Telecomportal blog

Sat, 30 Aug 2003 23:30:06 GMT

The Zelos Group, a technology research company, just released the report of a survey of 1300 people on the topic of wireless application likes and dislikes. Not surprisingly, people like photo mail and ptt services (although, I must admit, I sort of prefer the phone to ring first before somebody starts talking to me..also, with speaker phones and multi caller calling I don't really see the fascination with push to talk from a consumer standpoint...time will tell). Here's Zelos's summary:

Key Findings

• Push to Talk Tops The List. In a survey of almost 1,300 mobile subscribers, respondents were more likely to express strong interest in using push-to-talk or photo messaging services compared with other new network interactive applications. Over 20 percent were strongly predisposed to using these services compared with about 14 percent that currently access or expressed strong interest in accessing email.

• Bluetooth Needs Proof Points. When asked to rank features that they desire in their next handset, respondents were more likely to rank integrated digital camera and support for push-to-talk (PTT) service ahead of all other features apart from color display. Bluetooth ranked last in a list of 10 features, with only 13 percent of respondents choosing it in their top five.

• US Catching Text Messaging Craze. Despite being stymied until last year due to a lack of carrier inter-operability, text messaging has become a mainstream activity. Over one quarter of all respondents claimed to have sent a text message. Roughly 12 percent claim to do so at least once each week.

• Ring-Tones Make a Statement. A substantial portion of consumers want to make a social statement with a cellular terminal by customizing their devices. Over 50 percent of mobile subscribers claimed to have changed the default ring-tone on their device and 13 percent claimed to have paid to download a ring tone. Less conspicuous forms of personalization such as display graphics enjoy less appeal.

• Promise of Games Shouldn't be Oversold. While almost 30 percent of respondents claimed to play handset games, only a small portion expressed a willingness to pay for game content. While downloadable games appear prominently in carrier marketing initiatives, only 4 percent of respondents claimed to have paid to download one and 8 percent expressed a strong willingness to do so.

• Subscribers Want Control over Wireless Listings. When presented with a variety of options, less than 9 percent of respondents chose the ability to list their wireless number in a manner similar to residential phone listings. Sixty-two percent chose an unlisted wireless number as their preferred option. Others indicated a willingness to list numbers so long as simple safeguards can be put in place to manage access.

• Number Portability. While about 17 percent of respondents indicated that they would switch their subscription to a different carrier if they could hold on to their number, the data does not indicate that number portability will yield a significant change in subscriber churn. Subscribers underestimate their propensity to switch carriers With only 15 percent claiming that they plan to switch carriers, it is apparent that subscribers underestimate their own propensity to switch, given that carrier churn rates average over 25 percent annually without number portability.

Sat, 30 Aug 2003 23:25:04 GMT

MIT Roofnet. prostoalex writes "MIT Technology Review runs a story about MIT Computer science students building their own mesh network for Internet access: 'A few weeks ... [Slashdot]

Sat, 30 Aug 2003 23:24:06 GMT

CWRU Opens Largest Wi-Fi Net. server1 writes "In what could be the largest public wireless service in the world, Case Western Reserve University is opening more than 1,230 Cisco Aironet ... [Slashdot]

Fri, 29 Aug 2003 20:18:15 GMT

Just when you thought you knew all about 3G, the "forgotten" standard, TD CDMA, keeps up its momentum. There are a couple of variations of this TDD (Time Division Duplex) mode: lower chip rate/bandwidth called TDDSCDMA and a 5 MHz version called TDD CDMA. The former is described in the article below from Siemens, the latter has been quietly rolled out in New Zealand and elsewhere. It is ideal for unpaired spectrum, just like 802.11, but much more bandwidth efficient.

Siemens to develop 3G gear in China. The mobile group of the German company launches a joint venture with China's Huawei to make products based on the upcoming 3G wireless standard. [CNET News.com]

Wed, 27 Aug 2003 20:37:27 GMT

In the "they don't get yet" dept., wireless carriers struggling to improve margins through the use of camera phones have been total laggards at implementing interoperabiltiy standards. When I participated in this effort myself, there was tremendous foot dragging. It's really up to Verizon, AT&T, Sprint and others to complete this. Most of them don't understand the fundamental power of their own industry: there is exactly zero use for a single phone. That is, there's nobody to call. It's an OLD version of Metcalfe's law. You remember that one...

You would think when a spokesman is quoted (in the linked Forbes article, above) saying the following, that information would "trickle up" to Denny Strigl...but it's a long way to him...everything good takes time:

"We initiated SMS interoperability last fall on a Thursday without any public announcement," says a Verizon spokesman, "By Friday the number of text messages traveling on our network had tripled," he says. A formal announcement was made the following week. For the industry as a whole, the number of SMS messages sent in 2002 doubled over 2001 according to IDC.

Fri, 11 Jul 2003 03:30:36 GMT

Noise From Phone Can Chase Mosquitoes

Those clever Koreans; what will they think of next? South Korea's largest mobile phone operator said Thursday that it will offer cell phone users a new noise service that it says will repel mosquitoes. Subscribers can pay 3,000 won (US$2.50) to download a sound wave that is inaudible to human ears but annoys mosquitoes within a range of three feet. Customers can then play the sound by hitting a few buttons on their mobile phones.

wow.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A37000-2003Jul10.html

Thu, 10 Jul 2003 06:25:58 GMT

I love taking photos and posting and sending them around. Earlier this year I purchased a camera phone while in the UK and had fun sending photos to my friends around the world. It was fairly easy to configure MMS with Vodaphone Live service. Well, I did have to change the URL in the Nokia menu to ".pp" as I was a pre-paid sub, but that was easy. It did not, however, work when I was on the old D2 network (formerly Manesmann Mobilfunk, now Vodafone...disclosure - I worked for D2 designing and building the network from 1990-1993 in old Niederlassung West). Well, it was impossible to send a photo from Germany to anywhere since the GPRS gateway address was different. To meet the projections from the story below from Smartmobs, things will REALLY have to improve.

Phonecams everywhere.

Images made by the phones may presently be poor low-resolution shots but as cameras, the phones have other advantages. They are portable, discreet and networked which allows them to transmit the images they capture to another such phone, an e-mail address or the Internet.Soon they may be everywhere. The research firm, Strategy Analytics, predicts that 42 million camera cell phones will be sold worldwide this year and that sales will reach 218 million by 2008. A spokesman for Sony Ericsson, Peter Bodor,said "Eventually, all mobile phones will have either a picture or video camera."
For both good and evil, phonecams proliferate

[Smart Mobs]

Sat, 21 Jun 2003 23:28:42 GMT

Hotspot Honeymoon over? asks Unstrung of many research analysts...in case you have not read the sister (brother?) blog, the "WiFi hotpost" business model (there's an oxymoron!) is going the way of pets.com. Of course, WiFi on the other hand is heading the way of Pets - one in almost every home.

Meanwhile, Vonage presses forward with more VoIP services. John Dvorak's recent comments on PC Magazine has some comments on it. So much of telecom pricing and regulations are distance rated - ala Long Distance, LATA boundaries, etc. Of course that's irrelevant now, but old thinking dies hard. One amusing comment he made was "Trick of note. Although the company does not encourage this, I have a friend in Paris using the system with a U.S. phone number. The possibilities are endless"

Tue, 17 Jun 2003 16:32:56 GMT

I love wireless enthusiasm...that freshness from the "other" side. Sure, this guy's ideas have been around for years, and sure you will really need QUALCOMM's SnapTrak technology to have this work well in urban canyons, but why not?

Radiocar: Killer App for Mobile Net?.

Who knows whether it will happen -- but Dan Luke has an idea for revolutionizing urban transportation systems via GPS and wireless PDAs.

[Smart Mobs]