alphabetically or by speed dialling, initiate and take calls, as well as put a call on hold in order to answer a second call. Other phone functions can be voice activated, using various speaker-dependent or speaker-independent commands. An external GSM antenna should improve sound quality in hands-free operation.

“We are pleased that our co-operation with Nissan has brought such successful results. Together, we have found a perfect solution to completely satisfy even the more demanding users of automotive communications systems”, says Marcus Stahl, General Manager Automotive Accounts, Nokia Automotive. The integrated communication system is already available in Europe although it’s not clear at this stage if the device comes as standard with the cars, whether you have to change the base plate in order for it to work with other phone manufacturers’ products, or whether there will be a ‘standard’ interface devised at a later date for all car makers.

It’s also interesting that Nokia is now shifting from the handset production side to the hands-free kit side, if indeed the system supports all hands-free capable mobiles – including competitors. Bizarrely, this puts the company amongst competitors such as JCI, Lear and other third-party ‘integration’ companies who already do this for aftermarket install systems.

Nokia’s First NFC Product – Why it’s Important

Nokia NFC shell Nokia has lifted the lid on the world’s first NFC (Near Field Communication) equipped mobile phone by adding the special NFC clip-on shell to their 3220, a tri-band camera phone that is available in two versions (Euro/Asia & America). With its build-in NFC shell, the phone is the latest step in the development of innovative products for mobile communications.

NFC is essentially a contactless technology that allows for short-range two-way wireless connectivity using a tag and a reader. Developed jointly by Philips, Sony and Nokia, it is based on short-range (10 cm, 3.9”) radio frequency (RF) technology, an NFC-enabled mobile device lets you access services or operate your mobile device by placing it near a tag or share information by bringing two devices close to each other. When you’re near a tag, your mobile phone reads the tags content by emitting a short-range radio signal that powers up the tag’s microchip, allowing you to execute an action, such as opening a Web page, calling a number, or sending an SMS. The opportunities for the Media business, in particular advertising are immediately obvious. People passing posters, wanting to find out more information are able to directly request it there and then, at the point of impulse. It could them be immediately delivered by bringing up a Web page of info or received via email for later consumption. Vivendi Universal has also trialed selling tickets to films, simply by placing the phone on a NFC spot on a film poster. Similarly, by communicating with an enabled device such as a TV, the mobile device can send a picture to it It is currently unclear to us how much bandwidth will be offered by NFC, but we would assume it will be low, being more along the lines of ZigBee than Bluetooth. If this is the case, transferring a 1Mpx image will be a slow and painful process.

NFC is different from other contactless or RFID technologies in that it has a very short operating distance and also allows two devices to interconnect. The effective distance of an NFC solution depends on the tag design and the reader, but is only a few centimetres in Nokia’s solution.

The potential benefits of the technology include improved usability, easier access to services and content via physical objects, convenient sharing of digital items between devices by bringing them next to each other – such as swapping electronic business cards with clients – and local payment and ticketing capabilities. This has already been trialed in the Frankfurt transport system.

“Touch-based interactions will improve the consumer experience of existing services and create new opportunities for users to benefit from their phones. This technology has the potential to significantly improve the way operators provide and users discover and activate different mobile services,” said Gerhard Romen, Head of Market Development at Nokia Ventures Organisation. ‘By introducing the new Nokia NFC shell, Nokia clearly demonstrates strong commitment to offer users an intuitive wireless experience.” Samsung Electronics has also mentioned that it intends to manufacture NFC phones.

Tech Background to NFC – NFC technology evolved from a combination of contactless identification (RFID) and interconnection technologies. NFC operates in the 13.56MHz frequency range, over a distance of typically a few centimetres. NFC technology is standardised in ISO 18092, ISO 21481, ECMA (340, 352 and 356) and ETSI TS 102 190. NFC is also compatible with the broadly-established contactless smart card infrastructure based on ISO 14443 A, which is supported by Philips’ MIFARE technology and Sony’s FeliCa card.

Nokia 3220

HomeChoice now Quad-play, Adding Phones

Video Networks Ltd. (VNL) is upping their game with their HomeChoice service. It has announced the addition of a home phone service to its already rather ample HomeChoice bundle of broadband Internet, digital TV and video-on-demand, making it a serious contender for both home entertainment and communications. The service will be delivered using Carrier Pre-Selection, and VNL also plans to offer line rental in 2005. Carrier Pre-Selection entails them using BT lines to carry the phone traffic to VNL networks for delivery.

Currently the service isn’t using VoIP, but we understand from them that they may move to this in the New Year. They certainly have the equipment and bandwidth available to provide it.

HomeChoice customers can opt for either ‘Free Evening and Weekend’ calls at no additional cost, or have the option to upgrade to the ‘Anytime’ talk plan from £5 (~$9) per month. Both offering lower rates to UK mobiles and overseas numbers than similar plans from BT, TalkTalk, One.Tel, NTL and Telewest.

The ‘Free Evenings and Weekends’ talk plan offers, the obvious, free evening and weekend calls to all local and national numbers starting with 01 & 02, and a daytime rate of 2.5p to those numbers.

‘Anytime’ talk plan includes calls to all local and national numbers starting 01 & 02. It costs £9 (~$16) per month for 512Kb broadband customers, £7 (~$12) per month for 1Mb broadband customers, and £5 (~$9) per month for 2Mb broadband customers.

You don’t need a special box or a prefix code. You can use your existing phone and phone number, and the existing standard BT line in your house, for which you will still pay rental. But you have to take VNL’s broadband and digital TV services to avail of the free calls.

The first to offer four services in the UK, VNL geared itself up for this expansion earlier in the year by appointing Vijay Sodiwala, former managing director at Broadsystem Ventures, a News Corporation company, to develop the home phone services.

The service faces stiff competition from rival fixed line offerings such as Carphone Warehouse’s TalkTalk brand, One.Tel, BT, NTL and Telewest, but no doubt the £1 million (~$1,841,100) marketing push will give it a kick start, and hopefully (pardon the pun) ringing endorsements.

HomeChoice

Premier 3G Concert Broadcast

U2 special edition iPods, ‘phone cast’ Rooster concerts on 3G mobile phones, Robbie Williams new video premiered on 3 mobile phones – is rock becoming virtual?

Avoid the crowds, the heat, the general mayhem, (but sadly also the atmosphere) and virtually experience live gigs on your 3G mobile phone wherever you are, and make as many calls as you want during the intermission.

Yesterday in London, rock band, Rooster played the first ever concert broadcast by 3G mobile phone. Rooster was chosen because 3 is already in partnership with their record label, BMG. The 45-minute gig was really a trial run by 3 to discover more about how people use their video phones. 3, which already provides 1.2 million customers with 3G services in the UK, has already planned a series of gigs to happen throughout 2005, and is hoping that the move will lure more people into buying video phones.

The broadcast was trailed on Rooster’s Web site and on 3’s own phone-based news and entertainment channel, and about 10,000 people signed up for a free pre-gig reminder. Ten minutes before start-up, these 10,000 users were sent an SMS inviting them to visit a “virtual box office” where they could pay £5 to view the gig, and the first 1,000 were admitted.

Another world first was the release of Robbie Williams’ new video ‘Misunderstood’, exclusive for a week on 3 video mobiles before being premiered on the TV or the Web. The deal between EMI and 3 allows fans to either stream or download the video straight to their mobiles. This is a clever choice since the video for ‘Misunderstood’ – which features in the Bridget Jones sequel, ‘The Edge of Reason’ – includes clips from the forthcoming film.

Staying in the digital arena, Robbie Williams also recently announced the release of his greatest hits album on memory-card format for mobile phones, which will be released this month.

Some commentators might say these developments let fans get closer to artists, and if you were selling the equipment you would say that, wouldn’t you?

“It sounds exactly as you would expect a live band playing down a telephone line to sound”, says Alexis Petridis today in his Guardian review of the Rooster event – “a Library Of Congress field recording from the 1930s.”

http://www.roosterofficial.com http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/news/story/0,11711,1342211,00.html

Nokia: New Products and Strategic Alliances Announced

It’s all about mobility and workstyle now as mobile devices move ever closer to ubiquitous cover.

On just the second day of Winter, Christmas came early in Monaco yesterday when a plethora of new products, technologies and strategic alliances were announced at the ninth Nokia Mobility Conference. In keeping with worldwide trends, the announcements addressed product diversity, cross-industry collaboration and evolution in network infrastructure. The new Nokia smart phone line up includes the 7710 widescreen multimedia smartphone, the 3230 megapixel smartphone and the business-oriented Nokia 6020 camera phone. Nokia outlined plans to expand the Series 60 smartphone platform to include more extensive multimedia capabilities, supporting widescreen resolutions (up to 640 x 320) and touch-screen, pen-based and traditional input methods. A big strategic announcement was the extension of the long-standing alliance between Nokia and Oracle to implement push e-mail capability for Oracle(R) Collaboration Suite on the Nokia 9500 Communicator and Nokia 9300 enterprise smartphone, among others. The push e-mail solution, designed by Oracle and Consilient will be the first based on the emerging Push-IMAP standard, and is expected to be available during first quarter 2005, furthering the march towards integrated communications across multiple mobile devices and platforms. Nokia’s strategy of continuously forging relationships with multiple companies to provide a broad range of e-mail options on Nokia business-optimised devices such as the Nokia 9500 Communicator and Nokia 9300 enterprise smartphone includes alliances with Good Technology, IBM, Research In Motion, and Visto. Nokia also continues to market and develop its own mobile e-mail platform, Nokia One Business Server, targeted at corporations who want to extend their mobile e-mail to legacy browser-based mobile devices. In fact, the Enterprise Solutions group announced their strategy to become the device of choice for mobile e-mail and messaging in the enterprise market. The strategy aims to provide enterprises with a range of business-optimised mobile devices that not only excel as voice devices, but can support the widest range of mobile e-mail clients and supporting technologies and can integrate with leading enterprise applications. For Nokia, this means being able to offer enterprises a mobile e-mail environment for their unique needs. www.nokia.com
www.oracle.com

Nokia: Crown Castle joins to pilot DVB-H technology

Yet another chapter is unfolding in the battle to bring the TV screen and its contents to the mobile masses. And it’s all being made possible with global digital technology, as the first US pilot of DVB-H takes place. DVB-H is a standard specified by the Digital Video Broadcasting Organization specifically for the transmission of TV-like content and data to handheld devices, such as mobile phones. Nokia and Crown Castle have joined ranks to pilot DVB-H technology in the United States. Crown Castle already offers significant wireless communications coverage to 68 of the top 100 United States markets, and owns, operates and manages over 10,600 wireless communication sites in the U.S. The whole point of the exercise is to bring TV-like services to mobile devices. The pilot commenced in October, and aims to prove and test the feasibility of DVB-H technology and related service systems in this market space. The next step will be to expand the pilot to test consumer experiences and acceptance of a mobile phone TV service. Spokespeople from Nokia and Crown Castle aired their views in yesterday’s press release. “We believe this may be an important new technology for our company and our industry. We look forward to partnering with content providers and wireless service providers to introduce commercial services utilising the nation-wide spectrum that we acquired in 2003 and our extensive portfolio of US towers”, said Michael Schueppert, Senior Vice President – Business Development for Crown Castle. On the Nokia side, Seppo Sutela, Director, Rich Media, Nokia said, “Piloting with Crown Castle is a major milestone for Nokia. It will expand mobile phone TV services to United States, giving DVB-H standard a truly global reach. Mobile phone TV, based on DVB-H, will provide new attractive consumer services as well as business opportunities for all parties in the business system. Our pilot with Crown Castle is an important step towards that.” www.nokia.com
www.crowncastle.com

Europeans don’t Get Portable Video Players Yet

A new survey has found that Europeans are not enamoured by the all singing, all dancing devices that play songs and films, play video games and have a video-playback feature. Only 5% are interested in buying a device that plays both music and video, while a mere 7% would like their device to play games and video. But almost a third are interested in listening to music on a portable player such as an iPod.

5,000 consumers from Britain, Germany, France, Sweden, Spain and Italy were recently surveyed by Jupiter Research and the results were published yesterday.

Things might change, of course, if the multi-purpose gadgets could stay small, neat and inexpensive, and indeed Apple has managed to add photo display capabilities to the iPod without increasing its size.

It makes sense that 27% of European consumers would prefer to have music-only while on the move, since unlike movies, you really can listen and enjoy it whilst running or walking. As for the 13% who want to watch video while out and about, maybe they are the ones who have to wait the longest for buses and trains.

So, gadget makers sit up and take notice. Consumers want music, just music – 39% of French and 31% of British consumers were most interested in music players – and they want the sound quality to be top notch. That’s why lots of them have dedicated, digital music players. This is probably not really what Bill Gates wants to hear, with his Portable Media Center waiting in the wings.

Last months Jupiter Research report, ‘European Digital Music: Identifying Opportunity’, predicts that digital music revenue will reach €836 million(~$1,062m), or 8% of the total market, by 2009. While the growth of digital music players like Apple’s iPOD or the Creative Nomad Jukebox feature a lot in the news, CD’s still rule. So, it is sobering to remember that these statistics and reports are only referring to a tiny proportion of the music-listening public.

Qualcomm to Spend $800m on Video to Mobile Network

As if the cell phone was not already overburdened with cameras, music and video players and handheld computers, Qualcomm now want to add TV programs to the mix.

Qualcomm, the San Diego developer of wireless technology and maker of computer chips for cell phones have spotted a gap in the market that might increase sales of their chips. They have just announced plans for a subsidiary, MediaFLO USA Inc to deploy and operate a nationwide “mediacast” network, delivering high-quality video and audio programming to third-generation mobile phones at mass market prices in co-operation with US cellular operators.

QUALCOMM intends to offer the network as a shared resource for US CDMA2000 and WCDMA (UMTS) cellular operators, enabling them to deliver mobile interactive multimedia to their wireless subscribers without the cost of network deployment and operation. Content will be delivered to mobile devices in the 700 MHz spectrum that will enable the network to serve the whole country. It will be based on QUALCOMM’s FLO (Forward Link Only) technology, and will use the MediaFLO media distribution system for content aggregation, delivery and viewing.

The chain of events happens like this – MediaFLO will deliver news, sports or entertainment programs over the new ‘mediacast’, high-speed cell phone network to US wireless companies, who will in turn pay for the service beginning in 2006.

Supporting 50-100 national and local content channels, including up to 15 live streaming channels, this system will give TV stations and networks, cable TV and satellite operators and networks a major new distribution channel, enabling them to reach their audiences when they are away from home and on the go. Content will be delivered in an easy-to-use and familiar format at quality levels that dramatically surpass current mobile multimedia offerings through the use of QVGA video at up to 30 frames per second and high-quality stereo audio.

Dr Paul E. Jacobs, president of QUALCOMM Wireless and Internet Group sees this move as “the logical next step in the evolution of the wireless industry.” The network will cost US$800 million over the next four to five years.

It may not take on in Europe though. Only yesterday we learned from Jupiter Research that Europeans are less taken with the multi-functional gadgets.

Qualcomm