Wireless

Wireless connections

Freeview TV Homes Exceed Analogue For First Time
We wouldn’t normally bore you with tales of how many more percent of the UK population have joined the Digital TV-owning army, but this one is a significant one.
For the first time, the number of households having the BBC-backed Free-to-Air service, Freeview, has exceeded their analogue cousins. Nearly 7.1m have Freeview and 6.4m are still analogue only.
Freeview will also be pretty pleased that for the third successive quarter their sales have exceeded the 1 million mark, achieving 1.2m between January and March, up 40% over the same period last year.
Digital satellite is still the Digital Daddy, with 7.7m homes subscribing to Sky and the remaining 645,000 receiving free-to-view satellite.
There would have been relief at the recently-merged UK cable companies when they saw that there’d been an increase in the number of subscribers. The gain for NTL is only 5,000 subscribers in real terms as the additional new now-digital 70,000 digital cable subscribers were laid off against the 65,000 analogue subscribers who switched. These figures relate to the pre-merged companies.
Interestingly there still around 500,000 analogue subscribers out of the 3.3m total cable subscriber-base. Changing these has got to be a priority if NTL want to start making the returns they need from subscribers.
TV over ADSL First
For the first time Ofcom has reported separate figures for TV over ADSL services. Currently this is only London-focused HomeChoice, but they will be joined in short order by other IPTV companies like BT Vision. HomeChoice gained at a rate of 21.4% over the same period in 2005, ending with 48,545 subscribers.
Breaking down Sky’s figures
There’s some interest to be had comparing Sky’s Q4, 2005 figures with Q1 2006 – a couple of surprises lie in there.
Churn (number of subscribers leaving the service) is up to 11.4% over 10.6% and ARPU (Average Revenue Per User) is down £5 to £392 from £397. This doesn’t sound like a lot until you look at it in terms of income loss – over £38m.
On the positive front there was a gain of 87,000 households, with multi-room households gain 84,000 and Sky+ users up 149,000, now hitting 1,430,000.
Additional TV Sets – Ongoing problems
Ofcom are estimating that 38% of Freeview sales are intended to secondary TV sets which will start to allay a lot of fears.
The big hurdle for the UK digital switch-over gang is the replacement of the non-primary TV set, the bedroom TV & video, little Johnny’s TV and the spare that the babysitter uses. When the analogue-broadcast lights go off is when these people start to yell.
Ofcom UK Digital TV Q1 2006 report (PDF)
8 June, 2006
Samsung Announce True VGA Mobile Display
Mobile phone companies have been striving to develop high resolution displays to capitalise on the potential of multi-media content. This week, Samsung joined the growing list of manufacturers who have created a true VGA display suitable for mobile phones.
The 1.98″ LCD panel was debuted on Tuesday at the 2006 Society for Information Display International Conference and Exhibition in San Francisco. The screen uses the company’s proprietary amorphous silicon (a-Si) technology to achieve the same resolution as most desktop PC’s. It can display up to 16 million colours and supports extremely fast data transfer rates making it ideal for viewing video content.
According to Samsung, the screen has 10 times as many pixels per square inch as a typical 40″ HD TV meaning that your Big Brother clips will be rendered in super high definition.
VGA has been available on handheld devices for a while now. Toshiba debuted the first PDA with VGA display (the e805) back in December 2003 and the first VGA mobile, Sharp’s 904SH, launched in Japan in April this year. The latter has four times the resolution of the average QVGA (Quarter VGA) display and face recognition functions that authenticates users by their facial features.
All of this pixel-mania may be pleasing to electronics CEO’s and geek tech-heads but there are questions about the value of such high definition in such a small device. Higher resolution means greater pixel density which means smaller graphics. This doesn’t, necessarily, equate with ease of use. As one industry insider commented, “The fundamental issue is interface design not resolution. High resolution is primarily useful for viewing pictures – still or moving. Putting a Windows style UI (user interface) on a screen with a resolution greater than the human eye can detect doesn’t deliver a better product.”
Nokia has already had a stab at addressing this issue with their S60 browser Mini Map function which allows the user navigate around full HTML pages by zooming in and out. A feature which may point the way for future developments in interface design.
8 June, 2006
Mobile Consumers Are Lapping Up Convergence
Sad but (supposedly) true: a new study by Nokia has found that over one in five mobile owners said they’d find losing their phone more upsetting than their wallet, credit cards and – unbelievably – even their wedding ring.
Tempted though we are to find those people and give them a reality-introducing slap around the face with a wet fish, the survey does reflect the growing importance of mobiles in everyday life.
Clicking ticking mobiles
Nearly half (44 per cent) of mobile owners now use them as their primary camera – 68 per cent in India – with over two thirds predicting that music-enabled mobiles will soon rule the world, replacing MP3 players like iPods.
It doesn’t look like a good time to invest in Timex stocks, with the study finding that seventy two percent of mobile users no longer own a separate alarm clock – and nearly three quarters use their phones as their main watch or clock.
Nokia commissioned the research in 11 countries around the globe to discover people’s attitudes towards current and future mobiles, and generally found that people *heart* the things the planet over.
Such is the love for mobiles that users want to see them integrated even closer with their lives, with 42 per cent wanting their phones to be able to chat to their home networks, printer, PC, stereo, TV and mobile devices.
Curiously, 72 per cent of Saudi Arabians also wanted their fridges to be included in this network.
Surfing on the move
Mobile surfing continues to rise in popularity, with over a third (36%) of respondents browsing on their mobiles at least once a month, with Japan going for it big time, with 37% going online daily.
“The results strongly demonstrate that people are buying into the idea of convergence – they really do want one device that does it all, from taking quality images, to storing their music collections and operating a digitally connected home,” commented Tapio Hedman, senior vice-president of marketing, multimedia at Nokia.
Nokia
7 June, 2006
Nokia’s M-tickets Go Mainstream With Guns’n’Roses
Dandruff shakers looking forward to some geriatric rocking with Guns’n’Roses at the Hammersmith Apollo tomorrow night can forget all about keeping their tickets as a memento after the show.
That’s because the gig is set to be a high-profile trial of the new fangled mobile ticketing technology, where paying punters are sent barcodes to their phones instead of getting scrapbook-friendly paper tickets.
The m-tickets are disappointing looking affairs too, taking the form of a boring barcode and some text with event details.
Powered by technology provided by Nokia spin-off Ticketrush.co.uk, headband-toting rockers arriving at the gig will have to form an orderly queue to get their barcode tickets scanned by door staff.
It sounds nice and modern, but we’re already fostering fears of long lines of disgruntled rockers waiting in line as the door staff try and work out where the reset button is on their scanners.
Moreover, we don’t even like the idea of having tickets on our mobiles. What happens if your battery runs out, or if you delete your text message by accident?
It may save promoters printing costs and make the process of booking tickets all sleek, modern and Metropolis-like, but there are a lot of memories in old ticket stubs and, to misquote Johnny Thunders, you can’t put your arms around an m-ticket.
You can, of course, attempt to grab a personal record of the gig and annoy the people behind you all night by waving your glowing phone in the air.
With luck, you’ll end up with a blocky, distorted set of unrecognisable moving blobs in the far distance obscured by a forest of glowing phones in front of you.
Regardless of what punters want, The Man is pressing ahead for a bright virtual ticket future, with O2 working with technology provider, Mobiqa to provide m-tickets to this month’s O2 Wireless Festival in London – and in their first week, they managed to shift a hefty £100,000 worth of the things.
For kids too poor to get into gigs – and crafty freeloaders – the new m-ticketing may raise the bar for sneaking in free, but a part of us hopes that some clever nerds find a way to beat the system.
Otherwise they’ll never know the joys of our misspent youth, where we managed to get into a gig by the mighty Thin Lizzy by drawing a ticket.
The band were so impressed by our cheek that they signed the well-dodgy tickets after the gig. Try doing that with a chuffing m-ticket.
Ticketrush
6 June, 2006
GNER Offer Free On-Train WiFi Trial
GNER is so chuffed by the fact that all its East Coast trains will be offering Wi-Fi by August this year, it’s offering the service free of charge to all passengers, sorry, customers, this summer.
Of course, the announcement might just be a marketing stunt to make more people aware of the service (and hey! it’s working!), but we’ve no problem bigging up freebies when we hear about them.
Although first class passengers already get free Wi-Fi, serfs in ~~cattle class~~, ~~second class~~, standard class usually have to shell out wildly inflated prices for miserly chunks of Wi-Fi access; £2.95 for half an hour, nearly a fiver for an hour and a whopping tenner for just two hours access.
Thanks to GNER’s offer, summer travellers on their trains can trial the service and gorge themselves on a freebie, one-off unlimited 24-hour Wi-Fi session, from Monday 5th June to Monday 31st July.
Punters looking to hook up to their piece of wireless freebie action simply have to flip open their laptops, open up a browser window and let it automatically detect the GNER gateway page to Wi-Fi heaven.
Wi-Fi proves a hit with travellers
GNER has seen strong demand for their in-train Wi-Fi service, bringing forward the cross-fleet rollout from its planned May 2007 deadline to August this year.
The service works via a roof-mounted satellite dish and mobile phone antenna using 3G and GPRS, connected to each coach along the entire length of the train, making a train-long mobile WiFi ‘hot-spot.’
According to GNER, this will make them the first UK train operator to offer a fully wi-fi-enabled service.
Speaking last month, GNER chief executive Christopher Garnett was awash with Wi-Fi praise: “For a business user, wi-fi creates a truly mobile office, while leisure users can shop, keep up to date with news and sport or book a weekend break at the end of their journey.”
GNER
31 May, 2006
Nokia Mobile S60 Browser Code Goes Open Source
At the W3C conference in Edinburgh today, in a move to get the mobile industry (and possibly more) to standardise on a single Web browser, Nokia has released the source code for the mobile Web browser it developed last year.
Using the same open-source frameworks used by Apple’s Safari browser, originally created by the KDE team, Nokia designed a browser for its S60 phone range, adding various enhancements designed to improve mobile browsing.
Under the open source deal, any individual software developer, third party mobile phone makers or operators can get their grubby mitts on the software engine that powers the Nokia-developed browser and customise it for their own needs.
Nokia’s S60 Web Browser for S60 is a fully fledged affair, offering full mobile browsing of complete Web pages straight off the Internet, complete with support for AJAX technologies, dynamic HTML and scripting languages.
Nokia intend to offer “active participation” with the open source community, sharing enhancements, widgets and improvements to the core browser engine in real time.
“We want to reduce the fragmentation currently in place in mobile browsing,” said Lee Epting, VP of Forum Nokia, Nokia’s software development support program.
Although sceptics may suggest the last thing rivals would want to do is to start using a Nokia browser, she insisted that the terms of the ‘liberal license’ would let anyone use the code to develop their own commercial offerings.
The source code will be made available to open source developers through the WebKit Open Source Project.
Further resources can also be found at Nokia Opensourcesite and Nokia S60 browser.
24 May, 2006
Moto Q Smartphone Finally Launches
Months later than expected, Motorola’s new ‘Blackberry-killer’ smartphone, the Moto Q has finally been launched on the Verizon network in the US.
Dubbed the RAZRberry, the pocket-size Q is slightly thinner than Motorola’s monster-selling RAZR phone, with the company claiming that it’s the smallest device offering a QWERTY keyboard on the market.
Powered by Microsoft’s Windows Mobile 5.0 operating system, Motorola are describing the Moto Q as a “mini notebook” that will enable customers to leave their bulky laptops at home.
As we reported back in July 2005, the handset comes with EVDO wireless capabilities, a QVGA screen (at 320 x 240, still noticeably smaller than the 320 x 320 resolution of rival Palm Treo 700p), Bluetooth 1.2, 1.3MP camera and handy thumb scrollwheel. But no Wi-Fi.
Denny Strigl, president and CEO of Verizon Wireless, was on hand to whip up a whirlwind of PR froth: “The Moto Q offers power, style and ease-of-use in a cool ultrathin format, giving Verizon Wireless customers an uncompromising experience in one device.”
The Moto Q sure packs in a lot of functionality, offering e-mail, instant messages and short messages, backed up by business features like integration with Microsoft Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Adobe Acrobat.
“We think the opportunity extends beyond business users,” enthused Mark Shockley who regales under the fabulously American job title of “vice president of seamless mobility” in Motorola’s Mobile Devices unit.
Shockley insisted that the Q is for people with a “life balance” (a what?) who want to use their phones to listen to music, take photos, record short videos and play games.
Although Motorola seem to be aiming this phone at the mass market, we see it more as a bit of superslim strumpet aiming to woo current BlackBerry/Palm Treo users.
Although both those phones command a fierecly local user base, that wafer-thin form factor might just be enough to tempt them to jump ship.
Moto Q
23 May, 2006
Japan Gets Sony Ericsson W42S 3G Walkman Phone
Sony Ericsson has announced its first Walkman phone for Japan today and it looks like a beaut.
Due to be launched by Japanese wireless carrier KDDI in June, the W42S 3G packs a hefty 1GB of internal memory backed up by a Memory Stick Pro DUO expansion slot offering up to 4GB of storage.
The new Walkman phone comes with a power saving mode to keep the tunes pumping for up to 30 hours of playback, with the onboard player supporting MP3, AAC, AAC+ and eAAC+ music format files.
As a result of a partnership with KDDI, owners can gorge themselves on a feast of top tunes when they’re on the move, thanks to their LISMO music service which currently boasts a mighty 5 million downloads per month.
True to its Walkman heritage, the slide-out phone has a smorgasbord of built-in dedicated music controls, including a natty new mechanical navigation wotsit bolted on to the bottom of the phone.
Although it look a bit odd stuck on the phone, anyone who’s used the similar controls on Sony’s minidisk and MP3 players will now how easy they are to use.
The phone also comes with a 1.3 megapixel camera, a 2.2-inch, 240 x 320 pixels, 262k colour LCD screen, an FM radio and an Electronic Programme Guide (EPG) to keep punters well-fed with programming schedules.
There’s been no firm announcement of the retail price yet, although it’s hotly rumoured to be around the $180 mark, and no announcement of a UK release yet, natch.
Sony Ericsson W42S [Japanese]
23 May, 2006
The Wireless Event Recapped
The Wireless Event took place on Wednesday and Thursday at Olympia in London, it’s an industry show that stands out for exhibitors trying to sell to other exhibitors – who probably outnumber visitors (well maybe a slight exaggeration).
The theme of the exhibition is WiFi, WiMAX, 3G and VoIP and it comes with all the hype that surrounds them. There was little of anything new at the show, and wandering around upstairs, showed half the floorspace hadn’t been sold.
Unfortunately for a wireless show, getting a working connection to a WiFi network was almost impossible, mainly due to the number of networks available all interfering with each other. Maybe it should have been called the Wire Event or the Wireless Less Event. If metro WiFi is going to succeed then all the access points better be smart enough to not ‘tread on each others toes’ or it just isn’t going to work.
There were a lot of infrastructure companies trying to sell WiFi or WiMAX systems, some in the consumer space, but mainly for service providers. Of the mobile networks, only T-Mobile had a big stand, Orange had a small “business” services stand and O2 had a section of the Cloud’s stand.
There were some interesting products, but only a few. Here’s the cream of the crop.
Our pick of the show
Ruckus sell a WiFi access point, however the guts of the Ruckus system is what Netgear use for their RangeMAX range, which uses multiple antennae to steer the radio signals. Ruckus’s own version is more advanced and they are supporting things like streaming video. As an example of use, you can connect a media converter to a Sky TV box and then get decent quality through the WiFi connection to a TV several hundred feet away. Here the stream is converted back to a TV signal with another media converter. The access point looks quite pretty too – good for home use.
USR aka (US Robotics) have announced a USB handset that works with Skype. It’s really just a USB sound-device, but looks like a phone and has Skype integration (i.e. you can pull your contacts etc from Skype and they show in the phone’s display). They’ve also got a USB Skype conferencing device so several people sitting around a table can listen and speak on the call. Their ADSL/ADSL2+/Wireless routers are all now very simple to configure with wireless security turned on by default and basic ISP settings pre-configured.
Nokia had their new E series phone, with the E61 standing out from the pack. It runs Symbian and has support for several push Email systems included (Nokia Business Centre, Blackberry, Visto, Seven, and others). It’s about the same size as the Blackberry, but thinner with a metal casing and very bright colour display. It’s also a nice 3G phone.
The Cloud were there with a HUGE O2 Exec (aka i-mate JASJAR), anyone using the Exec can log-in to the Cloud’s homepage through WiFi, hit the O2 logo, enter their mobile number and the user will be phoned back. If they enter the digit 1 they’ll be granted access (and billed to that number).
BT Openzone had just announced their Wireless Cities initiative whereby Birmingham, Edinburgh, Leeds, Liverpool, Cardiff and Westminster are being made into hotzones. BT Openzone have a roaming agreement with the Cloud, but this puts them in direct competition (The Cloud are also offering wireless zones in various cities). Let’s hope the zones don’t overlap or connectivity issues will be as big a mess as the exhibition coverage was.
Zyxel had a their normal range of wired/wireless and security products. The star of their stand was their keyfob wireless hotspot locator. It works with all modes of WiFi (i.e. 802.11a/b/g) and supports unsecured and secure networks (WEP, WPA etc) showing what networks are available (at least 9 were available around the Zyxel stand).
The best bit of the show by far was the massages provided by Urban Chill. After a day wandering around Olympia it was just what was needed (thanks Lucy). To be honest had the massage come first, the rest of the show would have been a write-off.
19 May, 2006
Sony Launch AR-Series Blu-ray Laptops And VGN-UX50 Ultra Mobile PC
Sony has whipped out its first laptop equipped with a next-generation Blu-ray optical disk drive, saying that it will be available in Japan next month.
The electronics and entertainment giant also said that it would be unveiling a handheld PC that uses NAND flash memory instead of a hard disk drive during the same month.
VAIO AR-Series
The Blu-ray equipped Vaio notebook is expected to retail for about 400,000 yen ($3,600) – matching the price tag for Toshiba’s new notebooks equipped with the rival HD DVD drive.
Flagship of the new VAIO AR-Series is the AR11S laptop which will feature a hefty 17-inch WideUltraXGA2 screen with a native resolution of 1920 x 1200 for watching full HD resolution video.
The AR-Series will also come with a HDMI (High Definition Multimedia Interface) output for hooking up the lappie to a HD-ready TV or Full HD desktop display.
Lurking inside the shiny beast is an Intel Core Duo processor (up to and including the 2GHz T2500) and a NVIDIA GeForce Go 7600 graphics card with 256MB of dedicated video memory.
There’s also a built in digital camera and microphone onboard, a hybrid Digital TV-Ready (DVB-T) Tuner and a veritable ton of storage space available, up to 200GB.
Full pricing details for the UK are yet to be announced, but the words ‘Sony’ and ‘Blu-ray’ invariably mean, “wallet draining,” with the AR Premium Blu-ray enabled model looking set to be banged out around the $3,500 mark, while the AR Standard model be around $1,800,
Sony’s VGN-UX50 takes on Origami
Sony has also announced a palm-top computer set to compete with Microsoft’s much trumpeted Origami project.
Smaller than a paperback book, Sony’s new handheld computer runs on Microsoft’s Windows XP operating system and comes with a touch screen and small built-in keyboard.
Powered by Intel Core Solo U1400 (1.2 Ghz)/U1300 (1.06 Ghz) the pint-sized PC will sport an Intel 945GMS Express chipset, 512MB RAM, 20/30 GB hard drive and 69 key QWERTY keyboard.
Sony’s engineers have managed to wedge in a slide-out 4.5 inch WSVGA (1024×600) touchscreen display which can be used in portrait and landscape modes.
Other features include a 1.3 Megapixel Motion eye camera, Wi-Fi a/b/g, Bluetooth 2.0, Fingerprint sensor, Memory stick / Compact Flash card slot and a dock offering 3 x USB ports, 1 x Firewire port, Ethernet jack, 1 x VGA out and Felica reader (wireless payment service in Japan).
Sony will also be releasing a NAND Flash memory version of the Ultra Mobile PC, providing ‘instant on’ capability.
Sony plans to start selling the handheld PC in Japan from the end of May (for around 170,000 yen ~£820), with US deliveries following some time after.
Sony
17 May, 2006