Wireless Federation » archive for 'internet'
Bandwidth for Mobile Internet (France)A French Parliamentary commission recommends that part of the future spectrum of digital frequencies in France should be used for mobile and fixed Internet, once the analog signal is switched off.
In order to open high-speed Internet, the commission recommended that the 790 MHz-862 MHz sub-band be dedicated to electronic communication.
Aussies want web, TV access on mobiles'’ONE in two Australians want to access the internet over their mobile phone, while more than a third want to view live television'’ according to Himanshu Johar, Wireless Federation’s Senior Analyst
Internet access was the most popular form of content, desired by 52 per cent of respondents, followed by live TV (37 per cent) and TV clips (31 per cent). While half those surveyed wanted to use their phone to watch the news and check the weather, the most popular content was entertainment news, nominated by 58 per cent.
According to the global study Anytime, Anyplace by media agency Universal McCann, Australians have been slow to use the full suite of mobile phone applications.
The study found that only 33 per cent of Australians had used their phone to surf the mobile internet, send messages and emails or take photographs.
That ranked far behind the leading nation, Japan (47 per cent) and a number of other European and Asian markets, including China (43 per cent), India (34 per cent) and well behind the global average of 37 per cent.
But the study, which was conducted among 10,000 people who had a mobile phone and broadband access in 21 markets, found the US was last, with just one in five Americans engaging in complex mobile phone use.
The mobile is the world’s biggest portable media and computing platform. By 2011, 3.3 billion people are expected to be connected, according to data from the Wireless Federation, with the use driven by growth in Asia, Latin America and Africa.
“These people are really content-hungry,” Universal McCann Insight director Natalie Pidgeon said. “They like to have their scanner on 24/7.
“But the content they’re looking at on their mobile is quite perishable. They don’t want to keep it. Laptops are more about content they can keep: TV series, films and music. It’s the collectable content.”
3G-enabled mobile phones are the most in-demand device globally, with more than 40 per cent of respondents saying they planned to purchase one, followed by a video-capable iPod (39 per cent) and a wireless laptop. In Australia, penetration is higher than the global average of about 20 per cent.
But the study found people expected content to be device-neutral, or able to be viewed on a number of platforms.
“About the only thing they don’t want to transfer content to is a gaming console,” Ms Pidgeon said. “That seems to be for games only.”
The study also found phone users welcomed advertising as long as they had opted to receive it and they received something of value in return.
Two-thirds of respondents globally found branded content was an acceptable form of advertising.
Ads that appear in the middle of video clips were the least acceptable format.
And Hutchison’s 3 Mobile launched the 20-minute-long cricket show The Pitch, which it is billing as the first in-house telco-made-for-mobile program.
Mira Bashi, 3’s general manager of content and services, said the show, which is available as part of 3’s paid cricket packages, would help develop new media habits.
“I think consumers will sit down and watch it and look forward to it at the end of the day,” she said
Option to Develop World’s Smallest Wireless Module Optimized for Intel-Based Mobile Internet Devices (MID)Option N.V., the wireless technology company, today announced a collaboration with Intel Corporation to optimize WWAN modules for Mobile Internet Devices (MIDs) based on Intel’s low power technologies.
Mobile Internet Devices (MIDs) are a new category of truly mobile consumer devices that deliver full Internet experience on the go. These MIDs rely on ubiquitous wireless connectivity and anytime internet access to deliver range of usages around communication, entertainment and information.
Option will deliver WWAN modules that meet the power, size and performance characteristics needed for Mobile Internet Devices in 2008. Two modules are currently in development and will be optimized for MIDs based on Intel low power processors and chipsets. The GTM 201 EDGE module, which will be attractive to major growth markets such as China, Latin America and Southern Africa, and the HSPA module, GTM501 are planned for the first half of 2008. Delivered in an LGA package measuring just 25 x 30 x 2.5 mm, the devices are respectively the world’s smallest EDGE and HSPA WWAN modules.
Jan Callewaert, CEO Option, commented: “Delivering wireless modules that meet the requirements of Mobile Internet Devices is a major challenge and requires specific components and packaging techniques that are only now becoming available. We look forward to collaborating with Intel to optimize the WWAN module for Intel-based Mobile Internet Devices and helping identify customers that will be key to bringing these connected ultra mobile devices to life.”
“Mobile Internet Devices (MIDs) present an exciting growth opportunity for the industry. Intel is innovating for this category by delivering a range of building blocks, including low power processors and chipsets, to our customers” said Anand Chandrasekher, Intel Corporation Senior Vice President and General Manager of the Ultra Mobility Group. “We expect MIDs to have a range of wireless technologies and collaborating with Option on WWAN solutions for the category will help fuel the demand.”
Guangzhou Global Telecom Signs Distribution Agreement with China Unicom’s Zhengzhou BranchGuangzhou Global Telecom, Inc. , a wholesale distributor of mobile phone handsets, pre-paid calling cards and mobile handset value-added services in The People’s Republic of China (PRC), announced today that Guangzhou Global Telecom’s Zhengzhou Branch has signed an agreement with China Unicom’s Zhengzhou Branch.
Pursuant to the agreement, the company will become the principal agent to distribute China Unicom business in Zhengzhou. The Company can make transactions including:
— Cell phone card charged through the Internet;
— Charging procedure assistance;
— Selling phones, calling cards and mobile phone cards; and
— Integrated business related to the mobile phone.
The mobile users in Zhengzhou were approximately 4,527,000 at the end of September 2006, which is 63% of the total population of the city. The number of mobile users was 4,851,000 at the end of 2006, which is 1,334,000 more than that of 2005. The coverage of mobile users in major cities of China is 93%, which is higher than that of Zhengzhou. As a result, we believed that we have significant room to develop business in Zhengzhou.
“We are delighted to become the principal agent to distribute China Unicom’s business in Jinshui District of Zhengzhou City,” said Ms. Yankuan Li, Chairman and CEO of Guangzhou Global Telecom. “We are confident that our strong distribution experience and sales network will help China Unicom to expand its client base in the Zhengzhou region, as well as improve the mobile telecom service quality and standards. Within 1 month of setting up our branch in Zhengzhou, we were able to sign-off on a contract with China Unicom’s Zhengzhou Branch, which shows our quick expansion and integration capability.
US lawmaker slams iPhone termination feeThe Apple iPhone has enjoyed favorable reviews since its recent debut, but it came in for some rare criticism.
The phones, which cost between $500 and $600, are usable only on AT&T’s wireless network and will remain that way until 2012.
Even though the phones become expensive paperweights if customers quit AT&T’s wireless plan, the company will still charge a $175 early termination fee, said Rep. Edward J. Markey, chairman of a US House subcommittee on telecommunications and the Internet.
Markey described the phone as a “Hotel California service. You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave, you’re stuck with your iPhone and you can’t take it anywhere.”
The issue arose at a hearing on whether Congress should grant the cell phone industry’s wish and pre-empt states from regulating wireless phone companies.
State public utility commissions have no authority over pricing on wireless plans, but do have the authority to regulate the terms and conditions of wireless service agreements.
The wireless industry opposes what Verizon Wireless general counsel Steven Zipperstein called “patchwork, utility-style regulation” as “unnecessary and harmful.”
The Federal Communications Commission is currently considering rules that will dictate how a valuable swath of spectrum to be auctioned in the next six months will be used. Among the proposals is a requirement that one block of airwaves being auctioned be accessible to all wireless devices, which would include the iPhone.
Etisalat posts 33% rise in H1 net profitUAE-based operator Etisalat has posted a 33 percent annual rise in first-half net profit to AED 3.732 billion. Consolidated profits rose 30 percent to AED 10 billion, helped by expansion abroad including an increase in its stake in Africa’s Atlantique Telecom to 70 percent. The company spent AED 1.4 billion on capital equipment in the period. Its mobile subscriber base grew by over 1 million in the past year to 5.99 million, taking UAE penetration to 142 percent. Fixed lines reached 1.31 million at the end of June and internet subscribers hit 800,000. Internet penetration in the UAE is now at 60 percent. Its Egyptian mobile operator has passed 1 million customers since launching in May.
Norwegian Hacker Says He Can Bypass AT&T on iPhoneA well-known hacker claims to have overcome restrictions on Apple Inc.’s iPhone, allowing highly technical users to bypass AT&T Inc.’s network to use the phone’s Internet and music features.
In a post dated July 3 on his blog, Jon Johansen, 23, a prolific hacker of consumer electronics gadgets since he was a teenager in Norway, said “I’ve found a way to activate a brand new unactivated iPhone” without signing up for AT&T service.
“The iPhone does not have phone capability, but the iPod and Wi-Fi work. Stay tuned!” he wrote on his long-running blog, which is combatively named “So Sue Me.” The post was entitled “iPhone Independence Day,” a play on the July 4 U.S. holiday.
The site contained technical details for other hackers, as well as links to software necessary to complete the process.
One potential use would be for an iPhone user living or traveling outside the United States to access the iPhone’s music player and Internet service over Wi-Fi connections without using the phone.
AT&T spokesman Mark Siegel said it was necessary to activate the iPhone on AT&T’s network to ensure optimum performance. Using the phone without AT&T’s two-year service contract was unauthorized under the phone carrier’s exclusive network service contract with Apple, Siegel added.
“Any other use of the device is not authorized and we can’t guarantee the device will perform as intended to. We’ll monitor situations like this and if necessary we will take appropriate action,” he said. “Our terms and conditions are very clear.”
He did not elaborate on potential action AT&T might take.
Apple spokeswoman Natalie Kerris declined to comment on Johansen’s claims.
Apple has yet to reveal network operator deals in markets outside the United States. But the iPhone is a quad-band GSM phone and will work in many parts of Europe and Asia with international roaming deals arranged by AT&T, Kerris said.
Neither Apple nor AT&T have disclosed sales figures since the iPhone went on sale in the United States on June 29, but some analysts have estimated sales of up to 700,000 units for the costly coveted phone’s first weekend on the market.
Johansen became known as “DVD Jon” earlier this decade for helping to reverse engineer the code used to protect DVD movies against piracy, saying he did so in order to play them on his Linux computer.
The computer activist has engaged in a cat-and-mouse game with Apple to bypass copyright controls on various Apple products, including QuickTime, iTunes and Apple TV.
iPhone Calling in to Microsoft Exchange?With an estimated 700,000 Apple iPhones sold on its first weekend of availability, Americans obviously adore the expensive combination phone, media player and Internet client.
At $500 a pop, knowledge workers will be loathe to leave them behind, and will thus be bringing them into the enterprise.
But can the iPhone actually work in the enterprise without significant business application support? The answer is yes, if Synchronica PLC has anything to do with it.
The U.K.-based company is introducing its Mobile Gateway 3.0, which supports over-the-air synchronization between Microsoft Exchange and the iPhone.
Synchronica, an international provider of mobile synchronization and device management solutions, claims that its Mobile Gateway 3 will enable companies and service providers to offer mobile synchronization to business users. This in turn will enable users to receive corporate e-mail on their iPhones without requiring corporate IT managers to open up the firewall or install additional server-side software.
Microsoft, for its part, has also been working on making Exchange more iPhone-friendly. In Exchange Server 2007 Rollup 3, Microsoft claims to have fixed many IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol) clients problems. Both Macs and iPhones use the Mac Mail client. It, in turn, uses IMAP to work with Exchange.
Synchronica’s Mobile Gateway 3.0 middleware, already supports synchronization with a wide range of smartphones and mass-market feature phones from Nokia, Sony Ericsson, and other manufacturers.
In a statement, Carsten Brinkschulte, Synchronica’s CEO said, “The iPhone is a very attractive smartphone, appealing to both the consumer and prosumer market. However, IT Managers are not going to permit their executives to synchronize a device that requires them to punch holes in the corporate firewall.
“Mobile Gateway already supports synchronization with Microsoft Exchange, but does not require firewall modification or any software to be installed in the corporate network, so this won’t be an issue,” Brinkschulte continued. “From a carrier’s perspective, we are significantly expanding the reach of the iPhone into the business user and prosumer segments.”
Synchronica’s Mobile Gateway also already provides back-end support for POP3 and IMAP, connecting to popular mail services such as AOL or Yahoo. For business users, it provides a zero footprint architecture where users simply register their devices with Mobile Gateway to start receiving push email on their devices. Mobile Gateway includes built-in support for Microsoft Exchange, Lotus Notes, and Sun JES.
Synchronica is not the only company working to integrate the iPhone into the corporate communication system. Azaleos, an Exchange managed service company, will soon be releasing the next version of MobileXchange. This package is designed to help IT departments with provisioning, securing, monitoring and managing 7×24 access to e-mail and other critical business applications to any mobile device including everyone’s favorite new tech toy, the iPhone.
The company states that does this without requiring enterprises to expose IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol) and SMTP (Simple Mail Transport Protocol) in their Exchange servers or install additional connectors. Instead, Mobile Gateway uses Microsoft’s secure OWA (Outlook Web Access) to retrieve email from the corporate Exchange server.
Mobile Gateway 3.0 then delivers e-mail directly to the iPhone’s built-in e-mail client, allowing users to benefit from the outstanding user experience of the iPhone and its tight integration with the phone’s address book.
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Apple’s iPhone Gets Early Business Buyers, UsersTwo “firsts” may have been recorded for the iPhone on Tuesday as it is in the vanguard of enterprise purchases of the handset and a music-licensing company said it may be the first to license a song on the iPhone.
Mike Karfakis, president and CEO of Vitamin, a boutique design and marketing firm, surprised his employees by giving them iPhones. Noting that Vitamin’s five employees spend at least 80% of their working hours online, Karfakis said the devices are invaluable for online research, blog reading, podcast listening, e-mail sending, and video watching.
“My favorite feature would have to be complete access to Web sites as they appear on your home computer,” Karfakis said in an e-mail. “Apple has completely flipped the script on how the Internet is now integrated with palm devices. In the past PDA-accessible sites needed to be created for palm devices. With the iPhone, Apple has created a device that makes the existing Internet accessible.”
It’s still too soon to tell how the iPhone will sell in enterprise situations; before the launch of the mobile phone, some IT consultants and specialists cautioned companies to be wary of the iPhone in enterprise situations.
Vitamin, which counsels its customers on marketing and branding, believes the iPhones will help it stay in the forefront of branding aesthetics, in part because of the iPhone’s image as a leading-edge product, the company said.
Also on Tuesday, Rumblefish, a sonic branding and music-licensing agency, said it licensed a song by a group called the Procussions in an action that took less than three minutes. Rumblefish said it believes the licensing was the first song to be so licensed on the iPhone.
“Rumblefish has revolutionized music licensing, taking a confusing process and making it so easy that you can license a song from your phone,” Rumblefish CEO Paul Anthony said in a statement.
Apple, Amazon, eBay, RIM, And Google Lauded For E-Commerce InnovationApple’s iTunes, Amazon, eBay, RIM’s BlackBerry, and Google — both for search and AdWords — rank among the 10 most significant developments in e-commerce over the past decade, the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA) said on Wednesday.
The Washington, D.C.-based industry trade group also included broadband penetration, open standards (especially HTML), Wi-Fi, and user-generated content on its list. The list is intended to mark 10 years since the Clinton administration released the “Framework for Global Electronic Commerce,” a policy document that aimed to foster business and consumer confidence in the Internet.
“So many choices that today seem so obvious, were not at all obvious back then,” said Ken Wasch, president of SIIA. “Ira Magaziner had to fight off the International Telecommunications Union that thought it ought to regulate the Internet. There were some people who argued for an FCC-like regulatory structure. The only regulatory structure was ICANN, which, for all of its problems, worked.”
At least as interesting as the 10 developments singled out by the SIIA are some of the ones that didn’t make the cut. The passage of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), voice over IP, the founding of Salesforce.com, the Apache Web server, and the plummeting cost of digital storage are among the innovations and events that the SIIA’s 75 “policy and business wonks” passed over, said Ken Wasch, president of SIIA.
Although Wasch praised the way the government’s policy helped the Internet develop, he expressed disappointment that not everything worked out as well as was hoped at the time. “There was more of a belief back then that somehow the Internet would be a democratizing force,” he said. “And that has proven not to be the case.”
Beyond the starry-eyed optimism of Internet boosters in the mid-90s that overestimated technology’s capacity to change entrenched cultures, the Internet’s failure as a force for democratization can be laid at the feet of prominent Internet companies such as Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo, which punted when confronted by anti-democratic regimes. Rather than stand up for the principles they espoused in the U.S., Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo asked the U.S. government to stand up for them. However, such failure to rise to the occasion seems positively heroic when compared to the technology vendors that arm anti-democratic regimes with censorship tools.
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