Wireless

Wireless connections

Taiwan NFC Scheme Moves On, BenQ Supplies Handsets
According to industry insiders, trials of mobile phones doubling as payment tools will be taking place in Taiwan shortly, marking a big step for the nation’s contactless technology development.
They’re using Near Field Communication (NFC), a close-range wireless technology that operates over a few centimeters, enabling the simple transfer of information. Created by Nokia Corporation, Royal Philips Electronics and Sony Corporation, it uses a restricted version of RFID and we’ve been last 18 months, or so.
Taiwanese cardholders can already make payments at contracted petrol stations, coffee shops, video rental stores, train stations etc by simply waving their NFC-enabled device in front of sensor devices.
BenQ, one of the 12 partners in the NFC consortium, is expected to deliver 100 new mobile phones embedded with smart chips for the trial program next month.
Stage one of the trials will be conducted by Taipei Smart Card Corp, who will start testing the BenQ phones as a means of payment for services on bus lines, the MRT and public parking lots in the capital.
If that all goes tickety-boo, developers will look to strike deals with mobile service providers to integrate chips with Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) cards in handsets, giving access to mobile banking functions and even debit or credit card functionality.
The merging of cell phones and IC-chips is part of the government’s M-Taiwan (mobile-Taiwan) scheme, which put together a (NFC) consortium in November last year.
Taiwan’s alliance pooled the resources of BenQ, Taipei Smart Card, the Institute for Information Industry, five cellphone service providers, MasterCard International and Visa International.
NFC handset payment services are already tickling the public’s imagination in Japan and South Korea.
In Japan, Sony has been conducting contactless payment services with a mobile phone operator and train company, and in South Korea, SK Telecom has launched the Moneta card program with a circulation of 100,000 Visa-enabled mobile handsets.
According to Peter Manners, regional head of Visa International Asia-Pacific, the next phase is to promote the use of Universal Subscriber Identity Module (USIM) cards in 3G handsets.
Addressing besuited execs at the Smart Card Expo at the Taipei International Convention Center, Manners said Taiwan is second only to Malaysia in the Asia-Pacific in terms of chip-embedded card penetration.
Nokia 3220 Brings Contactless Payment and Ticketing
BenQ
NFC Forum
10 May, 2005
BlackBerry Harvests More Than 3 Million Subscribers
Research In Motion (RIM) have announced that that the BlackBerry wireless communicator now boasts 3 million worldwide subscribers, with one million subscribers added in less than six months.
The rise of RIM users has been astonishing. BlackBerry subscribers reached the one million mark in February 2004 with that figure being doubled in less than ten months as the company reached two million subscribers in November 2004.
“It’s an exciting time as BlackBerry continues to enjoy enormous success and rapid growth around the world,” purred Jim Balsillie, Chairman and Co-CEO, Research In Motion. “With over 50,000 retail points of presence, accelerated geographic expansion and the anticipated addition of 100 new carriers in 2005, we are scaling our operations for the five million and 10 million subscriber milestones.”
BlackBerry Enterprise Server’s ability to integrate with Microsoft Exchange, IBM Lotus Domino and Novell GroupWise (and other existing enterprise systems) has proved a hit with corporate customers keen to take advantage of push-based wireless access to e-mail and other corporate data.
Individuals and smaller businesses have also been attracted to the BlackBerry Internet Service, which allows users to access up to ten corporate and/or personal e-mail accounts (including Microsoft Exchange, IBM Lotus Domino and many popular ISP email accounts) from a single device.
Looking to the future, RIM is teaming up with Microsoft and IBM to extend instant messaging to BlackBerry subscribers through Microsoft Office Live Communications Server 2005 and Lotus instant messaging.
Pulsating with confidence, the company says it is gearing up to cope first with 5m subscribers and then 10m users, although it failed to give any idea of when they might expect to pass these hefty milestones.
With the NTP lawsuit now resolved, RIM is free to follow its European initiative and license its Blackberry Connect software to US mobile phone vendors, so we can expect to see more third-party phones and handsets connecting to the service.
Recent figures revealed that BlackBerry recorded a 76 percent increase in its total sales in the first quarter of 2005, while its main competitor Palm saw its sales slide by 26 percent.
Research In Motion (RIM)
RIM settles NTP lawsuit for $450m
9 May, 2005
Mobile Penetration In Europe To Hit 100% By 2007: Analysis
Cell phone penetration in Western Europe will hit 100% by 2007 as mobile-loving customers continue to scoop up multiple phones and phone cards.
A report by management consultancy Analysys Research revealed that active mobile penetration – which excludes phones that have not been used for about three months – would rise to 98% in 2006 (up from 90% in 2004) and eventually exceed 100% in western Europe.
The consultancy also warned that the market would stagnate in markets where operators shunned the cheaper pay-as-you-go offerings in an attempt to benefit from more lucrative contract deals.
(Contract deals usually involve customers signing up for 12-18 months, thus delivering stabilised customer revenues – or, as they call it in the trade, ARPU – average revenues per user.)
“In countries such as France and Germany, operators have an opportunity to increase penetration by marketing pre-paid offerings, which is often the best way to attract certain segments of the population, but they should not lose sight of profitability,” commented report co-author, Alex Zadvorny.
“Italy, where ARPU has been in line with the Western European market average and registered the slowest decline among the major European countries between 2000 and 2004, is a good example of how the prevalence of pre-paid does not necessarily suppress ARPU,” be continued.
In countries like Italy, Sweden and the UK, growth in penetration has shown no signs of abating, with penetration rising from 93%, 93% and 89%, respectively, in 2003 to 104%, 103% and 101% in 2004.
Although some people might think that the rise is fuelled by drug dealers toting multiple phones for ‘business’, the increase is actually explained by customers buying multiple phones and/or SIM cards.
Zadvorny explained that sales were also boosted by 3G, giving opportunities to “stabilise and potentially even grow voice ARPU by using the efficiency of the technology and offering large bundles of minutes”
“At the same time, in order to take advantage of the mobile data services opportunity, operators need to address factors such as transparency of pricing, standardisation and ease of use of devices, and the implementation of the relevant billing systems,” he added.
Analysys expects mobile service revenue to grow at a healthy 9% per year between 2004 and 2007, with 3G video phones creaking open more wallets with an alluring fare of video, Internet and music services.
Analysys
6 May, 2005
WiMAX Cuddle Between Sprint And Intel
With a manly backslap, Intel and Sprint have announced that they will work together to advance development of the 802.16e WiMAX standard.
WiMAX is an acronym for Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (snappy, eh?) and the technology aims to provide wireless broadband connectivity to fixed, portable and mobile devices without the need for line-of-sight to a base station.
The two companies will share technical specifications and equipment trials, and run interoperability tests to examine possible wireless broadband devices and services.
In case that sounded too simple, here’s Oliver Valente, CTO and VP of technology development for Sprint, to baffle you with a buzzword remix: “Our relationship with Intel will help validate requirements, drive key ecosystem development needs, formulate network strategies and define the potential for advanced wireless services adoption”.
Intel has been bigging up WiMAX with an eye to repeating their successful experience as the leading provider of Wi-Fi chipsets.
Although doubters of WiMAX maintain that competition with the 3G cell-phone service will render the technology redundant, both Intel and Sprint view portability as a winning approach to the technology, insisted that WiMAX “can provide high-capacity wireless broadband coverage and services throughout metro areas and an enriched multimedia user experience.”
Sean Maloney, another executive with an impossibly long job description (“executive vice president and general manager of the Intel Mobility Group”) added: “WiMAX technology has the promise to deliver new broadband services to consumers globally.”
The partnership hopes to draw on Sprint/Nextel’s substantial holdings in 2.5GHz spectrum band, although it’s been described as a “messy complex band” by wireless specialist Joe Nordgaard of Spectral Advantage, who added, “It’s going to be very difficult to come out with a common worldwide solution similar to Wi-Fi.”
Intel WiMAX
Sprint WiMAX
6 May, 2005
3 Get Granada’s Celebrity Wrestling TV Footage To Mobiles
UK third-generation mobile phone network 3, have teamed up with TV production and distribution company Granada to bring the popular ITV show, Celebrity Wrestling, to video mobiles for the first time.
(Note to readers unacquainted with this particular TV show: it’s a series of dreadful wrestling matches featuring barrel-scraping Z-List ‘celebrities’ desperately seeking tabloid fame).
The new agreement will give 3 network users access to the show’s ‘highlights’ with the added ‘bonus’ of backstage outtakes.
Gareth Jones, COO of 3 thinks the idea is a whoop-de-do winner: “TV shows like this are ideal for our ‘Today on 3’ service, we’re tapping into programmes that we know our customers really enjoy and we’re providing it to them in bite-size chunks on 3.”
Building up to a crescendo of celebrity-fuelled excitement, Jonesy went on: “Our customers are watching Celebrity Wrestling at home on TV, reading about it in the newspapers and through this new agreement with Granada, they can now watch the highlights on 3.”
Katrina Moran, Granada Interactive lined up for a synergistic snog: “We’re excited to be working with 3 and delighted to see Celebrity Wrestling proving so popular on 3’s video mobile network. We know Celebrity Wrestling fans won’t want to miss any of the action, with 3 they can watch their favourite moments on the move and even get the backstage uncut action too.”
Lord knows who would want to fork out for this dreadful tack, but Granada will be supplying around sixty video clips to 3 customers over the course of the eight week series, with the clips charged at 50p each (or included within add-on packages).
Why anyone would want to fork out to view the cray-zeeee backstage antics of a load of stretching-the-definition-of-the-word ‘celebrities’ on a mobile screen sure beats us, but it provide ample proof of the old adage; ‘where there’s muck, there’s brass’.
Celebrity Wrestling
Granada TV
5 May, 2005
T-Mobile Trials 2Mb WiFi On Southern Trains
T-Mobile is offering a free WiFi pilot service on Southern Rail’s busy London-to-Brighton train service in readiness for a full launch in June.
The service, part of a £1 billion improvement project for Southern Rail, will be rolled out on 14 trains supplied by 60 Wi-Fi base stations along the route.
T-Mobile have been trialing the service for several months, with a limited amount of base stations offering 256K upload speeds and download speeds at 2Mbit. T-Mobile has said these speeds will be upgraded on launch.
Despite limited publicity, freeloading passengers have been using the service, with T-Mobile logging seventy-five users over a ten day period from 1st April.
Most of the users were morning commuters, alerted to the service by stickers in the carriage windows.
From June onwards, passengers will have to fork out for the service as T-Mobile introduces its national HotSpot prices.
T-Mobile manager for WiFi Jay Saw was in full corporate PR spin mode as he enthused: “We are the only operator that has placed GPRS, 3G and WiFi at the centre of its strategy. That differentiates us from the competition. We’re the world’s largest network – by our own definition.”
“The Brighton Express has four million regular commuters. We’re the first to install broadband on a train,” beamed Saw, adding that, “Southern, along with our own research and feedback, tells us that there’s a lot of demand. And the feedback from the early users so far has been very positive. We are trying to maximise the value of dead time for commuters.”
Nomad Digital executive chairman Nigel Wallbridge, whose company is responsible for the build and operation of the WiFi network, sounded positively loved up as he set his backslap motors to full: “In my business life, I have rarely had a better experience than working with T-Mobile and Southern, and the railways rarely get good press in Britain.”
We hope to have a hands-on test of the service shortly.
Southern Railway
T-Mobile UK
5 May, 2005
Nokia Set To Become World’s Biggest Camera And MP3 Manufacturer
Nokia continues to be the Big Cheese of the worldwide mobile handset market, shipping nearly twice as many phones as its nearest competitor, Motorola.
According to a report by IDC, Nokia shipped 53.8 million handsets in the first quarter of 2005, representing a chunky 30.9% share of the market.
Motorola lagged a fair way behind with 28.7 million shipments (16.5% of the market), followed by fast-rising Samsung, who had 24.5 million shipments and 14.1% of the market.
Nokia anticipates continued success and expects to shift 25 million smartphones in 2005 – twice as many as the 12 million it sold in 2004.
According to data from Canalys, it’s already off to a flying start, shipping almost 5.4 million smartphones in the traditionally slow first quarter, a triple fold increase from last year.
Overall, global shipments of smart mobile devices were up 82% year on year in Q1 2005, with Nokia grabbing half the market, followed by palmOne, RIM (Blackberry) and Fujitsu.
Phenomenal camera phone sales are also predicted by Nokia, which looks to ship 100 million camera phones and 40 million phones offering MP3 playback.
This would make Nokia the biggest camera and MP3 player sellers in the world, toppling Canon and Apple respectively off their thrones.
As we reported last week, Nokia has announced a range of high quality two-megapixel camera phones, making the phones an attractive alternative to a dedicated digital camera.
Similarly, their spanking new N91 phone has both a camera and an MP3 player built in, with a 4 gig hard drive rivalling standalone digital music players like the iPod mini.
The new phone is expected to come with a wallet draining price sting of around $800-$900 (~$422-£475 ~ €623-€700), although telecom carrier deals are expected to bring the price down to around $500 (~£264 ~€390) in the US.
Things are heating up in the handset industry, with the big players trying to out do each other on the feature lists.
Sony are about to release the W800, their first walkman phone, while Samsung is already offering camera phones offering higher resolution images than Nokia.
It’s not all going Nokia’s way though. In the US, Motorola remain the top dogs with a mobile market share of 31.7%, while Samsung overtook Nokia, grabbing 18.2% of the market compared with Nokia’s 14.6%. In fourth place was LG Electronics with a market share of 12.6%, with Kyocera in fifth at 5.2%.
Nokia
Canalys
IDC
3 May, 2005
Pigeon Enabled Internet Faster Than ADSL
This has Friday Story written all over it. A few Israeli geeks set up a test to compare the speed of delivering data via pigeon (PEI – Pigeon Enabled Internet, as they’ve labelled it) compared with ADSL.
They’re building on Wi-Fly research carried out in Bergen, Norway a few years ago, when paper was used as the data medium. The latest version uses memory cards, 20-22 distributed over three pigeons, enabling much more data to be carried.
In total, 4Gb of data was transferred over 100Km – which, as they point out, is far superior to WiFi. Despite one of the pigeons being delayed, initially appearing to get lost on his journey (packet loss as they refer to it), they achieved a transfer rate of 2.27 Mbps, exceeding the commercially available ADSL rates in Israel of 0.75 – 1.5 Mbps.
As you know, the A in ADSL stands for Asynchronous, so the transferred rates listed equate to the speed that information is received. Upload rates are significantly lower. By their calculations, uploading 4Gb of data on ADSL would take around 96 hours – making the pigeon transfer significantly more efficient, equivalent to a T1 connection at 1.5Mbps.
As they point out, the pigeon gives pretty high latency (it takes quite a while for the first bit of data to arrive), but once it arrives, all of the 4Gb is delivered at once.
I’d often thought how price efficient the postal transfer of DVD’s was. 4.7Gb transferred overnight for around 50 pence – try buying bandwidth at that rate.
Chat around the office lead us to wonder what the next in the endless list of variation on creatures being used to transfer information would be. Nicolas Nova has provided the answer – Snail power.
PEI (Pigeon Enabled Internet) is FASTER then ADSL (via Nicolas Nova, through engadget)
Credit for images: Gil Pry-dvash, Gilad Reshef, Shai Vardi and Ami Ben Bassat
29 April, 2005
Treo 650 Smartphone: UK PalmOne Launch
PalmOne has formally launched its Treo 650 in the UK – more than six months after jammy Americans got their mitts on the keenly anticipated smartphone.
We’re not quite sure what ‘formally launched’ means, because there’s still no UK telecom networks offering them and you can’t officially buy them anywhere.
There was, however, a man from Orange at the press launch, wildly enthusing about the Treo’s capabilities. When pushed for an actual, real-life release date on the Orange network, the best we could get out of him was “Soon.”
It’s all rather frustrating because the presentation had thoroughly whetted our appetite for the Treo.
The updated version of the hugely successful Treo 600 offers a higher-resolution 320×320, 65,000-colour screen, a removable battery, 312MHz Intel XScale PXA270 processor, 32MB of Flash memory (21MB available to the user), Palm OS 5.4 ‘Garnet’, an enhanced VGA digicam and – finally – Bluetooth.
The handset includes useful quad-band GSM/GPRS connectivity for voice and data, with the bundled VersaMail email application supporting a single Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 ActiveSync account and multiple IMAP and POP accounts.
Anyone who’s ever battled with the complexities of hooking up email services on a mobile will appreciate the mass of preloaded server settings for local ISPs and other email providers built into the Treo. So long as your ISP is listed, setting up a new account takes a matter of seconds.
One thing noticeable by its absence was WiFi. Although palmOne offers an optional WiFi SDIO card for some of its Tungsten PDAs, it currently doesn’t work with the Treo 650.
I asked François Bornibus, vice president for palmOne EMEA, about this oversight, and was told that “drivers were being written” for the Treo, although he couldn’t give me a definite release date.
He also said that a Treo with a fully integrated WiFi “was on the roadmap”, although he wasn’t mindful of giving me a peek at this map.
Even with WiFi, Treo users will still be missing out on the killer VoIP application, Skype, so I asked if there were any plans to introduce a version for the Palm platform.
With a Gallic shrug, Bornibus suggested that it would be up to Skype themselves.
(PalmOne’s Senior Systems Engineer, John Walker, later told me that the current WiFi SDIO Card doesn’t have VoIP functionality anyway, so Treo users can forget all about joining in with the VoIP revolution for a while.)
Finally, I told Bornibus about the countless rumours of a windows-based Treo (sometimes called the Treo 670) that had been circulating around the Internet and asked him if there was such a device in the pipeline.
With an enigmatic smile, he answered, “Anything is possible” – make what you will of that!
Despite attending an official product launch, I left none the wiser as to when the Treo will actually be available or what other network carriers (apart from Orange) will be offering the phone. Naturally, there wasn’t a peep about pricing plans either.
Despite the somewhat UK shambolic release timetable, reviews across the Atlantic have generally been very enthusiastic, and as soon as we finally get our grubby mitts on a Treo, we’ll be posting up a full review.
Treo 650
28 April, 2005
Nokia N91, N90, N70: Nseries Mobile Multimedia Handsets
Nokia has launched three new Nseries mobile multimedia handsets, capable of taking print-quality pictures, playing MP3s, reading e-mail, browsing the Web sites and viewing mobile TV.
They might sound like a collection of night buses, but Nokia’s N90, N91 and N70 phones could represent a major step forward in multimedia mobile convergence.
“This next step in digital convergence brings together mobile devices, Internet content, still and video cameras, music, email and much more. Nokia Nseries devices share similar design traits as mobile phones, but they are actually powerful pocketable computers with a comprehensive set of multimedia features,” said Anssi Vanjoki, Executive Vice President, Multimedia, Nokia.
Nokia N91
The Nokia N91 multimedia handset looks to be facing up to Apple’s iPod, offering a two megapixel camera, Bluetooth and a 4-gigabyte hard disk, (capable of storing up to 3,000 CD-quality songs) inside its natty stainless steel case.
Serving up to 12.5 hours of sound via the included remote-control headset, the Nokia N91 supports a wide range of digital music formats including MP3, M4A, AAC and WMA.
Playback is made easy with dedicated music keys on the phone’s face, which slides down to reveal the phone keypad.
“The Nokia N91 delivers both a fantastic music experience and cutting-edge phone features,” purred Jonas Geust, Vice President, Music at Nokia. “What sets the Nokia N91 apart is the fact that it is always connected – you can download new music while on the move, add it to your favourite playlist and then share your playlist with friends. It’s truly the world’s best mobile connected jukebox.”
Nokia N90
The N90 features a twister-tastic, rotating camera barrel which fires up the phone’s 2 megapixel camera (with Carl Zeiss lens), offering autofocus, an integrated flash and 20x digital zoom.
The tri-band phone’s main display has a 352 x 416 pixel screen (262,144 colours), with a secondary 128 x 128 pixels display on the front.
With its pioneering multi-hinge twist-and-shoot design, we have brought ease-of-use and high quality photography into mobile telephony,” enthused Juha Putkiranta, senior vice president of multimedia imaging at Nokia.
Using the main screen as a viewfinder, the N90 can capture high quality video in MP4 format, with a 8x digital zoom.
Images, videos and sound can be stored on the phone’s internal 31 MB memory or on the supplied 64 MB RS-MMC
The 3G-enabled N90 is expected to be the first to hit the market this summer, with a suggested retail price for the N90 is €700 (~US$909 ~£474),
Nokia N70
Finally, the 3G-enabled Nokia N70 once again features a 2 megapixel camera, flash and front camera for video calling, with a FM radio, a digital music player and new 3D games.
The camera is activated by a rear sliding cover, with a range of capture scene settings available, including Scenery, Portrait, Night, and Sports.
Joe Coles, Director of imaging product marketing at Nokia, stressed the consumer demand for camera-enabled mobiles: “The number one reason why people today purchase new handsets is the camera. Indeed, we foresee that by the end of 2005, over half a billion people worldwide will own a camera phone.”
Measuring a diminutive 108.8 x 53 x 17.5 mm, the Nokia N70 is the smallest ever 2 megapixel 3G smartphone based on the Series 60 Platform and is expected to be available in the third quarter of 2005.
This new range of innovative phones represent further evidence of the convergence of consumer devices, with mobile phone makers keen to get a lion size bite of the action.
Nokia already claims to the biggest camera vendor in the world, and anticipates that these new phones will help secure its position as the largest seller of portable MP3 players later this year.
Nokia
Samsung’s Hard Drive Phone
28 April, 2005