Wireless – Page 108 – Digital-Lifestyles

China: 300 Million Mobile Users by 2005

The Chinese Ministry for Industry has released new figures which demonstrate the vast scale of the mobile market in China, and its potential for growth.

Although the percentage of mobile phone owners in China will still be relatively low at just 24.5% of the population in 2005, this will still mean 300 million subscribers. In contrast, approximately 65% of Europeans own a mobile phone, with the US catching up at 50%.

Currently, China’s 295,700,000 mobile phones account for half of all money spent communications. There are still another 800 million potential customers to reach, though the barriers of bringing access to rural areas and the cost of services must yet be dealt with.

Chinese mobile users send 300 million text messages a day – accounting for one third of the World’s total 510 billion of SMS sent every in 2003. Not bad for something that was tacked onto GSM as a afterthought and costs network operators virtually nothing to handle.

China Mobile

BT Launch New Broadband Satellite Service, Satellite Broadband 500.

Literally aimed at rural businesses, BT have introduced a new broadband satellite service providing 500kps to areas where there there are currently no ADSL facilities. The service is carried on Intelsat’s IS-907 satellite and covers the entire UK – if it’s successful, BT has an option to take the service into Western Europe.

The product, Satellite Broadband 500, comes in two flavours – Plus and “Lite”. Lite is for single users with a need for web access, whilst Plus is for multiple users requiring LAN connectivity.

The service will be available from BT Retail, but will also be offered wholesale for other ISPs and operators to resell. Subscription charges are competitive, starting at UK£46.99 (€75) per user for Lite and UK£85.99 (€129) for Plus. However, equipment prices start at UK£699 (€1048), and standard installation is UK£250 (€375). Subscriptions come with a dedicated BT support network.

Jonathan Wing, Head of Satellite Broadband at BT Broadcast Services, said in a statement: “There is a clear and demonstrated need for businesses, ISPs and others in the UK to have high-quality, high-speed, satellite broadband connections. Satellite broadband enables businesses and ISPs to be effective and competitive, wherever their offices are located.”

Japanese Consumers Protest at Broadcast Flag

Japanese television viewers have begun complaining to broadcasters over the sudden removal of editing and copying freedoms they’re experiencing now that the country’s version of the broadcast flag has been rolled out on digital terrestrial and cable channels.

NHK and and the National Association of Commercial Broadcasters launched the broadcast flag on 5 April, limiting viewers to a single copy of programmes carrying the signal. As programmes can only be copied once, no editing can be performed either. Within a week NHK and other broadcasters had received 15,000 complaints and enquiries.

This move also means that Japanese consumers will not be able to remove adverts from programmes they have recorded for archiving, or make a backup in case an offline recording is destroyed.

Furthermore, viewers have to insert a user identification card, B-CAS (from the company who manufactures them, BS Conditional Access Systems), into their digital televisions in order to watch broadcasts.

It’ll be interesting to see the scale of protest when America’s broadcast flag system rolls out in just over a year and a month – whilst not requiring an ID card to access broadcasts, the flag will tell all new television sets what can and can’t be done to a signal – right down to preventing any copying whatsoever.

Japan Times coverage

Slashdot debates the issue

SanDisk’s Combined WiFi and Memory SD Card

Storage specialists SanDisk will release a new addition to their product range next month – and we think that PocketPC users will get quite excited about it. It’s an SD memory card with a 802.11b transceiver built in.

The low-power card is compatible with devices running the PocketPC 2002, PocketPC 2003 and Windows Mobile 2003 operating systems and will provide a theoretical 11Mbps bandwidth over a range of about 800 feet.

SanDisk’s marketing manager Dave Smurthwaite made a bold statement with the card’s unveiling: “We think we’re about a year ahead of competitors.” So expect the market to be flooded with competitors’ versions in about four months’ time.

The card won’t be available for another month, but when it does appear it’ll be about US$130 (€107). Not only does that work out at about US$20 (€16.50) cheaper than buying a memory card and a WiFi adapter, users get the added convenience of only using one slot on their PDA.

SanDisk

UK Cinemas To Get 250 Digital Screens

Around £13 million (€19 million) of National Lottery money will be spent on installing 250 digital projectors in UK cinemas.

Apart from some quality improvements, the main benefit here is that distribution costs for films plummet – there are no expensive reels of film to cart around, and the number of screens a film can be shown on is not limited to the number of prints in existence. At upwards of £1000 (€1472) a print, it can be very costly to get enough copies together to secure a decent cinema release.

Hopefully, this means we’ll be able to see Wings of Desire in the cinema a bit more often.

Anyone who has seen a digitally projected film knows that improved quality is not always the case – there can be digital artefacts and some colour washout, so it’s not a case of digital better than film yet.

To qualify for the money, cinemas will set aside a portion of screen time to niche films, so that customers will have more rewarding fare to watch than the usual brain-devouring noise.

This new move will put the UK well ahead of the rest of the world when it comes to digital projection – there are currently only 190 digital cinema projectors around the world, with about a dozen in the UK.

UK Film Council

Sony “iPod” Killer Will Play Video

Another week, another “iPod killer” story: Sony have announced that the next version of their Vaio Pocket audio player will play video too.

Sony is keen to get back some of the portable media player market lost to Apple, and is hoping to do so with its next range of machines. Sony’s players will be backed with an online Sony music store, Connect, so the company will be able to provide the entire content process – from PC to content to player. Sony’s insistence on using its own proprietary audio format to reduce piracy may make the job of growing market share harder as customers’ ease of use suffers.

Sony unveiled their new music player in Japan this week, the VGF-AP1. Whilst the device features a 2.2″ colour screen, it’s for the user interface only: it can’t play video.

Sony is working with the Digital Home Networking group to define standards for device interoperability, and will use 802.11g to transmit video from its next generation Vaio Pocket to compatible televisions.

Sony’s new music player

Nintendo DS Specs

Nintendo have been leader of the hand-held video game platform for the past fifteen years – no-one has ever been able to come close. Many have tried – Sega with the Game Gear, Atari with their Lynx console. Sony even had a mild go with the PocketStation. What do you mean you’ve never heard of it?

Nintendo’s monopoly of the market is even more surprising considering how dated their GameBoy platform is looking. They got away with the standard GameBoy for nearly ten years before finally adding colour to it. Even the GBA SP isn’t an enormous leap beyond previous GameBoys.

With Nokia’s N-GAGE QD on the horizon and the PlayStation Portable getting closer every day, Nintendo know that they’ve got to release something pretty special to stay ahead – hence the DS.

Rumours flew around the internet for months over what the machine would be like – and it seems that some of the more outlandish claims are actually true.

Here are the facts:

It has really does have two screens
It’s true, one of the screens has touch input
The two processors allow true 3D polygon graphics on both screens
Voice recognition is built in
It has built in wireless communications
It has a chat client
The battery is rechargeable like the GBA SP
The game media is smaller than a GBA game cartridge – and can store over a gigabit

The new console is certainly innovative – and might well prevent Sony or Nokia taking over their party, but we’ve yet to see any confirmation on how much it’s going to cost. Since the console is certainly not a phone, its price won’t be subsidised with a service contract – but we think it’ll probably come in a bit cheaper than Sony’s PSP, which is being targeted at an older (and slightly richer audience). This puts it at about $150 (€127)– but what will this mean for the suddenly, massively, outdated GBA SP at $100 (€84.50)?
Nintendo on the DS

Picture Messaging Slow in the UK

Although picture messaging seems very popular with troops in Iraq at the moment, the service is yet to make any impact in the UK, says a survey by NOP.

Texting took a while to take off – but look what happened when it eventually did. Network providers are hoping for much the same thing – in fact, Sicap, who provide messaging products to mobile operators are rather hoping that Euro 2004 and the Olympic games will lure customers into MMS adoption.

There are two main reasons given for the lack of messaging: 45% don’t have a handset (kind of crucial, really – and also applies if your friends don’t have any either), and 17% don’t know how to send them. Odd then, that they would go to the expense of buying such a well-featured phone. But given that I still receive text messages THAT LOOK LIKE THIS, then it’s not surprising that people only have a limited amount of patience in learning how things work.

Indeed, on the rare occasions when I venture out, there seems to be little use of picture phones in real life situations. Phone users tend to take a few snaps when they first get their new phone, but after a while apathy, privacy infringement fears and the hail of tutting from those nearby soon dampen any enthusiasm for sending your mates a picture of the great time you’re pretending to have.

“The findings of our survey highlight that we will still have a lot more to do as an industry to encourage consumers to embrace MMS in the same way as they have SMS,” said Per-Johan Lundin, Head of Marketing, Sicap. “The first goal is to drive as many MMS compatible handsets into the hands of users as possible. Secondly, the services need to extremely user friendly like Vodafone Live. But the final piece of the jigsaw puzzle is compelling content. Some of this will be generated by users themselves but a lot will need to be generated around the content that consumers are really interested in like sports.”

If picture messaging is this slow in the UK, then you can bet it’s nowhere in the US, which tends to drag behind Europe in the mobile market.

Sicap

Microsoft Drop WiFi Hardware Range

Microsoft are dropping another hardware line – this time it’s WiFi network cards, laptop adapters and broadband networking routers. If you didn’t know that MS sold this sort of hardware, it was in the North American market only. They started selling the equipment in 2002, to favourable reviews and customer comments.

Microsoft have yet to comment on why they are dropping their WiFi line, but it’s though that this move will allow them to focus on their key software businesses.

They’ll allow current stocks to sell out and support the hardware through its warranty period, but then that’s it. The wireless XBox adapter will stay on the market however, underlining MS’s commitment to their innovative games platform.

MSNBC on the news

Wi-Fi Alliance to jump early on IEEE WLAN standard

Claiming that they want to get the market moving, the Wi-Fi Alliance is starting its certification programme for wireless Quality of Service (QoS) in September before the official declaration of the standard by the IEEE. The IEEE is expected to declare the standard by the end of 2004 at the earliest.

WiFi standards really are a confusing alphabet soup. 802.11b is the original 11Mbps wireless running at 2.4GHz frequency, confusingly 802.11a runs faster at 54Mpbs but at the higher frequency of 5GHz, 802.11g is 54Mbps at 2.4GHz, 802.11i has enhanced security, 802.11h is concerned with spectrum and power control management, 802.11e will provide QoS. Even the trade finds it confusing, never mind the consumer, hence the creations of terms like WiFi.

WME (Wi-Fi Multimedia Extensions), part of 802.11e, will provide QoS which is important for a number of applications. Currently all packets of data on a WiFi network are treated equally, but for some sensitive types of traffic such as video, audio and voice it is more important that those data packets arrive before thing such as web pages. If the sensitive packets do not arrive on time or in order, the playback of them can become choppy – not what the consumer is expecting.

Frank Hanzlik, managing director of the Wi-Fi Alliance explained the importance of this for home media networks, “You need to be able to manage bandwidth and prioritise the packets if you’re sending a video image from your PC to your television.”

Pre-empting the release of standard is a worrying trend that is becoming more common. A commercial entity or industry body gambles that they can possibly influence the market by releasing equipment with their pre-emptive ‘standard’. They hope that if the purchasing public has gone their route and bought substantial amount of equipment using it, it itself becomes the standard.

Wi-Fi Alliance

IEEE