to URL or not to URL, that is the question

Since Phil Windley did an interview with Sachin Agarwal and Garry Tan of Posterous that was recorded June 8th and posted shortly thereafter, I've been playing with Posterous, linking it to my Blogger and Twitter accounts and the simplicity has really dawned on me as to how significant something like Posterous is. Simply: Just email your post to yourself and you have a blog post.

None of this write here or go to this URL "stuff". None of this Wordpress complexity, either. Now granted, for some of us engineering geeks, we like the complexity. But for Mom and Dad, not going to happen. Maybe they can make something like Blogger happen, but then again, maybe all they can handle is email.

Take Twitter for example, pretty simple interface, 140 characters, micro-blogging - call it what you want, but the bottom line - 140 characters and that's it. Some people are filling their accounts with nonsense, like what kind of coffee they are getting or what kind of weather there is where they are. I admit it, I have done some of the same.

The 140 character limit originally came from SMS, the Short Message Service, the text messaging "thing" that your kids are using on their cell phones. It's this short because in the original designs, SMS was carried in the control channel. These days, it's application will eventually head to IP, as all of the carriers figure out how to move the app into the IP world since it will be less expensive to deploy there, especially as the massive SMS apps (which the "reality" shows like Idol caused to happen) continue to have popularity with the masses.

Oh, but "some" have said Twitter can be extended, use SnipUrl and you can put a short link in your twitter feed that will redirect (using the basic HTTP redirect capabilities, that's all SnipUrl is after all is one big mesh of a database of redirect links). And low and behold that's how you are supposed to "post a picture" to or using twitter. This would work for any link you can get to on the world wide web. But this adds complexity to something already simple.

Posterous reminded me about the short URL phenom because if you link your Twitter account to your Posterous blog, then they will automatically create a twitter post with a short url linking back to your Posterous post. Pretty cool, because they are making it simple to use.

Simple is what it's all about.

I had a similar discussion in a slightly different vein with a marketing person for a project I'm working on for her, and I was telling her to be careful on the business case because you can't count on people typing into the URL bar, which she disagreed with. Well, missy, I say, I have kids, so I have a built in test group right in my house, so I tried my little theory out on these two and I found out that neither of them really know what the URL is or what that thing at the top of the browser window is for. I am pretty sure that both of them have typed something in there at some time in their short "internet" lives, but they really prefer not to do anything with it. They both get links in email or forum posts and they set them as favorites/bookmarks and then they navigate back there using that mechanism.

With the movement of mobile devices from phones to "smart" phones, I would (and to my marketing person) strongly suggest that with limited screen real estate and with the urgency of the mobile tasks, people will just naturally gravitate toward using links or bookmarks or widgets or whatever the new technology is at the time. Manually typing in a URL into an address bar is about to be a thing of the past, especially for a mobile device.

That's where I think we are going, to the continued use of bookmarks and linking and a bit less of the " W W W . YOURSITEHERE . com stuff.

Volunteer in your community

On November 13, I made a presentation of a check of $750 from the Verizon Foundation to the Woodside Elementary School PFC as a matching contribution for my volunteer hours as one of the parent volunteers in the traffic line, assisting kids to get safely to school each morning.

The Verizon Foundation, the philanthropic arm of Verizon Communications, is committed to improving literacy and K-12 education; fostering awareness and prevention of domestic violence; and promoting the use of technology in health-care delivery. In 2006, the foundation awarded more than $69 million in grants to nonprofit agencies in the United States and abroad. The foundation also matched charitable donations from Verizon employees and retirees, resulting in $29 million in combined contributions.

Under the foundation's Verizon Volunteer initiative, one of the nation's largest employee-volunteer programs, company employees and retirees have also contributed nearly 3 million hours of community service since Verizon's inception in 2000. In 2006 alone, volunteers contributed 600,000 hours. This latter Verizon Volunteer initiative is the grant program that I applied for. For more information on the foundation, visit http://www.verizon.com/foundation.

Many corporations have similar programs. Does your employer offer such a program that might “double up” the volunteer hours or contributions you may already be providing to the school, the PFC, or elsewhere in the community? Please check. If you are not already, consider volunteering for one of the many positions of the Woodside PFC or elsewhere in our community.

We need to fund basic science research

As some of you might know, I often write about technology topics in Telecommunications or Electrical Engineering. Today, however, I thought it important to pick a slightly different slant…

This weekend, I was listening to my backlog of podcasts and included in what I listened to were two different podcasts for TechNation where

• Dr. Moira Gunn (the host) interviews Greg Lucier, the Chairman and CEO of Invitrogen. In the interview, the point that is put across on why society needs to fund basic science research.
• Science journalist David Ewing Duncan discusses the "The Bio-Issue of the Week" with Dr. Gunn, in which drug spending (R&D) is up, but results in the from approved drugs are down and some drugs are about to come off patents, so revenues for these companies will eventually dry up.
  

In both cases, as I’m hearing and reading many other articles on diverse topics, it may be because our country doesn’t support the basic science research enough. For example, in the latter podcast, the point was made that there is a mountain of data out of the human genomics project that really needs detailed analysis; e.g. we know what a gene does, what we don’t know is exactly how it does it. Or considered another way, the genes that a human shares with a mouse is really a high percentage, something approaching 98%+, but what makes the difference between the human and the mouse is when and how the gene does it’s job.

Without interested people, without post-doc programs to provide research topics, … well, would you work in a field that is apparently drying up? But, it’s not really drying up, other countries, like Korea, China, and Australia have tremendous programs for this sort of thing. We are giving our best and brightest lost of reasons to leave this country.

The lack of sensible policy at the federal level, the lack of proper funding, in cross-disciplined approaches, to projects that are going to benefit us all, … well, I fear for the future (next couple of decades)…

You might say this isn’t important, but you’d be missing the point. The direct investment that DARPA, NASA, and other agencies had with science and technology research provided some glamour for the space program stuff of the 60’s, but it also lead to communications satellites and other mundane things like cellular telephone networks and devices.

Some like to say that Captain Kirk of the Starship Enterprise “invented” the cell phone, because of the use of the communicator on each Star Trek episode, but the fact of the matter was that the imagination of a whole generation was sparked, because of the believability of those episodes, and a market demand (for cell phone technology) was later satisfied, not only by companies trying to make money, but by a whole generation of engineering and scientific students that brought a passion to creating not only the mobile phone technologies we take for granted today, but the internet, the progress toward improvements in the cancer situation (many people can live out their lives today in remission, whereas 20 – 30 years ago, cancer was a death sentence) and countless other technologies we so easily take for granted.

We need to continue to improve upon this situation. Can you imagine a world without Diabetes? Did you know, we stand on the brink of figuring out how to accomplish this? This isn’t a would it be nice thing to do, there are huge costs in both medical support and human suffering associated with just this one disease. Make the investment – reap huge benefits; just like we did in mobile phone and internet technologies.

I’d like to ask you today, to write your congressman, tell them this is important to us, as a country, to change this situation. Invest in science. It doesn’t have to be preachy, it doesn’t have to any more than a 1-2 minute phone call or a 1 paragraph email, but do something to be part of the solution to change from an almost anti-science policy to one where, similar to the 60’s, we are on the road to great things.

Sunrocket calls it quits

Just saw (via Reuters) that Sunrocket appears to have closed down.

Recently, I posted about the perils of IP and the US Patent office, and Vonage was still holding on.

Hype has to be balanced with flawless execution, which is certainly a hard thing to do. If you have more money, you can weather some large mistakes. We'll have to see what the news is as this story develops, certainly at this early stage almost anything could be "blamed" for what has happened to Sunrocket. The Truth will probably take some time to come out.

Siemens brings DECT to US

According to The Business VoIP Report, DECT technology is now shipping from Siemens.

Siemens has begun shipping to the U.S. a variety of cordless phones built around the Digital Enhanced Cordless Telephony (DECT) standards. The new Gigaset models include the S450 IP and SX762 WLAN DSL gateway. While DECT phones have been on the European market for over 10 years, the new models represent the first DECT devices Siemens has brought to the U.S. The line includes both IP and non-IP devices, and brings a wide variety of new features and feature-delivery mechanisms to the U.S. market.

Noting other news sources earlier, I had written about this interesting trend (about 8 months ago) in which a European technology innovation was finally getting to our shores after 10 years of maturity. Actually, some early Gigasets where able to be purchased back then, so with a little more fanfare, we have a DECT device offering that is being broadened.

• Here (where Siemen’s Gigaset was noted as being an example of among the first of the DECT models you could purchase then that is/was coupled with Yahoo! Messenger w/Voice capabilities) and
• here where more models where announced and expected to be showing up by 3Q2007.
  

WAMU - Tech Tuesday – Musings on mobile phone technology

I’m a little behind on my podcast listening, but I caught one just this weekend, The Kojo Nnamdi Show, Tech Tuesday, is a technology review radio show, which is recorded and available for the public as a podcast or a web download. Often, his shows depict the social aspects of technology and how society shapes technology.

A typical Tech Tuesday always includes the political or social implications of any new innovation, and explores the unexpected ways in which change creeps (or steam rolls) into our lives.

This particular show, from 5/22, had a few guests on the program, one gentleman from India and his efforts to bring internet to the public in less than metro areas of India, via wireless internet kiosks (not your typical internet access) for the farmer to provide agricultural product pricing, access to government services, for example… A second man talked about his company’s efforts in Cambodia, to bring a higher class of work to people there, via simple data entry jobs, since the work can be outsourced practically anywhere now…

This piece should remind us that our view of the “internet” resource isn’t necessarily the only one. Even mobile phone technology can be deployed differently in the 3rd world and allow different types of “applications” to be deployed. As an example, forget the “near” 100% coverage we have here in the U.S., think instead about coverage that might be “good enough” – and coupled with lower infrastructure costs as technology has improved, and you have a fixed-wireless phone system that doesn’t rely on mobility so much, but does indeed provide basic telephone service to a rural area, since to provide “real” fixed telephone service, with fiber, copper wires, and traditional telco switches is just too costly, indeed it’s unreasonable to consider in this environment.

Myself, I’m reminded about a deployment of SMS related technology I did for my last company. The scene: an African tribal herdsman. The problem: Moving his herd of cattle from one place to another. Why? Because of hoof and mouth disease, all cattle movement is strictly controlled by the government. The herdsman has to go to a government office, fill out some paperwork, come back the next day for his permit to go from point A to point B with his cattle.

These native African herdsmen are fiercely independent, often they’d rather distrust the government, but the hoof and mouth disease problem is endemic in parts of Africa and the situation does need to be improved upon.

The solution? My company worked with one of the local mobile phone companies to deploy an SMS based forms system that interconnected the farmer with the government. The technology was off the shelf web servers, so that “SMS applications” could be deployed with simple HTML tags in the basic web pages of a web app that already existed. What we added was a network based browser that rendered this HTML, on one side, and interfaced to the mobile provider’s SMS gateways. The special HTML tags identified specifically the text that was meaningful in the SMS messages, whereas the remaining text would be worthwhile to the typical computer screen.

So, how did this all work? Like this…

• The farmer decides he wants to move his herd. He knows where they are currently and he knows where he wants to go…
• He pulls out his mobile phone (and they do have and use them there) and sends a text msg to a specific number, for the government’s form for cattle movement.
• In response, he receives a “fill-in the blanks” msg, which he replies to, which allows him to fill-in the info that the government needs: name, number of cattle, that sort of thing. He sends it back, and receives a separate SMS msg, with an authorization code.
• The tribesman begins moving his herd.
• He comes to a government checkpoint, shows his SMS authorization code on his phone to the guard at the checkpoint, the guard sends the code number to the app on his own phone, and now the herdsman can proceed to the next checkpoint.
• Continuing on his journey, the herdsman repeats the checkpoint process with each guard he has to proceed through.
• Arriving at this destination, the herdsman sends his own authorization code back, just as the guards have been doing at each checkpoint, which closes out the herdsman’s cattle movement

So, the government gets to monitor herd movement within their country, the herdsman didn’t have to go to any government office, he simply used a tool he already had (his mobile phone). Even the guards didn’t have any paperwork to fill-out and submit. Everyone makes out for the better.

The interesting thing is this was deployed about 10 years ago, with existing SMS technology. Today, people might be thinking about web browsers in the phones, and a traditional web app or a mobilized web app, but the point is – for this service, we used an existing web app, modified HTML slightly, and inserted our network server, which

• rendered the pages, as if it were a user,
• extracted the special SMS tags and pertinent textual data,
• pushed this data onto the SMS gateway,
• upon response from the gateway, the text from the herdsman is formatted
• the HTML response is sent back to the application

No “special” phones or WAP browsers, just plain ole text msging.

Now don’t ask me about how the herdsman would charge his phone, while I suspect he had a solar charger, I never did find that out for sure.

New "terms" in the telephony business

I can't remember where I read this, but now that VoIP is a pretty common technology offering and that more and more of the common man is aware of what it is and what it does, it's fair that new terms are coming to the forefront...

• "Fuzzing" is essentially a denial-of-service attack against a VoIP system.
  
• "Footprinting" is using a search engine to find things like extension listings on the open Internet.
  
• "SIP Enumeration" means probing ports on a network to find one that isn't tightly locked down.

Nothing really new here as far as content, these security issues have been discussed before, what's new is the "catchy" terms themselves.

Vonage hanging on?

On Monday, the Supreme Court handed down a ruling in KSR vs. Teleflex, finding that the "combination of two commonly known elements into something obvious" is not patentable. While on it's surface this is a good thing, eliminating lots of expense in litigating bogus patents or patents that do not really enhance, as might be expected the next piece of news was:

From FierceVOIP: Vonage has seized on the ruling, asking an appellate court to throw out the verdict against it and order a new trial. Verizon, of course, is opposed. Vonage is already appealing its loss at trial; the appellate court has set a June 25 hearing on that appeal. Vonage wants the appeal to be put on hold pending the results of the new trial. If it loses that second trial, Vonage wants the existing appeals process to resume. Even though Vonage was convicted of infringing three patents, the courts are letting the company operate pretty much as normal while the appeals are being heard.

I need a playbook.

Let's see,

• I've lost,
  
• I'm appealing, but
  
• I want my appeal on hold and I want a new trial,
  
• but if I lose at that trial, I want my appeal to start again

Broadband Wireless - Now with WiFi!!

This week the NYTimes noted in the technology section that a company by the name of AutoNet had struck a deal with Avis to provide a wifi experience "in your rental car."

While aimed at the business person renting a car (and perhaps specifically targeted at the person with a wifi laptop but not yet having a broadband wireless access card or tethered phone, the concept is interesting (notwithstanding the safety and legal issues involved). Interesting, because it provides local access to a "router" - this is the wifi part - and wireless "wide area network" access to the Internet.

This isn't the first time this has been around, Kyocera has marketed a similar device for some time to the public (Link to rfwel website). People on InternetbyCellPhone (groups.yahoo.com) have been talking for quite awhile about how to do this with the basic laptop and Window's Internet sharing feature.

More players probably means this is starting to get real. Safety issues aside, the more connected we get, the easier it will be to travel with those "connected" kids of ours.

One point... the NYT article notes Autonet as the company involved with Avis. Autonet's website notes a Skype application of the technology (i.e. travel with your Skype client on the laptop or a Skype standalone wireless phone) make calls all day long on the wireless "data" network... This is something that the wireless carriers TOU spell out as something "not good" - not for technology reasons - really - but rather because the pricing for data plans is all messed up. Today's plans are designed for the "occasional" data user, not a cable modem user... Perhaps more pricing plans are headed our way?

What the future will bring

I was having lunch with some of my previous work associates yesterday. We got to talking about mobile phones, the “bricks” of yesterday and the “razor” thin ones of today, and also about VoIP services (since half of us had it). This reminded me, since I’d read it sometime ago, but no longer remember who exactly coined it, that in the past, there were 3 ways to get information into your home:

1. the phone line (which was bi-directional),
2. over-the-air broadcast (one way) radio and
3. broadcast TV
4. well, maybe 4 if you count the newspaper or a magazine
   

Today, we still may have

1. a phone line,
2. the radio
3. plus possibly also satellite radio
4. broadcast TV may be completely replaced
5. via cable (or satellite)
6. but also there is a high-speed digital line that may be DSL (with the phone) or might come over the cable (with the cable TV)
7. plus, in some areas optical fiber for the TV.
8. Now we also have mobile cellular telephone service that's more or less been for voice,
9. but is also increasing being used for data as the bandwidth increases (this is where I’m working in the industry now)
10. A few years ago there where smatterings, then rivers, now floods of WiFi and now WiMAX, or metro broadband wireless (there used to be a company just down the street that was heavily involved in just this thing in South America, because it’s cheaper to “wire” households up this way than with copper).
11. There are plenty more fixed and mobile communications options than I can think of right now. My sisters, in rural Minnesota, get a slower speed version of broadband that’s built off antennas on top of granary elevators and mini-pizzabox sized antenna’s on their houses or in their yards. The distribution antenna works for distances up to 15-20 miles. That and power are the reasons why it’s slower speed. This was put in place because the local telco switch was running out of ports for dial-up and basic voice, back 10-15 years ago, and an enterprising young man saw an opportunity and worked it, when the REA type telco couldn’t possibly move fast enough.
12. And there's a chance you're still getting a newspaper delivered, too.
    
    

The point is, the source of bandwidth pretty much does not matter any more. You'll get your telephone service from somewhere in a network cloud, or maybe from some other network cloud if you move around. If you’re like me, you have application services that tie the endpoints together so that people calling you in one cloud don’t know that you’re answering in the other cloud.

This is largely going to be the same for your TV service. Our soldiers in Iraq, I’m told, have versions of IPTV that are more modern versions of the "triple play" that interworking of the broadband/phone/TV service, which is of course, carried on a military backbone or perhaps a leased facility back to their families here in the states. I don’t begrudge them a bit for a service such as this, but it sure heralds the future for us, doesn’t it?

Content is changing, too, newspapers are still around, but increasingly they have to pay attention to the online world. Oh, the basics of reporting and fact gathering is still largely the same, the tools are different and faster to use. Just lots more amateurs out there…

Radio, and now TV, are putting broadcasts (with and without commercials) out there for distribution via RSS or maybe forcing the website experience. Some media outlets are not getting “it” trying to force users to watch live (Nielson still has clout) in order to keep the same old revenue sources. Others ARE getting it, and that’s why there are DVD’s of whole season of TV shows, or in some forward looking markets, downloads or even feeds of shows. So, distribution models change and with it, the revenue dynamics. I freely admit I don’t have time to listen to that radio or TV show anymore in “real-time”. I want my “time-shifting” rights! So, podcasts and TiVo/MythTV – I think these are good things. Once bitten, “don’t take my TiVo away!”

In the future, it really won't matter if the pipe is

• FIOS (Fiber to the curb ala Verizon landline or my Dad’s cable company in rural MN),
• EVDO Rev. A (VerizonWireless and Sprint),
• HFC (CATV company), or
• copper wires (traditional telco).
  
  

Telco infrastructure is getting to the point where we don’t care what it is, as long as it’s there when we want it and it’s economical enough to fit into our lives without making us think about it. Content and basic service models are increasingly looking for alternative revenue sources, rather than the basic Alfred Hitchcock “word from our sponsor” model which really just shifts costs from minutes of use (MOU) into a bundled cost of an advertised product. MOU will still be there for a while, thanks to the telcos and more importantly, the mobile phone era. But something better than the current draconian measures envisioned with DRM and lawsuits is needed.

We’ve come a long way since when I would travel and my mother used to ask me to call collect and ask for Uncle Arvin, who was never there; it was just a pre-arranged signal that I had arrived at my destination. Let’s hope the coming years see as much of a change for the better as the last few years.

Happy Holidays.

DECT News

Previously, link here, I had posted regarding DECT, or Digital Enhanced Cordless Telecommunications technology, as something that was going to come to the U.S. in a bigger way.

If you’ve been in a computer store lately, you may have seen this wireless phone using the DECT standard. Earlier this month, there was news (link here) that some suppliers of those phones are now building wireless VoIP into them. So it’s beginning to look like (quoting the article)

• computers still do intensive work on the Net, but
• people will use wireless DECT phones to

1. make IP phone calls,
2. listen to Internet radio or
3. check a phone directory.

These enhancements are at most a year away; streaming audio will be coming after that in 2008.

NEW ACROYMN: “CAT-iq” - Cordless Advanced Technology-internet and quality.

Gads, more and more technology – what’s a person to do… Seriously, this may have value though, if you’d rather not “boot up” the PC to do these sorts of things. If you keep the PC on all the time, well maybe not so much… On the other hand, if you have a choice between a dumb wireless phone and one that has more intelligence, without a lot of cost differential, then duh

Power Outage

This morning, we suffered a 1.5 hour power outage. It reminds me how sensitive technology is to the basics, such as electricity.

I have a UPS battery backup for my router and cable modem, since for convenience I might want to use the VoIP phone line for an hour or so, during the early part of an outage. This VoIP line is used throughout the house, but as I say - it's a convenient to keep it running.

My burglar alarm has it's own battery backup, so it will still work for a couple of days, dialing out on the land line.

The laptop(s) have a battery, but then they are only good for a hour or 2.

Reminds me that about a year ago, I spec'd out what it would take to go totally solar. The answer was $75k, about $20-25k out of pocket.

Oh, and Murphy was alive and kicking this morning as well. Since we have well water here, without electricity, there isn't much water pressure to do an entire shower. I called my neighbor to hook up a garden hose to his house (something I've done in the past) since he has city water. But he wasn't home.

Hey, I used to be a Boy Scout, right? Some water in the sink, boil some water on the stove (I am civilized, ok) combine in the sink and tah dah... I can at least sponge bathe and wash my hair... Water done, combined, all set to apply lather...

the power comes on.

IPTV

IPTV, or Internet Protocol delivering TeleVision (and not Iowa Public Television) is supposed to be a big market. These last few years, lots of companies have been investigating and some have been actually doing something. The subscriber levels for this year, 2006, is supposed to be 8.3 million, worldwide. But, only 500,000 of these subscribers are in the U.S. That is 6.02%... A lot of these subscribers are in western Europe, with Gartner indicating 3.3 million are there, this year. Other deployments are starting in Shanghai, Guangdong, and other Chinese cities.

The market is supposed to explode. Gartner is indicating a 5 fold increase in 4 years in western Europe and others indicating a roughly 4 fold increase worldwide, over the same timeframe, to 34 million total subscribers. At the high end of the speculation, 63 million subscribers have been quoted in the press.

If the U.S. has 500,000 subscribers now, who has them? Parts of Rural America, in that there are hundreds of Independent Operating Companies (IOCs) who are running IPTV today. Places like Ramondville, Texas and Lenora, Kansas. Nearer to me; Fallon, Nevada.

Outside the U.S., IPTV is rolling along, in places like Belgium and Brazil, Sweden and Slovenia, Ireland and Italy. With price sensitive Germans, the expectation of interactivity is expected to help generate money for the carriers. In France, it’s sold in consumer electronic stores, similar to our Best Buy or CompUSA. Gartner, again, predicts that by the end of this year, roughly half of IPTV subscribers will be in France. As the other western European country’s growth catches up, France will still keep a third of these subscribers.

Why haven’t we heard about this much here?

1. Elsewhere, the combination of low entry prices from competitors and incumbents (like France Telecom) and the idea that content from firms like the Pay per View players are willing to embrace new distribution channels. According to Gartner, however, a lot of the subscribers captured via this aggressive pricing have yet to be completely “hooked” on the IPTV service itself, it’s simply packaged as part of their “triple play” bundle. The factors that follow contribute to situations unique to those of us here in the U.S.
   
   
2. The phone companies, here, usually have copper, “twisted pair” for the “last mile” to your house. Running voice at 64kbps is what this last mile distribution was designed for. A pair of wires, and thus 2 possible phone lines for each house, who could want for more? A couple of decades ago, this was satisfactory thinking. DSL internet services, rolled out for the demand for broadband internet, uses this same twisted pair copper wire to get to a “DSL modem” in your house. The investment they’ve made in DSLAMs in the central office may not yet have paid off enough, for them to start to look at upgrades to this infrastructure. The newer services, such as streaming HD TV, or even a basic DVD movie compressed in MPEG2 (a popular video compression technique) is 5-7 Mbps of bandwidth that will obviously put a strain on this kind of infrastructure. So, either they must add hardware in the “last mile” part of the network, to enhance and strengthen signals to go farther or stay stronger or they must go to something the industry calls Fiber to the Curb (FTTC). Verizon calls this FiOS, or Fiber Optic Services, and they are pretty much ready to push the button. Very expensive stuff, but the market is seeing some action here from these smaller operators, the IOCs, rolling out fiber. In Sanborn, MN, where I grew up, Cable TV (which is also the phone company in Sanborn) service was so troublesome with an aging HFC network, that about 5-6 years ago, the Cable company dug up all of the streets and laid fiber to everyone’s house. My dad has fiber at his back door. Sanborn, MN – population 434. No IPTV yet, but he certainly has a pipe large enough if and when they finally offer such a service. A bigger population area, different fiscal issues, but as operators such as Verizon are demonstrating, not necessarily impossible to solve.
   
   
3. The U.S. legacy cable operators, the MSOs, have been delivering your standard TV over coax cable and this is called Hybrid/Fiber Coax or HFC (From the head-end to your neighborhood, it’s fiber, to a device on a telephone pole or in a vault, appropriately called, the “fiber node” and then it’s coaxial cable to your house). All of the channels are “broadcast” in separate frequency channels along this infrastructure simultaneously. Telephone service and regular internet service to your “cable modem” is delivered similarly, in a channels right alongside the video. Digital TV is delivered right down these same channels, encoded in something called QAM, decoded by your digital set-top-box. There is a lot of money invested here in this infrastructure and it is not yet financially compelling for the MSOs to change.
   
   
4. Communications Opportunity, Promotion and Enhancement (COPE) Act of 2006 – Specifically, this is the house version of the major overhaul of the last Telecom bill. The senate had it’s own involvement in the issue, but basically, we have a lot of rule making to be done before it’s clear who/what/where/when money will be made by this or that operator, distributor, content provider, etc. – too many rules, it’s hard for anyone to predict and thus only agile companies, ready to move after rulemaking, will gain rewards.
   
   
5. Telephone companies have never delivered TV content before. Sure, some are supplementing their voice and internet offerings with satellite TV, but let’s face it, they are just putting their name on the satellite TV offering from another company. Licensing, broadcasting, distribution rights – well, the MSOs have a lead in this space.
   
   
6. The MSOs and satellite companies offer premium content right now, some of it in High Definition, or HD. To compete, and IPTV offering must be better than the MSOs level of the playing field. Better technologically: Effectively, it must be better than what European and Asian operators are delivering in the early MPEG2 encoding technology. It’s almost expected now, that a true offering must be multiple HD streams, each 12-20 Mbps – not 5-7 Mbps. They also must offer DVR or “TiVo-like” services, either home based or network based, for the streams coming into the home or the movie libraries the carrier is involved with. Sometimes it is barely likely that 5 Mbps is getting down to you, must less multiple HD TV streams. The “broadcast flag” issue over who owns the right to push advertising at you and force you to watch it (also tied into the Senate bill) may hinder IPTV’s acceptance, particularly if it screws up who can and cannot produce the devices that will “play back” IPTV. Better services: Interactivity (think sports betting in some countries) may be key for adoption, something that is harder to do in today's world (not to mention that gambling is a real political problem here in the U.S.). The success of SMS texting linked to reality TV has shown the desire for the public to interact, paying real money, but with SMS the revenue is going to a wireless carrier, not necessarily the IPTV carrier. So, interactivity within the platform (think "Deal or No Deal" kinds of interactivity.)
   
   
7. Finally, distributing this streaming mess of bits around the house to what ever device needs it, The HDTV set, a desktop computer, a 2nd TV set, a laptop computer. Should this be Ethernet? Or Ethernet over Power cabling? Or WiFi? It’s this last point that a small company, named Ruckus Wireless, with several announcements this last week, is becoming a key player. They secured $16 million in additional financing from telco and electronics company’s VC arms. They also announced shipping wireless product for reliably delivering these video streams within the house, thus eliminating the potential wiring mess a consumer or professional installer would have to undertake. A lot of their technology is involved in the dynamic tuning aspect of the antenna systems. Essentially, they “beam” the bits to the TV set, instead of 360 degree broadcast to everyone nearby, because the antenna system locates the remote station and “locks on”. Problems with walls and beams are resolved in this manner. Essentially, Ethernet performance, without the physical cable. Ruckus has indicated that industry-wide there is an approximate cost of $400-500 for a 3 room install as part of IPTV launching. This is per subscriber.
   

So, quite a lot that has to come together before you can literally sit down in your favorite chair, flip on the HD to watch your favorite game over an IP infrastructure. Except, if you are in Wyoming or Kansas.

DECT Technology Coming to the U.S.

DECT, or Digital Enhanced Cordless Telecommunications, is coming to the U.S. in a move largely framed by the FCC and the DECT forum, an industry association that has been lobbying the FCC for some changes to previous rules.

What in the world is DECT? Well, first of all, the “E” used to stand for European, as this was largely a cellular telecommunications system that is built with small cell sizes, roughly about 600 feet in diameter, originally coming from Europe. It has enjoyed some success there, where it has been standardized, by ETSI, the European standards body involved in Telco. Their work on DECT started in the late 1980’s culminating in the first ETSI standard in 1992.

Earlier in the 1980’s, work was being done to develop the technology, which largely centered on work in the UK and in Sweden. Perhaps the first driver was to digitally “enhance” the analog cordless phone offerings that were starting to show up, at that time, from Asian manufacturers. Digital, of course, was better than Analog – less “crackle” and interference, higher density of phones in a given space, security, moving between “cells”, just like the regular mobile phone network, but with unlicensed users rather than the more formal and really high-tech cellular base station that belongs to the mobile phone company and serves hundreds of users over much larger cell sizes.

These were all reasons for DECT, not necessarily for the individual at home, but more for the business user, perhaps with a large space to cover, like a warehouse, and/or lots of people needing service, such as an office type of setup. Mobility is the name of the game, rather than a fixed phone at your desk. This is not to say that business is the only user of this technology, almost since the beginning, manufacturers have been offering business and domestic types of offerings, with Siemen’s Gigaset being an example of among the first, and continuing on through today with newer and newer models. Today, you can purchase a Gigaset that is coupled with Yahoo! Messenger w/Voice capabilities, the VoIP offer from Yahoo.

The standards have covered and defined the radio part of this link between handset and basestation as well as the handover that occurs between the basestation and an office switchboard (PABX) or public telco switch (or your local terminal adapter in the VoIP case).

Largely, what has changed to allow this technology to move to our shores has been a decision by the FCC late last year to set aside some radio spectrum in the 1920-1930 MHz frequencies for unlicensed users. Originally, this spectrum was to be sold off in the PCS auctions and there was an FCC requirement for new users to pay a sizeable fee to help relocate existing users of the radio spectrum. Some changes to the channelization requirements and a significantly lower fee have helped to make the U.S. market more attractive. In Europe, DECT operates in a different frequency band, 1880-1900 MHz.

Why is this better than what we have today for digital cordless phones? Better range is often cited as one advantage over existing 2.4 Ghz or 5.8 GHz phones. Other things to note are simultaneous calls on a number of handsets, quality of service, security, no-toll internal calls (think PBX extension to extension types of calls), ability to handoff call from one cell to the next (which means a very large area, like an entire warehouse, can be covered with lots of base stations), push-to-talk, and of course, Voice over IP (VoIP) integration.

Interference is less at 1920 MHz because a company may have their Wireless LAN setup and running at 2.4 GHz or 5.8 GHz. Other interference usually comes from baby monitors and microwave ovens. A lot of firms marketing in this area are focused on small to medium businesses, largely due to the expectation that a really large enterprise will have voice and data integrated together in their Wireless LAN infrastructure and not need DECT, because they would be probably expected to have Voice over WiFi types of phones, sometimes noted with the “VoWLAN” acronym. A small company may not have the resources, nor the money, to fully integrate voice and data on their own Wireless LAN infrastructure.

Who is bring this to the US? SpectraLink is one such company, having recently acquired Kirk Telecom of Denmark. Kirk is one of the leading suppliers of DECT equipment in the EU. SpectraLink’s main focus will be on small to medium sized enterprise business products. There will be some consumer products. Uniden is introducing its first set of cordless phone products based on DECT, announced just this week. Uniden had earlier announced an equity purchase and partnership with SunCorp Technologies of Hong Kong, another manufacturer of DECT products.

So, perhaps some advantages for a small to medium business looking to push into wireless handset technologies for it’s employees, i.e., where mobility of the employee and communications needs both need to be met for employee productivity, but where they may not want to make the larger fiscal and more complex jump into VoWLAN. And this from a piece of technology that has had a decade to mature.

Mobile Phones for Kids

Mobile Phones for kids? An interesting concept, and one which Disney Mobile, working off the Disney brand, hopes will be engaging enough for parents to purchase the extra phone and perhaps a few extra minutes under the family’s “plan”.

The big money may be in the parent’s plan and usage, getting the parents to switch to Disney Mobile and then add in the small extras that the children’s usage represents. Continuing to build brand-loyalty, by offering these extra services such as tracking the location of the phone (and thus the child) as well as controlling the usage of the child, no indiscriminate texting or calling unless it’s an emergency (and no, calling Suzie does not constitute an emergency) – these are good concepts. And unlike, ESPN Mobile, they appear to be poised to succeed.

Keeping parents and kids more in contact with each other (“Where should I pick you up after dance class?” or “Where are you going after the library?”), controlling usage so it doesn’t break the bank (with call and text restrictions during certain hours). You won’t get this initially from the commercials (which are now flooding TV and other outlets), there the message is aimed at the kids and how cool it is – thus the lobbying of you, the parent starts – coupled with the peers and perhaps older siblings, flaunting them at school using them everywhere.

Note, some schools have banned their use during school hours, so check with your kid’s school and if you get your child a mobile phone, from Disney Mobile or another operator, educate your child. Confiscation for the remainder of the year does no good for either you or the child. The reasons schools are so strict on mobile phones is because they (and pagers before them) have been used for crime (drug dealing, starting fights, porn) and even cheating on tests. Kids are pretty smart – there is even a ring tone that most adults over 30 cannot hear. Just Google “Mosquitotone”… Soon, a visual Mosquitotone detector for teachers appeared on the market. This is just like military strategy on a battlefield…

If your child walks a distance to school and you’re concerned about any aspect of safety, maybe you’ve been already thinking about this… After a little investigation, you will find that not only Disney, but other carriers as well, have surprisingly low cost plans to add the extra phone to a “family” plan. Disney Mobile, in it’s advertisements, is touting the GPS (Global Positioning System) features later in their commercials, so via your phone or a website, you can find out where the phone is and presumably where your child is. Disney does not exclusively have this feature (remember the little red dots of the Sprint Nextel commercials?).

You may be thinking that a mobile phone for your child is unnecessary. They are alien to our own childhoods, and if you’ve immigrated recently to this country they may be really alien (South Africa didn’t have TV until the 70’s). As a parent, the joy is to decide what is necessary vs. automatically giving them everything that everyone else has. You should decide based on today’s world, today’s issues, rather than your childhood world.

Remember, in the 80’s children were coming home from school and spending hours on the phone, a separate land line phone wired into their room, talking to their friends and dates. In the late 90’s, with the advent of instant messenger services from AOL, Yahoo and MSN, they were IM’ing each other. So, the paradigm shifts yet again…

Price should also be in your consideration, mobile phones are easy to loose, but with the GPS services and the cost being relatively reasonable, this part of the issue has continued to be minimized. Literally, it is not so much of a financial consideration as it was 2-5 years ago.

Like any piece of technology, it can be promoted as a lifesaver or disdained as a yet another “gimmie”. Especially if your child wants to be independent and he/she is aware or notified (as some of the services promote) when you are tracking him/her. Your child may wonder if you’re going to let them breathe anytime soon.

My advise, investigate the plans, note the features and prices. As parents, talk to each other about the pros and cons, then engage with your child, find out how they would use it, educate them on the issues at school and elsewhere. Make an informed decision.

Good luck.

New from BenQ-Siemens, a concept mobile phone

It is titled the “Black Box,” this handset has no keypad, it uses a touchscreen for all functions. The user interface seems as if it can be accessed via the icons, going from phone to camera to calculator modes just by touching the screen in the right place. This phone should be universally interesting to anyone, regardless of language.

We may never see the phone in product, as this is a concept phone, but the idea is very interesting.

Mobile ESPN pulls the plug

Mobile ESPN, Launched in the Fall of 2005 on a number of US mobile carriers and then in February 2006 as an MVNO, a Mobile Virtual Network Operator – those business entities that look and feel like a mobile phone company, but really rebrand or reuse mobile network infrastructure from someone else, like Sprint Nextel, VerizonWireless or Cingular.

Now, however, they are announcing that they will close up shop. Advertised to be “the first national U.S. wireless phone service specifically targeted to sports fans” Mobile ESPN was bringing personalized sports programming from ESPN, along with ring tones, sports news, info, statistics, photos, logos and streaming video to its customers.

By the end of the year, customers will have some options about what to do and where to go to seek service. On their website, the indicate that “As of December 31, 2006, Mobile ESPN will cease its wireless service provider operations and work to deliver our content and experience through another nationwide carrier.”

Almost at the same time as ESPN is pulling the plug, another MVNO launched, Red Pocket Mobile, marketing to Chinese Americans and offering low cost international service on calls to Asia. Unique selling points? Calls to US or China, Singapore, and Taiwan are the same price and an iConnectHome service would allow people in Asia to dial a local number there and reach the subscriber here in the US, i.e. no international long distance.

IMS: the relation of SOA and IMS to each other

I made this post on a Light Reading message board regarding "non standard applications" in IMS and related HSS and even SOA functions.

What is a non-standard app, anyway?

feel free to read the entire thread on Re: SOA- IMS relation

Top 10 most beautiful cellphones

Fosfor Gadgets

Don't you just love it? (don't complain to me, this is about design, not functionality)

Hyped Cellphone does not "fly"

David Pogue Article

Early reviews are in, and publicly it's not good for the LG phone offered by Verizon Wireless.