WirelessMoves

3GSM / MWC : Ovi Share

Ovi's going to be a lot of things for Nokia in the future. During the congress, I've been looking at Ovi Share, one of the first Ovi applications, to see what the difference is to using Shozu to upload to Flickr, YouTube, etc. What Ovi does is to combine all of those services as it let's you upload all kinds of content from pictures, videos to PDF files to Ovi to share with others. The S60 Ovi client syncs with the portal and knows the groups that have previsously been created to share content with predefined user groups or the public. Also, the client can grab recent uploads of friends and show thumbnails of their new pictures, etc. right on the phone. Very nice integration into the S60 platform. I was also quite impressed with the AJAX implementation on the desktop. Very smooth user interface to view pictures and videos and add information to uploaded material. Forwading content to other people via eMail and the like is also possible. If the Ovi Share client runs on my N93 I'll create an account once I am back home. Could become my new content home.

3GSM / MWC : Quad Band HSPA is no longer enough

I'll leave it up for others to judge if it has been a smart move of Sony-Ericsson to use Microsoft Mobile along UIQ as an OS for their high end phones. So I have a different pitch for this story: When browsing the specs of their new Windows OS Experia X1 phone I noticed that it will come in two hardware versions: One supporting HSPA in the 850/1700/1900/2100 MHz bands and another one in the 900/1700/1900/2100 bands. The first variant is probably targeted at the US and Australian market since they have networks in the 850 and 1900 MHz bands and that one odd HSPA network of T-Mobile in 1700 MHz. The 2100 Mhz is for roaming. The second variant seems to address the European market where we might see UMTS migrating to the 900 Mhz band soon beyond the first network in Finland using this frequency. So while I am happy to see quad band HSPA support coming soon I have the feeling that the story does not end here.

3GSM / MWC : HP integrates Gobi Chipset for Worldwide Roaming

I am an international traveler so Internet access anytime anywhere no matter where I am is of grate importance to me. I am glad to see that there are now chipset solutions on the market which integrate CDMA and UMTS in a single chip for notebooks. I've spoken to Regine Pohl of HP during the congress about this as HP has integrated Qualcomm's Gobi platform in some of their business notebooks. For HP the advantage is that they can use the same chipset for all their notebooks worldwide while the user benefits from global seamless access no matter of the network technology. The chipset, however, is only one part of the equation, roaming agreements and affordable roaming tarrifs another. To this end, Regine said that HP is in contact with mobile operators to not only offer notebooks to their customers but also customized global access solutions. I am looking forward to this initiative to bear fruits.

3GSM / MWC : The Position of the Phone has Changed

Today I noticed an interesting shift in mobile phone usage behavior at the congress. Despite the mobile Internet being evangelized in the past years by many, most people still had their phone at their ears for making phone calls. This year when I look around the majority of people at the event have the phone in their hands to check eMail and browse the web. Good to see that it's finally happening on a larger scale.

3GSM / MWC : And My Prize for The Best Mobile Experience Goes To.. .

Believe it or not but I have not touched my notebook since last Sunday. The reason is simple: I leave the hotel at 7:30 in the morning and come back home around midnight. During the day carrying a notebook is simply not practicable and once back in the hotel, sleep is much more important. So as you might have noticed due to the spelling errors here and there that I've been blogging and picture uploading to Flickr only from the mobile phone. And it has worked very well this year. Typepad has finally managed to get their eMail posting feature straight and posts are now instantly put on the blog. So kudos to them, it works a lot better than last year. To see what others are doing and to keep myself informed, accessing the web from the mobile during the past days has been just as equally imporant. I've installed Opera Mini on my N93 before coming to Barcelona for the purpose and played around with it a bit before arriving in town. I've been a bit of a sceptic concerning Opera Mini before, being a Java application and all. However, I've changed my mind since as the experience of accessing standard web sites via its transcoding features is simply amazing. Especially over the crappy Yoigo network, it shows how its strenghts as it compresses web pages to something that can be downloaded even over such networks in a fly. And on the phone itself the application is very fast despite not being a native application. Might have something to do with the ARM Jazelle extension for executing Java code in hardware. So my prize for the application that gives me the best mobile experience this year goes to Opera for the Opera Mini web browser.

3GSM / MWC : PicoChip LTE and WiMAX chips

It has been good to meet with John Edwards of picoChip at congress with whom I'll be holding the WiMAX course at the University of Oxford later this year together with Chris Beardsmore of Intel. Since my scope of interest in wireless ranges from layer one to the application on the top I very much enjoyed to see picoChip's latest chip for LTE and WiMAX base stations in action. While others use Asics for the lower layer protocol handling and decoding, picoChip has designed their own chip with an ARM 9 processor and their own DSP to do the job more flexibly. The ARM processor used for the higher levels of the protocol stack runs Linux and the chip is used both for WiMAX and LTE. Looks like their solution has become quite popular as their WiMAX implementation has been chosen by testing houses as the reference design all other WiMAX companies have to test against. Chris allowed me to take a picture of their base station reference board and you can find it in my 3GSM Flickr stream on the right of the page.

3GSM / MWC: HP connects Telco Operators and Web 2.0

It looks like somebody at HP has noticed that I think and write a lot about mobile network infrastructure so I was invited to a number of interviews with key people managing HP products for mobile network operators. One striking thought I had during the discussion with Peter Dragunas of HP was that I need to turn my view on how telcom operators and web 2.0 companies could work together totally upside down. So far I was always arguing that the relationship between the two parties is difficult at best as Web 2.0 companies go for the global audience while network operators usually only have a national view. Dealing with hundreds of mobile network operators to bring their applications to mobile is a difficult task at best that few Internet companies will try to undertake. But what if the network operators went out and created services to link their assets to Web 2.0 applications instead of the other way around? Peter gave me a practical example: Telecom Italia Mobile has created an application with HP's help that allows people in SecondLife to get a virtual mobile phone in their virtual TIM store and then send and receive SMS and potentially also voice calls between virtual phones and phones in the real world. Quite a fascianting applicatio and it's easy to see how TIM can make revenue with the service. Peter could not say whether the idea came from TIM or SecondLife in the first place but I think it's a good role model for other wireless operators to think about (mobile) web 2.0.

Anyone out there with other examples of how mobile operators reach out to the web 2.0 world?

3GSM / MWC : An evening with S60

Things happen fast here in Barcelona. The Mobile Jam Session was just over and I was already on the bus to spend the evening with friends and fellow bloggers at the S60 reception in the evening. Thanks to Jan Bonnevier to talk with me about Ovi, I am going to check out the first fruits of your work at the Nokia booth today. It was also great to meet a couple of fellow bloggers from the U.S. who've made it to 3GSM for the first time this year, in particular Amir and Darla Mack. Lots of good discussions around mobiles, blogging and U.S. customs. Stefan, great to meet you there two, let's increase the word count beyond 5 the next time ;-) A perfect event for relaxing after a busy day. A big thanks to the S60 team!

3GSM / MWC : Meeting with the Publisher

A bit of self advertising today as it`s always good to meet with Wiley, my publisher, at the congress to see how the book sales are doing and to take a look at the latest titles that have just been released. If you need to get an overview of different wireless technologies then I of course recommend you to pick up a copy of my book in the local book store, at Amazon or in any other online book store. To find out about the details of a specific system such as WiMAX or LTE there are a number of specialized books on these topics now. The book on LTE is written by Pierre Lescuyer whom I have known for a long time since we`ve been working in the same company for some time and it`s great to see Pierre has come up with another book.

3GSM / MWC : Mobile Jam Session

I haven't seen a lot of the 3GSM exhibition itself yet because there are a lot of things happening besides the congress and there are lots of interesting people to meet. Tuesday afternoon was the Mobile Jam Session and I am really glad I went to the event. Targeted at mobile developers the format was great to discuss the latest and greatest ideas and problems of mobile developers alike. I got many of my questions answered and got lots of good input.

One interesting thought I took away from the session which developed while we were discussing different User Interface approaches of Apple and the rest of the mobile industry is the relationship between operators and Apple vs. operators and Nokia: The Apple brand has a lot of marketing power and Appel had nothing to loose in the mobile space. This way they have managed nugging network operators into becoming a bit pipe for them and on top even share the revenue they make as a bit pipe with them. Nokia on the other hand is also a powerful brand but they make their money with selling handsets to operators and not so much by directly selling them to the customer. Consequently their handle on operators to do something new and bold was pretty much restricted. So it was good Apple came in and broke the ice.

But maybe mobile network operators felt that the iPhone was good for them because of it's restrictions. Think what the data consumption with a Nokia Nseries phone would be if it were sold at the same conditions by mobile operators as the iPhone. Suddenly you have all those cool applications in addition to browsing and eMailing...

Anyway, just one of many interesting thoughts developing during the event. Thanks to Caroline and Rudy for organizing the event, I very much enjoyed it.

Also thanks to Peter for explaining soviet style tactics of mobile operators. Well, that's for another post.