A Wireless Wonk Weblog

No, its not the cops. Its just my BlackBerry.

2010-04-15T09:26:00.000-07:00

Have you ever noticed how bright the LED is on a BlackBerry. Have you also noticed that it is almost always blinking. Jump to my most recent post on BlackBerry Motion to learn how to turn off the incessant blinking.

The Mobile Web is Ripe for Disruption

2010-03-31T20:25:00.000-07:00

Lately, I’ve done a lot of reading about Flash vs. HTML5 on the mobile platform. The issues surrounding this debate are complex and entail technology as well as corporate strategy. The debate is also evolving on an almost daily basis with discussions of battery life, video speeds and resource consumption. I have read all of this knowing that the future of the mobile experience lies in the balance. Then it hit me, for all that this debate is, it may not decide the future of the mobile web after all. Let me explain.

The Past . . .

The history books are filled with examples of technologies that outgrew their user’s needs. Internet enabled Refrigerators that connected to our home computer so we could manage our grocery lists never could overcome the simplicity of notepaper and a magnet to do the same task. The supersonic Concorde proved that faster is not always better when it cost significantly more to move noticeably fewer people slightly faster than the new wide-body jets being designed at the same time. My final example can be found a lot closer to home for us in the mobile data industry. Windows Mobile is probably still the most technologically advanced mobile operating system available. In fact, many of the iPhone’s latest achievements and distant dreams (Skype over 3G, streaming media and video calls) premiered on Windows Mobile devices years ago.

So, what does this have to do with Flash, HTML5 and the future of mobile browsing? Nothing . . . yet.

Internet enabled refrigerators, the Concorde, and Windows Mobile 6 were all seen as technological leaps forward at the time they were introduced. The problem is that the user’s needs did not require these technological improvements in order to be met. The “smart refrigerator” was done in by the status quo; the pen and paper it hoped to replace. The Concorde was done in by failing to understand who their real customer was, the airlines, not the passengers. Windows Mobile was done in by over-engineering when customers wanted a phone that did not require a degree in engineering to operate.

. . . we are doomed to repeat.

The Status Quo

Outside of the tech savvy people we all tend to hang out with, most users don’t know what they don’t have. Most phones have a YouTube player, can stream media from many sources and have thousands of games to choose from. While Flash and HTML5 will make life easier for the developers, no one has created the need in the customer’s mind yet.

The Real Customer

The answer to this is still a bit foggy to me, which is why I worry. Who is Flash and HTML5 aimed at in the mobile ecosystem? I can see them making life easier for developers, yet the lack of platform standards (Apple vs. Adobe) is seriously undercutting this advantage. They should help manufacturers and carriers deliver more value, but so far neither has told the consumers what that added value will be. As stated in The Status Quo, no one has even begun to sell this to the end-user, so it is hard to believe that they are even being considered as potential customers.

Over-engineering

Lastly, I am faced with the question of advancement versus necessity. While I have not seen a single survey, study or report that says that the end-users want Flash or HTML5, they seem to be interested in a richer and faster web experience on their phones. The more I think about this, the more I think that Henry Ford’s approach to technological advancement is right. "If I'd asked my customers what they wanted, they'd have said a faster horse." I’m afraid that a “richer” media experience may be the mobile web’s equivalent to a faster horse.

The Future

If Flash and HTML5 are indeed the faster horse, who is going to invent the car? Harvard business professor, Clayton Christensen points out that truly innovative products enter the market from beneath the entrenched products. Mini computers aren’t as powerful as mainframe computers; PCs aren’t as powerful as minis; laptops aren’t as powerful as PCs and smartphones aren’t as powerful as laptops. Yet, each of these evolutionary steps in computing displaced its predecessor. Why? Because convenience trumps power in the mass market. Today, Smartphones are the number one selling computing device around the world because they are more convenient for everyday tasks, not because they are more powerful. I think web developers and designers should keep this in mind as they plan for the future of mobile browsing. While there will always be a fraction of every industry that continues to push the technological envelope, consumers will eventually opt for convenience over power. If you don’t believe me, let’s return to the example set by Windows Mobile. Windows Mobile was the pre-eminent mobile platform for a decade. Every new model had a faster processor, better screen resolution, more features and more applications. Yet, as the platform evolved, it got bloated with features and functions that consumers didn’t need, or worse, got in the way of a convenient mobile experience.

I can’t say that Flash and HTML5 will be the beginning of the end for the mobile web. I won’t know that for many years. What I can tell you is that the time is right for someone to disrupt the relatively consistent evolution of the mobile web experience. While technological advancement requires us to look forward, survival does require us to look over our shoulder every now and then.

“Gmail vs. Gmail” on a BlackBerry

2010-03-31T19:22:00.000-07:00

Check out my comparison of Gmail on the BlackBerry to Gmail on the BlackBerry on Monica Simons' BlackBerry Motion website.

If you have to ask, you have to click through to find out for yourself.

The Past, Present, and Future of Flash on Mobile

2010-03-31T19:14:00.000-07:00

Check out my report on Flash in the mobile environment on, author and international speaker, Janine Warner's Mobile Web Design Blog.

Options for the Verizon BlackBerry Bing application

2010-01-14T20:08:00.000-08:00

Verizon BlackBerry users discovered a little something extra in their phones this December. Verizon added an icon for Microsoft’s Bing application. For some users, this is an extra treat, for others it is the technical equivalent to a lump of coal. If you fall into the first group, you can stop reading now and enjoy Microsoft’s reasonable attempt to match Google in the mobile app space. If, on the other hand, you feel blindly assaulted by Verizon and Microsoft for forcing this application upon your pristinely configured device, there are options.

First, let me tell you that the Bing icon is not an application, so you cannot uninstall it like an application. Think of the icon as a placeholder. It is just like many of the other icons that are pre-installed when you power up your BlackBerry for the first time (V Cast Videos, V Cast Music, VZW Tones, Visual Voice Mail, etc.). Clicking on the Bing icon actually launches a website from which you can install the Bing application. With this in mind, here are three options for dealing with the Bing icon.

1) Delete the Bing VPL service book. Go to Options / Advanced Options / Service Books. Highlight the Bing VPL service book, press Menu and select delete. This will remove the Bing icon from your device. While this sounds like a simple solution, it is not a onetime task. The Bing service book is re-installed whenever the device reloads service books. Service books are reloaded as part of creating a new BlackBerry Internet Service email account as well as whenever the phone is reset (taking the battery out without powering down the phone first). For some users, the Bing VPL service book may never reappear, for others it may turn up again and again.

2) Hide the Bing icon. While this doesn’t remove the icon from your phone, it does place it out of site. To do this, highlight the Bing icon, press Menu and select Hide. The icon has now been hidden from view. You can unhide the icon by going to the home screen, pressing Menu and selecting Show All. Highlight the Bing icon, press Menu again and select Hide to uncheck that option. Press Menu again and select Show All to uncheck that option if necessary.

3) Lastly, you can just leave the Bing icon on the screen. It doesn’t take up much memory if you don’t install the application. It is just another icon on your Home Screen.

While some users see the Bing icon as an invasion of their BlackBerry’s Home Screen, it really is no different than the V Cast and VZW apps that come pre-installed. In this case, I guess it is more accurate to consider Bing a post-installed icon.

GSM encryption code cracked wide open, leaked to the Internet

2010-01-11T08:14:00.000-08:00

This is the headline to Boy Genius Report’s (BGR’s) article regarding a group of 5 hackers that claim to have cracked a 64 bit GSM encryption scheme. While their headline implied doom and gloom for security engineers around the world, the content of the article is more reasoned and accurate. According to BGR, “it is important to point out that the GSM algorithm that was cracked was the older and less secure 64-bit A5/1 algorithm, not the newer 128-bit A5/3 algorithm.” Other news sources also report that the cracked codes still require thousands of dollars of computer and radio equipment to access the wireless conversations they want to compromise. What is left out of the article is actually more important than what is said. Let’s cover what BGR did not.

The 64-bit A5/1 algorithm is only used to scramble voice conversations on older GSM equipment. This means that:

Good News
1) Your data transmissions are not impacted by this development.
2) Calls made with a 3G capable phone over a 3G connection are not impacted.
3) According to some sources, T-Mobile has converted its entire network to the newer encryption algorithm.
4) The same sources claim that AT&T has converted part, but not all, of its network to the newer encryption algorithm.
5) There are 3 pillars to information security. The pillar that this development impacts is Access, or the ability to listen to a voice conversation. It doesn’t impact Integrity or Identification. This means that no one can make phone calls or data transmissions posing as you. This also means that no one can alter your voice or data transmission.

Bad News
1) Because newer network equipment is designed to work with older handsets, even the latest in network equipment will accept the older algorithm. This means that any GSM user with an older handset (manufactured before 2007) may still be susceptible to eavesdropping even if the carrier (T-Mobile, AT&T, etc.) has upgraded the encryption algorithm in that area of their network.

In a nutshell, only very sophisticated and well funded criminal organizations will have the means to eavesdrop on your calls. Even if they try, they need to be very close to you to intercept your radio signal. They may need to be within feet of you in some buildings to within miles in some rural areas. They also need to catch you while your call is being handled by an older AT&T cellular site or they need to catch you while you are using an older model phone. Lastly, your conversation needs to be of such value that a very sophisticated and well funded criminal organization would want to go through all of the trouble we have outlined in order to listen in. If you regularly partake in these kinds of conversations, I would suggest you look into buying a TalkSecure Wireless phone from General Dynamics (http://www.gdc4s.com/content/detail.cfm?item=90bdc199-8775-4439-9b83-c021dc7e9e76) it runs your conversation through another 128-bit encryption algorithm on top of the one used by the carrier.

If you don’t partake in these kinds of conversations, I really wouldn’t worry about it.

T-Mobile 3G users get an upgrade for 2010

2010-01-06T12:12:00.000-08:00

According to PhoneScoop:

"Today (January 5, 2010) T-Mobile announced that it has upgraded its entire 3G network to HSPA 7.2Mbps (peak speeds). That's an improvement from 3.6Mbps, and should allow for faster wireless downloads. T-Mobile also pointed out that its 3G footprint now covers some 200 million Americans. T-Mobile also said that it plans to be the first U.S. carrier to deploy HSPA+ across its network by mid 2010. T-Mobile currently has an HSPA+ trial under way in Philadelphia. Once fully enabled, HSPA+ will offer up to 21Mbps downloads."

This is great news for many of T-Mobile’s 3G subscribers, but not all of them. While the network supports the higher speeds, some T-Mobile 3G handsets do not. Here is the list of T-Mobile’s 3G handsets and their supported network throughput.

HSPA 7.2 (High Speed Packet Access)
T-Mobile Dash 3G
T-Mobile G1
T-Mobile myTouch 3G
HTC Touch Pro2
Motorola CLIQ
Sidekick LX 2009
T-Mobile webConnect
T-Mobile webConnect Jet
These devices can download data at speeds up to 7.2Mbps and upload at up to 1.8Mbps. In all honesty, these speeds are theoretical. Real world performance will be slightly slower. Other HSPA 7.2 networks are seeing roughly 3Mbps download speeds and 1Mbps upload speeds in real world usage. At 3Mbps, it would take 8 seconds to download a 3 MB file, or the equivalent of a 3 minute MP3 track.

HSDPA 3.6 (High Speed Download Packet Access)T-Mobile Tap
BlackBerry Bold 9700
Samsung Behold II
Samsung Comeback
Samsung Gravity 2
Samsung Highlight
Samsung Memoir
Samsung t659
Sony Ericsson Eqiunox
These phones can download data at speeds up to 3.6Mbps and upload at up to 384Kbps. As with HSPA, these speeds are theoretical. Real world performance will be in the neighborhood of 1Mbps download and 100Kbps upload. At 1Mbps, it would take 24 seconds to download a 3 MB file, or the equivalent of a 3 minute MP3 track.

UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications System)Samsung t639
Samsung t819
Samsung Behold
Nokia 3711
The theoretical speeds for early 3G devices using UMTS are 384Kbps for the uplink and downlink. Most UMTS users are seeing speeds in the area of 100Kbps. At 100Kbps, it would take 4 minutes to download a 3 MB file, or the equivalent of a 3 minute MP3 track.

NOTE: Operating systems, processor speeds, and even display components can impact the apparent speed of any wireless device. Don’t think that your BlackBerry Bold 9700 is outdated or slow because other devices move data through the air faster than yours. Use these numbers to compare Beholds to Behold IIs or T-Mobile’s HTC Touch Pro2 (at 7.2Mbps maximum) to Verizon’s Touch Pro2 (at 3.1Mbps maximum). As Albert Einstein (or the punk band Cigar) would point out, speed is relative.

Happy new year T-Mobile 3G subscribers!

Twitter is the 21st century's CB radio

2009-04-20T21:49:00.000-07:00

I have never felt that Twitter has that "aha!" feel that one blogger claims is ever-present with successful new technologies. I have always felt that Twitter was destined to be a very successful, but short lived, fad, just like . . . I could never figure that last part out. I have even twittered my thoughts about Twitter's eventual demise, but without the analog to its failure.

Then it hit me a couple days ago. Twitter is the 21st century equivalent of the 20th century's CB radio. Let me illustrate.

CB radios were the tools of over the road truckers. They allowed them to stay connected with their peers where other communication methods were inefficient, or non-existent. The CB was the domain of a small group of people who's business depended on it.

Twitter has always been intended for any user to post short comments about whatever they wish. Twitter did not have a small targeted audience like the CB radio.

As CB radios gained in popularity, more and more users from outside the trucking industry began using CB radios to talk to each other about nothing important. Sure, you would hear about the occasional speed trap if you were monitoring truckers on the highway, but there wasn't much riveting or valuable content on the CB for the regular citizen. Yet the lack of content couldn't counter the influences of C. W. McCall and B.J. and the Bear in the mass popularization of the CB radio.

While Twitter was always intended to be a mass market service, the popularity of Twitter mirrors the CB in the way that the media has driven its popularity more than the service itself. Twitter milestones like Ashton Kutcher's million followers, Shaq's mid-game tweets and U.S. Representatives who were caught twittering during the President's State of the Nation address, brought enormous exposure to the service. Twitter is now as overpopulated as CB radio channels were in the 1970's. Old boomers like me may remember when CB radio's went from 23 channels to 40.

So both services started small, had explosive growth because of the media and became overpopulated with "chatter". More evidence of the parallels of the two technologies can be found in their creation of community.

Many sociologist will look to a unique language when defining a community. CB radio users had slang and 10-codes. Twitter users have their own shorthand and hash codes. CB radio users were identified by their "handles" while Twitter users are also identified by their "handles" or "aliases".

Where most of the CB's public traffic flowed over channel 19, groups of friends would avoid the chatter on lesser used channels. This would be similar to creating a friends list in Twitter and only following them.

So, there is a lot of common ground under the CB radio craze and Twitter's recent popularity surge. Are they destined for the same fate? I believe so, and that is not a bad thing in my mind. The public got tired of listening to kids constantly breaking in on the CB with "What's your 20?" As for Twitter, I am already hearing from regular citizens and many news outlets that they don't care that the neighbor kid sneezed or what Shaq had for breakfast. I give Twitter 3 to 6 more months before the chatter causes the popularity to plateau. Twitter will remain relevant in the mainstream while celebrities continue to broadcast their lives to their fanatics (yes, fan is short for fanatics). As celebrities move on to some other fad, which always happens, so too will the everyday user of Twitter.

The good news is that like the CB, the user base will shrink but the content value will rise. Twitter may return to its original roots as a micro-blogging service with valuable content worth sifting through. Only time will tell.

WiMax, Femtocells and WiFi on cell phones: Three ships that will collide in the night

2009-04-16T18:15:00.000-07:00

All three of these technologies are reaching new levels of maturity. Verizon is publicly considering adding WiFi to its handsets while its competitors have been doing this for years. The GSM community has finally approved 3G femtocell standards that will allow consumers and small businesses to improve cellular coverage in their homes and offices. The Federal stimulus package has billions of dollars earmarked for bringing broadband internet to under-served communities.

While the mainstream media is certainly confused about how each of these technologies address their needs, it often appears that the industry is just as confused. Appearances can be deceiving. I believe that the industry's perceived confusion is actually more pragmatic. I think we are at a point where 3 similar technologies have multiple paths to commercialization. Some of the paths are obvious while others are speculative. Some of the paths lead to competition while others are uniquely suited for just one technology. Let's look at a number of the paths open to these 3 technologies.

Rural broadband is an example of a path specifically suited to WiMax technology. Neither WiFi nor femtocells support the coverage needs of rural broadband. Craig McCaw, the visionary that he is, saw this opportunity several years ago. Notice that Clearwire, founded by McCaw, focused on moderately populated communities before its partnership with Sprint. Clearwire's work in the Inuit communities in Canada's northern provinces is an excellent example of McCaw's vision of empowering under-served communities with broadband internet. While this should be a strong growth opportunity for Clearwire, I fear that Sprint's involvement could jeopardize this. Partnering with Sprint is often akin to casting Ted McGinley in your sitcom. Many companies that have partnered with Sprint have suffered setbacks as a result. Sprint partnered with several cable companies in the 1990's to enter the digital cellular revolution. While Sprint flourished in this new market, its cable partners found wireless to be an expensive distraction from their core businesses and quickly exited their partnerships. The merger with Nextel is another example of unfulfilled promise. Sprint's initial launch of Clear in Baltimore illustrates a dangerous diversion from Clearwire's original business model.

An example of a truly competitive path is indoor coverage enhancement. T-Mobile really pioneered this space with the launch of their HotSpot@Home service in June of 2007. This service took advantage of WiFi on specific handsets, public WiFi hotspots and the customer's own WiFi network to provide enhanced coverage and reduced rate plan cost to the customer. Verizon launched a competitive service using a femtocell in place of a WiFi hotspot. This is definitely an example where 2 of the technologies compete head to head.

Sprint's announcement that it will use WiMax to provide 4th generation wireless services plots a collision course with femtocells and WiFi. While femtocells and WiFi provide increased coverage, increased data speeds are also a benefit of both technologies. Where WiMax as a cellular evolution path becomes interesting is how Sprint would handle indoor ceverage expansion. Would they deploy WiMax femtocells? Would they allow WiFi onto their WiMax products in order to expand coverage? Or, will they rely on 3G femtocells to fill the indoor coverage gaps? This is the technology collision I am watching for like an avid NASCAR fan on a hot Sunday at Darlington.

Other paths to watch are muni-WiFi, or the use of many WiFi hotspots to cover a large municipal area. There is speculation that cellular companies may use WiMax to transmit data from remote cell sites to their central switching office. It is conceivable that your next cell phone will use WiFi when you are at work, a femtocell at home and WiMax to jump from the carrier's tower to their central office at other times. Regardless of the technology moves that have, and will continue to take place. Real long term success for each of these technologies lies in their stealth. As long as the customer can make and receive phone calls, get their e-mail, surf the web and do whatever other data tasks they find important, they will not care if the network is WiFi, WiMax or Mad Max. My vision of a telecom utopia is that all of these technologies will find their profitable niches and enable new and exciting services for customers. More importantly, the customer will have no knowledge of the network, and will never need to know. I am looking forward to a day when CDMA vs. GSM, or WiMax vs. WiFi is replaced with ubiquitous wireless coverage . . . Period.

Let the mVoIP (mobile Voice over IP) evolution begin!

2009-04-10T10:56:00.000-07:00

Yes, I said EVOLUTION, not revolution.

Skype announced the launch of their VoIP program for the iPhone and will do the same for RIM's BlackBerry in May. Well the media got a wiff of that one and immediately realized that voice communication will never be the same. They are right, but only missed the revolution by almost 2 years.

For those who follow me here, or know me, the following sentence is a bit of an understatement. I have more than a few cell phones that I can use on a daily basis. I tell you this because all but a couple are capable of doing mobile Voice of Internet Protocol (mVoIP).

My two year old Nokia N95 has a built in SIP client (mVoIP program) and works with any SIP enabled VoIP solution. I have it configured with a hosted VoIP provider here in Minnesota and can make calls over WiFi or cellular networks. My N95 has been replaced with a newer Nokia E71 that can do all of the mVoIP stuff the N95 could do in a much cooler package.

My first mobile use of Skype was 5 years ago when it was introduced for Windows Mobile. Today I have Skype loaded on my Windows Mobile AT&T Tilt and my iPhone 3G. The iPhone version is smooth, but I prefer the Tilt since I can use it over AT&T's cellular network, which means I can use it wherever I go. I may be at the launch of the BlackBerry version, and plan to load and test it as soon as it is out.

So the media is getting all excited today about a phenomena that started almost 5 years ago. While mVoIP got its start in 2004, I contend that the revolution really started to roll in 2008 when T-Mobile launched their HotSpot@Home service. There are a few reasons I believe that T-Mobile's @Home service is the real revolution.

The media is focusing on Apple's unwillingness to open Skype to the cellular network. They are spewing unsubstantiated claims that the carriers are affraid of mVoIP because it will hurt their business. "mVoIP is going to kill voice revenue." Of course mVoIP will have a negative impact on voice revenue. This is no different than digital networks having a negative impact on the old analog networks. Heck, even cars had a negative impact on stable (horse stables) revenues. That's progress. That's opportunity. @Home is revolutionary because a national wireless carrier launched it for businesses and consumers. While the media blares the demise of the cellular industry because of mVoIP, some in the industry have already responded. T-Mobile recognized that mVoIP is not a threat, it is an opportunity to capture new business. Sure it may negatively impact voice revenue, but it is driving up T-Mobile's data revenue at the same time. It also has reduced T-Mobile's need to build expensive towers to fill in coverage in very small areas.

@Home is also revolutionary because of the lasting impact it will have. While the iPhone 3G was garnering all of the press attention, @Home's launch wasn't even greeted with the chirps of crickets. Because of the noticable lack of coverage for @Home's launch, future historian's are going to have bad days trying to explaine the fundamental shift in telecommunications it ushered in. While the iPhone represented some very innovative technologies and implimentations that garnered it well earned recognition, I contend that handsets will see many more shifts like this one in the future. The recognition that voice is just more bits of data on the cellular network and that treating voice as data can be monetized by a wireless carrier is a shift that will not be undone. Touch screen interfaces were around before the iPhone and will be long after the iPhone as well. As carriers move voice traffic into the realm of mobile data, they will not go back to the old archaic methods of moving voice anymore than they will bring back the analog networks of the late 80's.

The revolution started almost 5 years ago when Skype gave Windows Mobile users an alternative to traditional voice calls. Nokia advanced the revolution when it built another mVoIP capability into its handsets. And T-Mobile showed the rest of the telecom industry that the challenge can be met, and advanced if you take control of it yourself and not let the technology control you.

Apple, welcome to the revolution!

The Developer Debate About App Stores

2009-04-08T21:09:00.001-07:00

There is an an interesting debate going on in the mobile developer community regarding the app stores for the different mobile platforms. Most of the discussions revolve around how many customers the sites have, or will have, and the quality of the apps on the sites. I don't think those issues address the real question that developers should be asking:

Where is the user for MY application?

Sure the iPhone App Store has more current subscribers, and the BlackBerry App World probably won't catch up for a while. It is also true that an application may stand out more in the BlackBerry App World with fewer fart and beer applications to compete with. To me, the real question is: Where is MY user? If my application is designed to track international travel expenses, I will probably start with a BlackBerry application. If I have an application that uses an accelerometer to enhance a game of rock/paper/scissors, I'll probably start with an iPhone application.

But there are many other criteria to consider:

BlackBerries and iPhones are not available in all of the same countries. If I have a language translation application, is the platform I am programming for even available in countries that speak that language?

While there are legitimate concerns about deploying apps over the air in a BlackBerry enterprise environment, the same scenario can play in a developer's favor. More than once I have pointed large corporations at developers who wrote applications that could be managed remotely. BlackBerry supports remote management, iPhone (currently) does not.
(Note: All BlackBerry Enterprise Server customers can manage remote applications to a very, very granular level. My large corporate BES customers allow their users to install applications over-the-air, but they block or disable PIM (calendar, contacts, tasks, etc.) access within those applications. This means that users can download games or any other application that doesn't hook into the PIM. An application like Google Maps for Mobile will still run, but it won't give you a "map this contact" option in the Address Book.)

Who is my prospective customer? If the customer is in government, legal or finance, I will probably start on the BlackBerry. If the customer is in marketing, the arts or design, I will probably go with the iPhone. BUT WAIT, some of the best application successes came from going against the normal use of the platform. VisiCalc on the Apple ][, adding voice calls to a text pager (BlackBerry 5810), VoIP over cellular (O.K., this example will prove out in 3 to 5 years). A "business app" that makes legitimate use of an accelerometer (no gimmicks) could create new market
penetration for the iPhone.

Also remember that you are not developing for the storefront, you are developing for the customer. In Apple's case, you have one distribution venue. In RIM's case, you don't have to distribute through the App World, you could partner with an organization and distribute directly. Sell a real estate application through your local realty company or an MLS. Some customers may not want a custom application of theirs available to the public in an app store.

I'm sure that you are all aware of all of these considerations. I just wanted to make sure that more important project development factors don't get pushed too far out of frame: the customer and the application itself.

In search of mobile advertising

2009-03-20T18:19:00.000-07:00

Have you noticed that the advertising, mobile, and even mainstream media is going ga-ga over mobile advertising? So where are the banners for mobile websites?

I am trying to launch a mobile site with advertising and I am finding more road blocks than green lights. First, many existing ads on mobile sites actually point at big browser ads. This is O.K. for some mobiles, but not all of them. While all BlackBerries can display these pages beautifully, many BlackBerries are shipped with all of the requisite settings turned off. This means that the average BlackBerry user misses out on a real web experience because someone thought it was better to browse badly formatted sites fast than it is to browse a real site the way it was designed. On the other hand, Google will only provide mobile banners if you format your page exclusively for mobile browsers. Believe it or not, that means that your site won't work on some mobile browsers as well. Apple's iPhone can render a big browser page as good as any mobile device. Unfortunately it chokes on websites designed with WAP 2.0 which is the preferred platform for Google's mobile ad program. Google's own Android also looks down upon mobile formatted sites thinking that their 3" screen can substitute just fine for the 20" you have on your desk. Yea, yea, the battle between two apparent mobile web development camps; mobile formatted content and big pages on little screens, means that neither philosophy works for everyone.

With that in mind, I designed my page with basic HTML formatting so that it looks good on any screen, big or small. The problem is that because the page was written in HTML, I can't find an ad affiliate that will provide links that point at mobile ads. O.K., I am embellishing here. There is one affiliate program that supports, O.K., they promote, their mobile ad program. Here is an excerpt from their website:

"To help publishers stay on the cutting edge of shopping trends --------- now offers Mobile Links. Designed for those publishers that want to work with certain advertisers to create tracking links for mobile devices, --------- Mobile Links provides an easy to use technology framework for distributing and maintaining m-commerce links. ---------'s m-commerce tracking technology enables advertisers and publishers to reach and accurately measure the buying behavior of mobile consumers."

Wow, that is EXACTLY what I was looking for. I registered on their site, read their required exceedingly long publisher's agreement, and began to search for links. There was nothing for mobile. I went back to the website and found this:

"If you are a publisher that’s interested in building a site that is designed for mobile commerce and would benefit from --------- Mobile Links join the --------- Network to get started and share your plans with the --------- Network Development team."

There is no information on their site about their Network Development team, let alone how to contact them, so I called the publisher's support line. The rep was friendly, but told me that there was no way for me to contact them. She would take my information and have someone get back to me. Here is the response I got:

"If your mobile web page can be accessed with a normal web browser you can use any --------- links or banners. If it is exclusively formatted for mobile phone web browsers, the only advertiser that currently offers these links is 1-800-Flowers.com."

One advertiser! One! Boy that's going to help me stay on the cutting edge.

So my search continues. I have a friend who recommended that I write a case study on finding mobile banners. The more I hunt, the more I think it will become a business plan.

If you provide an affiliate program with mobile banners, or know someone who does, I will happily sing your/their praises in this blog. I'll even give you/them as prominent a spot on the site as I am allowed to by contract.

SO, with this advertising drought, I may actually launch this page as a free app on an international mobile app store with NO advertising. Watch this blog for more adventures in mobile advertising.

A dose of reality to go with 4G marketing

2009-03-16T20:26:00.000-07:00

My brother-in-law recently referred me to an article that spoke about 4G having speeds up to 300Mbps. I can assure you that these are fantasy numbers. Then again, anything you read today about LTE or WiMAX Mobile will usually give you engineering numbers, or marketing's translation of engineering numbers, which is usually the same as "theoretical", or "no way in hell you are going to see those speeds in real life."

I'll give you real world data based on my direct experience with the GSM Alliance Services Working Group and current LTE standards.

To understand the difference between theoretical and actual data rates you need to consider 3 variables:

Terminal Class - There are 5 terminal classes. Terminal Classes range from Voice Only to Peak Data Rate devices. I do not know of any Voice Only or Data Only devices. PC Cards/modems are the only possible example of Data Only, but most of them could support voice anyway because the radio equipment the manufacturers buy is cheaper with voice and data than with data only. GPRS (2G) and EDGE (2.5G) can do voice or data, but only one at a time. If I am downloading a file and get a call, the data session is suspended until the voice call is completed. GSM 3G is the only current technology that supports simultaneous voice and data over the cellular network. If your phone is generating a voice call on the network, it is taking up space that could be used by the data session on the same phone. This means that data is a bit slower when being used simultaneously with a voice call. This is one reason GSM carriers like to put WiFi radios in their 2.5G phones. WiFi is a completely separate radio, so a phone call and a WiFi session can coexist without any loss of performance on either service. If you have a smartphone with WiFi, try to surf the web and make a voice call at the same time. It is cool, and will help promote bluetooth headsets so you can surf and talk at the same time comfortably.

Timeslots (GPRS) or Spectrum Efficiency (3G/4G) - In my standards days, the cellular channels were subdivided into 8 timeslots. Think of these as 8 lanes of traffic on the freeway. The engineers would publish potential data speeds using all 8 timeslots. It made the numbers very impressive, but it was unrealistic for several reasons.

1) It was foolish to assume that you wouldn't have voice traffic on the same channel/freeway. Cellular networks have always been designed to give voice calls priority over data, therefore data never could have had unlimited access to all 8 lanes.

2) A radio that transmitted and/or received on 8 timeslots simultaneously would chew up and spit out a fully charged battery in a couple hours. It would also generate enough heat to melt the plastics in the phone. The fastest devices in that day used only five timeslots at one time, usually 4 downloading and one uploading.

Today 3G/4G uses spectrum efficiency to judge peak data rates. The current 4G peak data rate forecasts are based on 20MHz of radio spectrum. Translated into English, this means that the data device will need to use the entire width of the highway in order to move that much data in so little time. Try downloading a song on your iPhone 3G near a freeway at evening rush hour. It will be SLOW. Try the same download at 2 in the morning and it will zip unencumbered by voice or other data traffic. Since other data traffic does play a factor, a geek trade show will cause your phone to lag where a dog show may not.

As with GPRS, it is unrealistic to give a single user the right to hog all of the width of the highway so they can move more data while everyone else is waiting on an on-ramp for their turn at the data network. Now, LTE standards are written to give 4G data devices access to the whole width of the road, but I expect that this will only play out in the overnight hours and/or in the early stages when 4G traffic is scarce on the new networks.

Forward Error Correction (FEC) - Gizmodo alluded to this. Basically, if the connection is strong and clean, the phone and network can use less space for error correction algorithms. When the data connection is weak and dirty, the phone and network actually use more space to keep the data clean than they do for the data itself. The engineers do all of their preliminary data modeling in a lab, so their results tend to be based on very clean, very strong data connections. The real world ain't so kind.

A fourth consideration that most people overlook is backhaul. Backhaul refers to the amount of bandwidth the carrier has between their towers and their switch. Often times, the backhaul is less than the capacity of the radios on the tower. This means that even though the radios could handle dozens of simultaneous data sessions at a high throughput, the backbone can only support 2/3 or even 1/2 of that. The reason is mainly economics. Most backhaul from a tower is done over another company's lines. It is just plain expensive to buy enough bandwidth to support all the calls that may hit someday, so they budget for normal traffic and let peak traffic suffer. Many people who know the tech behind the networks believe this was the real cause of the iPhone network troubles in the early days. They just didn't have enough pipe to move the amount of data iPhone users were demanding.

Again, the biggest difference is that 3G uses the open space between phone calls on the network, where GPRS used dedicated timeslots. GPRS had a theoretical limit of over 170kbps, but the reality was usually about 30kbps. The newest 3G technology (HSPA) has a theoretical download of over 17Mbps, but performs at about 1Mbps to 1.4Mbps. The LTE standards list a theoretical peak downlink data rate of over 300Mbps, but AT&T is touting a theoretical LTE speed of 100Mbps and an expected real world performance of 10Mbps.

I realize that these numbers put a damper on a lot of the grandiose marketing messages and cool new broadband applications that the wireless companies are promising, but until LTE hits the street, all of the numbers are theoretical. I expect LTE to hit the street at 10Mbps, but improve over the subsequent years to around 100Mpbs.

And, so you don't worry about this merry-go-round ride coming to a stop, LTE Advanced standards are already in development.

Phones will always get faster, but rarely as fast as the wireless evangelists promise as quick as they promise it.

Carrier's and Manufacturers Just Don't Get It!!!

2009-02-03T14:56:00.000-08:00

As I was preparing some notes for a case study I am contributing too, I decided to review some of the cellular carrier and cellular manufacturer mobile sites. Not thinking, I tried to hit up AT&T from a T-Mobile device. I got the full desktop page, not a mobile page. Then it hit me, I always access the manufacturer's sites from their devices, and low and behold I get a mobile formatted site. The same is true for the carriers. When I bring up a specific carrier on that carrier's phone, I get the mobile page. When I try to pull up a carrier site from a competitor's phone, I get the full desktop page. In fact, if I tried to get to T-Mobile's page form a competitor's BlackBerry, I got an error message stating that the site was incompatible with my device.

With over 265 million mobile users in the U.S., you would think that the carriers and manufacturers would try to make information a little bit more accessable to people looking to switch.

Carriers and manufacturers: build mobile sites that not only give mobile users access to the story that would make them switch, but take it a step further and customize the message based on the browser and the carrier that brought them to you. If I hit AT&T from a T-Mobile BlackBerry, I should get a page that sings the praises of the BlackBerry Bold and it's 3G network. If I hit HTC from a Palm Treo, they should be shouting out the benefits of Windows Mobile or Android (depending on who is subsidizing the website that month).

There aren't many new customers out there. Its time to start marketing to your competitor's customers where they are, on their phone.

CNBC sports reporter claims BlackBerry Bold tv ad is innacurate

2009-01-16T21:00:00.000-08:00

Darren Rovell of CNBC went on a rant about how "idiotic" and "careless" RIM was for showing a commercial where the runner exceeds the world record pace for the race he is supposedly running. O.K., so Darren is obviously a track and field uber-geek. I get it, I do. I comment to people about the absolutely ridiculous things that advertisements have people doing with their cell phones. Here is where Darren and I differ. I get it, it's called advertising, not documentary. I observe the embellishments, but I don't call out the advertiser for using exaggeration to market their product. Darren did.

So I called Darren out with an e-mail. To his credit, he reprinted it with a couple others at http://www.cnbc.com/id/28639892?__source=RSS*blog*&par=RSS.

Here is my e-mail:
"While you are nitpicking your way through telecom ads, will you also address the following:

Comcast High Speed Internet with PowerBoost – Is PowerBoost approved for animal testing by the FDA?

Verizon Wireless – How do all of those Verizon employees get away with blocking traffic and following people around all day? I use Verizon and haven’t seen any of them. Am I being discriminated against?

AT&T Wireless – I thought Wisconsin had more bars in more places. Is the FCC looking into this false claim by AT&T? Is the Wisconsin attorney general?

Sprint Nextel – Is it legal to haul school age children in the back of delivery vans?

Darren, I think you have a lot of articles to write if you want to fix the world one TV ad at a time. Where was your advertising analysis during the campaign season? There is an area that does need help.

Barack Obama dropped his BlackBerry!

2009-01-16T20:01:00.000-08:00

We have jets landing miraculously in the Hudson River, Cabinet appointee hearings, Obama campaigning for his stimulous package and a few wars in the Middle East. With all of this, the AP posts a story about the President Elect dropping his BlackBerry. Not giving it up like some security officials would like, but accidently dropping the device to the ground. Wow, this is wrong on so many levels:

1) This is not news. The First Officer of the USAir flight losing his cell phone durring the landing IS news, and true. This is not news.

2) Some observant folks have calculated that all of the coverage of Barack Obama and his BlackBerry addiction would be worth millions and millions of dollars in free advertising for RIM. That is news. This is not.

3) The world of newspaper journalism is busy predicting, observing and trying to avoid the demise of their entire industry. This is news. Writing a multi-paragraph story about someone dropping their phone is not only NOT NEWS, but a complete waste of journalistic resources that could be providing the in-depth reporting of Obama's stimulous campaign trip that only newspapers have historically provided. Instead the AP reporter gives us a 15 second snipet that would have difficulty getting time on Entertainment Tonight, let alone a news program. Also worth noting is the fact that the AP reporter saught comment on the issue from an Obama spokesperson.

4) The article closes with a cliffhanger. "No word yet on whether the Blackberry still works." How can anyone sleep not knowing if the President Elect will be able to read his e-mail tonight or if he'll be a huddled mass of sweat as he deals with his crackberry withdrawl symptoms?

5) Conspirocy theories could arise. Was this "accident" really the work of NCS (National Communications System) opperatives who are responsible for secure government communication? Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs quipped: "That may have solved his Blackberry dilemma, right? Forget the lawyers!" (True quotation!)

6) This story, as written, was carried by hundreds of "news" outlets.

Now that I have vented on the news media for absolutely ridiculous judgement, I can breath for a minute or two, and then write my next BlackBerry related rant.

Hidden Gem from RIM and DataViz

2008-10-23T07:23:00.000-07:00

RIM and T-Mobile just released the 4.5 device software upgrade for their BlackBerry Curve. One of the features of the new device software is Word To Go and Slideshow To Go from DataViz. Within those programs DataViz has hidden a real bonus for you. When you register the product with DataViz (Register is a menu option within Word To Go and Slideshow To Go), they will offer you a free upgrade to version 1.002 of Documents To Go. O.K., so it doesn’t sound like much of an upgrade, but it is. You see, you are getting version 1.002 of the whole suite, not just Word or Slideshow. This means that your registration and subsequent upgrade will add Sheets To Go to your BlackBerry. Now you have the ability to edit Word, PowerPoint, and Excel documents right on your BlackBerry. Bonus!

The State of "Openness" in the Wireless World

2008-10-02T20:46:00.000-07:00

Two years ago, consumers began to get vocal about all of the closed aspects of their cellular experience. For some, it was the inability to take their expensive smartphone with them to another carrier. For others it was the disappointment of not having the same features that others with the exact same phone had only because they were with a different carrier. While there are a number of areas that could use some “openness” in wireless, I am going to focus on three areas from a PDA or smartphone user’s perspective.

PDA Operating Systems

Every operating system (OS) company has a different approach to how it provides its product to PDA manufacturers. Microsoft charges a royalty to manufacturers to use the Windows Mobile OS on its devices. Microsoft has many manufacturers who purchase and use Windows Mobile on their devices, but Microsoft doesn't manufacture any PDAs themselves. Because any company is welcome to purchase and use Windows Mobile, this has been the model of an open environment for more than a decade. Palm and Research In Motion (RIM) have long been held up as the poster children for the closed environment. Palm started out as the PDA manufacturer and the OS developer under one roof. Eventually another company licensed Palm's OS for its PDAs. This company was starting to challenge Palm's market share, so Palm purchased them (Handspring). Today Palm is its own biggest customer for the Palm OS. Although Palm still manufactures PDAs with the Palm OS, the majority of its revenue comes from the sale of Palm manufactured PDAs running the Windows Mobile OS. Research In Motion is also a PDA manufacturer and OS developer. Like Palm, the primary customer for their OS is themselves. RIM has made several attempts to establish relationships with other manufacturers. BlackBerry Connect, BlackBerry On Board and BlackBerry For Windows have all met with lackluster support from other manufacturers. So despite their attempts, RIM is still a model of a closed OS environment. Two new entrants to the game are taking completely different approaches to the issue of open operating systems. Google is an OS developer that does not manufacture PDAs. Like Microsoft, Google is relying on manufacturers to pick their OS for their devices. Google’s approach to distribution of its Android OS is to give it away. That is correct, manufacturers do not have to pay Google a dime to use their PDA operating system. Now how Google will generate a profit from free software is the subject of some future blog. For today, just know that Google is the new face of the open OS. The new face of the closed OS is Apple. Like Palm and RIM, Apple manufactures the PDA (iPhone) and has developed the OS. Where RIM and Palm made attempts to entice other manufacturers to their OS, Apple has made no such overtures to date.

Software Development and Distribution

For some people, the PDA is just another phone until they install specific software applications to turn it into a productivity tool. There are plenty of applications available for every smartphone and PDA on the market. Every device has a myriad of business and personal software titles available to them. There are two challenges to the consumer here though. Because each PDA platform uses a different operating system, software developers need to write a different version of their software for each platform. This either multiplies the work required to release and support a new program, or it forces the developer to limit the number of devices its new program will run on.

Another challenge is distribution. For many years a consumer could purchase software from the publisher, the carrier, or even on-line stores. Today this is not always the case. RIM, Microsoft and Palm have always allowed software publishers to distribute their programs as they saw fit. Apple brought a new model to the market in 2007. Apple added a cool application to the iPhone that allows users to purchase and install applications right from their handset. Apple was not the first to allow customers to do this, but they were the first ones to make it easy. The problem with the App Store concept is not in the technology, but in the business model. The App Store is the only source of software for the iPhone. This may simplify things for consumers, but it actually makes a software company’s life much harder. Not only does the company have another PDA platform to support, but it loses control of distribution. The company has only one distributer to work with; a distributer who has already set the product margins and marketing guidelines; a distributer who also reserves the right to refuse to sell the program if it chooses. In the Apple business model, there is no small distribution house that would be willing to take a chance on a strange, new, innovative application. If they can’t sell to Apple, they can’t sell to anybody. Google has adopted the App Store software model, but appears to be maintaining the open market stance of RIM, Palm and Microsoft. At least one on-line store has already announced that it will also distribute Google Android applications through its own application store. Again, Google follows the open road.

Carrier Availability and Portability

Carrier portability refers to a user’s ability to use their existing PDA with another carrier if they choose to change carriers. In some cases this is a technical issue. AT&T and T-Mobile use one technology (GSM) while Alltel, Sprint and Verizon use another (CDMA). This means that today it is technically impossible to take an AT&T BlackBerry over to Sprint’s network or for a Verizon customer to bring their Treo over to T-Mobile. In the case where a customer wants to move from one GSM carrier to another GSM carrier or one CDMA carrier to another CDMA carrier, it is more procedural. Carriers add value to their offering by pre-configuring their devices with network settings and software. When a Sprint customer wants to take their Windows Mobile device over to Alltel, there are a number of settings that need to be changed or added to the device to ensure that it works well on Alltel’s network. Some technically savvy customers do this themselves on a regular basis. The existing steps are not for the faint of heart and by no means customer friendly. Another option that is available today for GSM customers is to purchase an “unlocked” PDA. These devices work equally on AT&T or T-Mobile but do not include any of the customization that the carriers do before shipping their own branded phones. Each carrier announced plans to make carrier portability easier for its customers, but only a handful of devices (modems and industry specific devices, no consumer or business PDAs) have been certified by the carriers.

Carrier availability refers to the availability of certain PDAs on each carrier’s network. For example, while I can’t take my T-Mobile BlackBerry Curve with me if I move to Sprint service, I can purchase a Sprint BlackBerry Curve so that all of the software I own is compatible and so I don’t have to learn a whole new system. While there are a number of exceptions, the vast majority of devices on the market have versions for each of the carriers. One notable exception is the Apple iPhone. Now it is not unusual for a carrier to negotiate a period of exclusivity when they introduce a new phone. In most cases this is 30 or 60 days. This means that when AT&T launched the BlackBerry 8800, T-Mobile wasn’t able to sell it until 60 days after AT&T introduced it. Verizon and Sprint launched their BlackBerry 8800s a short time after T-Mobile. Today, every carrier sells a BlackBerry 8800 series device.

One phone has ignored the concept of openness in terms of carrier portability and carrier availability. That phone is the Apple iPhone. Apple doesn’t just tweak the phone’s settings to make it work better on AT&T’s network; they actually program the phone to fail if you try to change those settings. On top of that, Apple is rumored to have granted AT&T a five year exclusive. This means that the only way to get and use an Apple iPhone is to sign a contract with AT&T.

Amazing isn’t it? Two years ago the consumer was asking for open networks and open software. A year later Apple replied with the only phone in history where the manufacturer was the same as the operating system developer and the sole source for software solutions. At least you can buy the phone from one of three dealers (Apple, AT&T and Best Buy).

As you can see, the call for an open cellular experience has been met with very contradictory responses. Like most PDA enthusiasts, I will watch the evolution of the market to see who comes out with the best hardware and software. I will also be keenly aware of which manufacturers and carriers decide to open the cellular experience and which ones decide to put the prison on lock down.

Unlearning BlackBerry Etiquette

2008-09-30T20:21:00.000-07:00

(Unlearning is an interesting approach to preparing for the future from friend and author Jack Uldrich.)

I just read another one of those omnipresent articles about how rude it is for people to be using their BlackBerries and Treos and other PDAs during meetings and "power lunches". While I agree that it is important to be respectful of other people’s time and attention in a meeting, the sheer frequency and fervor of these articles could lead one to believe that all meetings would be well run and productive if not for the evil intents of RIM and Palm and all of the other PDA manufacturers. The fact of the matter is that BlackBerries and their peers are no more responsible for distracted meeting attendees than cell phones are for distracted drivers. To put it another way, BlackBerries don't kill meetings, people kill meetings. You don't believe me? Think back to the classmates that would stare out the classroom window during particularly compelling lectures, or drawings and scribbles in the margins of your coworker's meeting agendas. What about the number of people who would bring their notebook computer to a meeting just to complete a few more hands of Solitaire. The fact of the matter is that people will find distractions in a meeting or in a car regardless of the technology at hand, or in hand as is more often the case.

Business etiquette is the central issue to be addressed in these situations, but I am going to take this article in a different direction. I am going to raise a proposition that will run counter to most of the BlackBerry etiquette articles I have read. Most of these articles start with “common sense” recommendations like leaving your iPhone at your desk, or turning it off during the meeting. With a quarter century of experience selling, supporting, marketing and evangelizing emerging technologies, I can assure you that those efforts are counterproductive and will actually slow the acceptable use of PDAs in meetings.

I recognize that PDAs are an enabling technology for the distracted, but I contend that they are also an enabling technology for the productive participant. Earlier this year I was at a conference with thousands of BlackBerry users. I, like many of the other attendees, spent the majority of each breakout session pressing the tiny keys on my BlackBerry. I'm sure that some of my peers were catching up on their e-mail. I witnessed others who were playing games or surfing the internet. These are the same people who were scribbling on their meeting agendas four or five years ago. Now the common retort of the e-mailer is that they need to stay connected, even during meetings. My answer to them is that mobile data is not about connectivity, it’s about control. I paid close to $4,000 in travel and registration fees to attend this conference. Very few e-mails were worth the distraction or more importantly, the information I would have missed from the speakers at these sessions. But what about me? I told you that I was also typing away on my BlackBerry. I was. I was taking notes. You see, I can type fast enough on my BlackBerry to take notes at a conference. I will go out on a limb and tell you that I was not alone. As I said, it's about control. By entering my notes on the BlackBerry, they automatically synchronized with my desktop computer and were instantly available for me to e-mail. At that point some of my colleagues and I were in control of the knowledge that was shared with us that day.

A PDA can bring control to a business lunch similar to how it brought control to the conference. I have used my BlackBerry to schedule lunch meetings, navigate to them, call other attendees and even check the restaurant's menu before I arrived. Once I find myself in a face to face situation, the BlackBerry gets holstered. I may pull it out to schedule another meeting with my lunch guest, search for some information that will move the meeting forward, or even record some information that I will need to remember, but I will not check e-mail, surf some unrelated websites, or play games. The PDA still needs to be viewed as a tool and should never take away from the purpose and attention of the meeting. Therefore we need to realize that technology should not be used as an excuse to be rude. If a person believes that they can hide behind their iPhone during a meeting under the guise that they are taking notes, any good meeting organizer will tell them that they are only fooling themselves. No Treo, BlackBerry or iPhone will hide the lack of attention and eye contact that is evident when someone is not paying attention.

My main point is that banning or discouraging Treos and other PDAs from meetings is only going to postpone the civil acceptance and courteous use of these important business tools. Realize that not everyone who is using a BlackBerry at a conference or in an important meeting is distracted or inattentive. PDAs can serve a valuable purpose in these situations. As these tools become more prevalent, so will their use in meetings. By being aware of this technological shift, we can prepare for the social shift that will accompany it. Even if you don’t use one, you will need to realize that not every PDA user is a "crackberry addict". As we in business begin to come to terms with this, the PDAs acceptance at meetings will grow not out of surrender to technology, but out of recognition of the value they can bring to the attendees and the progress of the meeting itself. Prepare yourself for the reality that PDAs will quickly move from an unwelcome distraction to a required resource at most meetings in the near future.

Verizon Opens Up?

2008-01-23T06:35:00.000-08:00

A Windows Mobile perspective

Have you heard the news? Verizon Wireless is going to open its wireless network to phones using GSM technology. This is big news for Pocket PC users because some of the new Pocket PC phones will work with your choice of wireless carrier, as long as your carrier uses GSM. You see Verizon and Sprint use CDMA for their network technology. There is nothing wrong with CDMA except that GSM (Global System for Mobile) is the de-facto wireless standard outside of the United States. So how do I know this is going to happen, a Vodafone spokesperson said so. Who is Vodafone? Vodafone is owner of 45% of Verizon Wireless and one of the biggest GSM network operators in the world. When asked when Verizon planned to implement their break with CDMA, Verizon’s spokeswoman said “We are talking 2004, 2005. By that point who knows what will happen.”

Huh?

Sorry, I was stuck in a bit of a time warp. You see the previous paragraph describes actual news from 2001. Despite Vodafone’s pushing and prodding, Verizon didn’t switch to GSM technology in 2001, 2004 or 2005. But, if you haven’t heard, Vodafone is pushing Verizon to toy with GSM technology yet again. Vodafone and Verizon have jointly announced their intention to trial LTE (Long Term Evolution) technology. This is the 4th generation choice of the GSM community.

So, why is Verizon entertaining a move to GSM again in 2008? It makes sense from a business operations standpoint. Vodafone and Verizon have been fighting over technologies since their marriage in 1999. Vodafone even courted the old AT&T Wireless before it was acquired by Cingular. To work towards common goals instead of different ones will help both companies run more efficiently. It also makes sense that Verizon would explore other network options since Sprint has already announced its break from CDMA for the world of WiMax for its 4th generation technology. If Verizon stayed the course with CDMA technologies, it would account for the vast majority of U.S. CDMA sales. On one hand, it would give them control over which handsets they wanted from whichever manufacturers that they chose. On the other hand, as one of the last holdouts in the CDMA camp, the number of manufacturers willing to bet their futures on one large customer would surely dwindle. In effect, Verizon would be the big fish in a small and shrinking pond. Now, this may not sound bad to some CEOs, but there is another reason to question Verizon’s loyalty to CDMA going forward.

Up to this point, I have discussed “openness” as it pertains to network technology, or, which handsets work on which networks. Another aspect of “openness” in the wireless world pertains to handset technology, or, what applications work on what handsets. This may seem like a moot point for those of us in the Windows Mobile world. For the most part, Pocket Outlook works the same on a Sprint Touch as it does on the unlocked HTC Touch. The fact of the matter is that a lot of development goes on behind the screen to make sure that you see it that way. Because the wireless technologies are different between GSM and CDMA, so is the coding for some bandwidth intensive applications. If the people who develop new applications could focus on one technology instead of two, manufacturers and wireless carriers would spend a lot less time on handset and application testing. If Verizon becomes the lone CDMA carrier in the U.S., even more developers and handset manufacturers will choose to focus on just one technology, and it won’t be CDMA.

So, what are the benefits to you if Verizon does change to a GSM technology? The most important benefit for everyone is “openness”. O.K., that sounds sort of existential. Let me explain. For over a decade, wireless phone users around the world have been able to buy the handset they wanted and use it with the carrier they wanted. While this freedom is more a result of an open business model than a network infrastructure, GSM and its SIM card technology have been enablers of that freedom. This openness is evident in the number of “unlocked” GSM Windows Mobile devices that are featured in this magazine every issue. If Verizon moves to a GSM technology, a world of devices will be opened up to their customers. The expanded product line for Verizon, combined with its willingness to let you bring another carrier’s handset with you as a customer will give you, as prospects or customers, more choices in handsets and carriers. To summarize my existential start to this section, more openness for Verizon equals more choices for you, the customer.

Will Verizon move to LTE and the GSM family? I don’t really know. As we have discussed, there are a lot of good reasons for them to do so. Then again, most of these reasons are the same reasons for Verizon to do it 7 years ago. Despite all of the posturing of Verizon towards GSM, a Verizon Wireless spokesman recently emphasized that the company is “working closely with Vodafone for next-generation technology. We have not made a technology decision.”

Haptics - Just another "buzz"word?

2008-01-23T06:23:00.000-08:00

A number of upcoming phones are touting the fact that they include "haptic" technology. The majority of the announcements seem to think that the buzzword is enough to get people interested without actually having to define the feature. I guess that leaves it up to me.

Haptics isn’t new, and isn’t even new to phones. Many of you have had phones with haptic technology but just didn’t know it. The first time I recall encountering haptics on a cell phone was playing Nokia’s Snake game. For a few years it was THE game to play on a phone. After a while it started to get pretty boring. To liven it up, Nokia tied certain game events to the vibration component of the phone. The resulting vibration of the snake hitting the wall was a very early and primitive use of haptics.

Haptics is the use of touch sensitive feedback to create a different sensory experience. That doesn’t sound really clear to me either. Let me use a more up to date example. Video game technology has been using haptics for many years. Gamers refer to haptics as “force feedback”. Controllers with force feedback technology (aka: haptics) generate resistance and vibration to give you the sensation of driving a car at 100 MPH through the streets of New York, or the sensation of firing a weapon, or hitting a ball. The manipulation of the sense of touch to create those sensations is haptics.

So, how does this apply to cell phones? Think of my biggest pet peeve with Windows Mobile and the iPhone. Touch screens suck for typing any quantity of text. There is no sensation that a key has been pressed, so you have to watch the screen when you type in order to get visual confirmation of the keystroke. Now, take the force feedback controllers from your PS3 or X-Box and shrink them to fit underneath a key in a cell phone. Then, take away the key and just put a thick piece of plastic over the whole thing. This is what the ROKR8 is doing. When you press a “key” on the ROKR8, you are actually touching a touch sensitive screen. The haptics behind the spot you touch on the screen provide resistance and vibration to make your fingers think that they have pressed a key. Now, you can use a touch screen, have it feel like a real keyboard, and keep your eyes on the road while you dial.

Here is another explanation, specific to the ROKR8 from PhoneScoop:

The second key innovation is the incredible haptic feedback system integrated into the keypad surface. To put it simply, it's the first true touch keypad that feels like real buttons. All current phones on the market with touch keys and "haptic feedback" actually just vibrate the whole phone a little bit to let you know your touch registered. On the E8, however, the haptic feedback is localized so you only feel it under your finger, not the whole phone. What's more impressive is that it doesn't just vibrate a little; it actually has separate "press down" and "release" types of feedback that actually simulate the feel of pressing a physical button. This new type of haptics really works, and quite well. The effect is best described as "spooky". It works so well that if Motorola had told us it had real keys under the surface - and wasn't a touch keypad at all - we would have believed them and never doubted it. In fact , if you treat it like a touch keypad, you'll have trouble with it. That's because it's designed to be treated like a "real" keypad; key presses only register if you press as hard as you would with physical buttons. A light touch like you might use with other touch phones won't cut it on the E8

I hope this helps you get a feel for haptics.

Facebook and Blended Lives

2007-10-12T21:18:00.000-07:00

Dean Bubley, a blogger and technologist, just posted a blog about how he is trying to keep his life neatly divided between work and personal. He is even trying to keep his cyber life divided between Facebook (for personal) and Linked-In (for business).

http://disruptivewireless.blogspot.com/2007/10/social-networks-and-business-contacts.html

Here is what I posted in his comment section:

Dean,

Your blog really shows your age. Facebook "is not your father's Oldsmobile". Linked-In is. I am on both sites, just as you are, but I notice a distinct division between the two sites that I think you are missing. I am 44 years old and fit in perfectly with the Linked-In demographic. On Facebook, I feel like I'm a dusty relic from some forgotten shelf in a museum. So why am I on Facebook? Because Linked-In is destined to travel down the same road as Oldsmobile. Why should a nationwide community of friends and neighbors (in a cyber sense) all get up and move to a different site for their professional contacts when their peers are already linked on the Facebook site? O.K., one reason would be to get away from the embarising posts and photos from that one weekend (or maybe several) they had freshman year. Yet, as the population of Facebook continues to mature, so will the culture of the site. Think of Facebook as one of Clayton Christensen's disruptive forces on the internet.

Another change the next generation is bringing into the business world is the idea of a blended life instead of a balanced one. If you can flip a switch at 5:00 pm and turn off your business life, then turn it on again at 8:00 am the next day, you are more disiplined and more deprived than I am, and many of my more successful peers. I know people who have never missed their kid's sporting events, even if they took place at 3:00 pm on a weekday. I cut out of work at 2:00 pm one day a week for 10 years to coach at my local high school. If we tried to keep our personal lives and business lives tucked neatly into their respective boxes, we would have missed those times. Likewise, I have met you at conferences in the states. I doubt you have restricted your flights across the pond to the 8 hour workday window. That means that you are already carving out time from your personal life to meet your career goals. So, you see, you are already starting to blend.

Lastly, isn't one of the staples of our industry convergence? Not just of technologies, but of the ability to communicate when and where we need to with whomever we want to.Dean, the world is blending, and you are a major contributer to the cause (that is a compliment whether you like it or not). You may find the old ways more balanced and comfortable, but I think it is time to see that convergence is happening all around us, and the next generation is going to continue the trend of using our technologies to take control of their blended lives.

Why Computer geeks need Wireless Wonks!

2007-06-06T14:10:00.000-07:00

Lance Ulanof, an Editor at PC Magazine, was on Fox News recently talking about cool cell phone alternatives to the iPhone. Now, a lot of people question Fox's ability to present factual reporting. I cover those issues in a different blog. As for technology, Fox and Lance continue the questionable facts tradition. Click on the link and watch the video. You will see Lance hold up a T-Mobile Dash and present it as a Motorola Q. He corrects this slip a bit later, but goes on to say that the T-Mobile Dash is available from AT&T Wireless/Cingular and that it uses the Palm Operating System. OMG! He messed up 1) the manufacturer, 2) the name, 3) the carrier, and 4) the operating system.

With this kind of awareness in the PC world, no wonder Apple (a computer company) thinks they can corner cell phones.

Fox News Scorecard:

1) The manufacturer of the T-Mobile Dash is not Motorola, it is HTC for T-Mobile.
2) The name of the T-Mobile Dash is not Q, it is Dash.
3) The carrier for the T-Mobile Dash is not AT&T Wireless/Cingular, it is . . . wait for it . . . check out the name for a hint . . . T-Mobile.
4) The OS is for the T-Mobile Dash is not the Palm OS, it is Windows Mobile 5.0 Smartphone Edition

BlackBerry on Windows

2007-04-23T13:10:00.000-07:00

The article linked above addresses RIM's intention to make BlackBerry software available on Windows Mobile devices. This really isn't new. Manufacturers and carriers have had the option to put the BlackBerry OS directly on their devices (BlackBerry On Board) or to connect their existing OS (Windows Mobile, Symbian, etc.) to the BlackBerry environment with BlackBerry Connect. This just sound like a marriage of the 2.

Now I recognize that there are some major differences between the 2 existing programs and this new one. I just don't see the benefits to the new one yet. Where BlackBerry On Board put a clean OS on a device, the new program puts a clean OS on top of another OS. Windows Mobile isn't what I would call a clean OS. Most Windows Mobile devices slow to a crawl or stutter when trying to perform more than 1 or 2 tasks. The BlackBerry "application" will be doing a lot of work. I expect the impact on performance to be noticeable, very noticeable. Oh sure, it's an application, so I can shut it down when I need too, but that's like turning off my car when I am going downhill just to save gas. It will not happen.

Since few, if any manufacturers have adopted the BlackBerry On Board model, I had hoped for some innovative applications of the BlackBerry Connect model on Windows Mobile or Symbian. Sure enough, there were plenty of announcements, and very few devices. I had the opportunity to play with a Samsung phone with BlackBerry Connect for 4 month. The 4 months is important to note because that is how long I tried to find someone at Samsung or RIM who could provide support getting the phone connected to our BlackBerry Server. Mind you, I am better connected with both companies than your above average customer, yet after 4 months, I found no one who could help. Samsung, RIM, you can't say that I didn't try.

I hope I am wrong about the future of this application. I currently carry a Windows Mobile device and a BlackBerry. A good marriage of the 2 would be phenomenal. I'm just afraid it will be like marrying a Hatfield to a McCoy.

Post-mortem on the BlackBerry outage

2007-04-23T12:15:00.000-07:00

The linked article from RCR discusses RIM's failure to notify users about the BlackBerry outage last Tuesday evening. Overall, I agree with the critics that they interviewed. RIM should have, at least, acknowledged the outage ASAP. Instead, a pre-recorded message on their tech support line was their de facto PR contact for almost 12 hours. RIM should have posted something to their website ASAP regarding the outage. Again, no argument. Most importantly, most critics believe that they should have notified their users of the outage. I can see some good reasons why this would have been good, and bad.

It would have been good to notify the IT people who support the BlackBerry Enterprise Servers. A simple e-mail to these people could have saved them hours of time chasing apparent ghosts in their machines when it was a RIM issue from the start. It also would have given them the much needed defense of "It's not our fault" when all of their end-users called them to complain that their BlackBerries didn't work. This was probably a bigger blow to RIM than the reaction from actual BlackBerry users. Many of the IT staffs that are supporting BES are the same people who already support Microsoft's Exchange Server. When an Exchange Server goes down it is within their control to fix it, and they know it. RIM's failure to come to the aid of their own caretakers in the field will certainly be remembered as new options are presented.

It would have been bad to notify the media immediately without a well constructed explanation of the situation. If they had issued a press release stating they have a problem, but don't know what it is, or how to fix it, they would have compounded the PR hit they knew they were going to take anyway. While I think it should have come out sooner, I think RIM was smart to make sure they had all the facts in hand before they went to the media.

Should RIM have notified the actual BlackBerry users right away. Ideally, yes, if they could have, but sending an e-mail to the user would have been foolish. The vast majority of BlackBerry users are not going to have e-mail up on their computer after 5pm in the evening. That is what the BlackBerry is for. An e-mail to end-users announcing the problem would have been insulting at 8am the next day. On the other hand, an e-mail sent before 8am saying that they are aware of the problem and are working to fix it would have been a welcome message on their computer Wednesday morning.

I think the missed opportunity lies in the laps(e) of the carriers. While they were not at fault for the failure, the impact still hit their customers. The carriers probably didn't loose any good will by sitting silent, but they missed the opportunity to provide an extra level of customer service that BlackBerry users would have appreciated and valued. Even with the RIM system down, there were 2 means of communication open to the impacted users, voice and text messaging. I don't believe that RIM has access to either of those contact points for its customers, so it was up to the carriers to recognize the opportunity and capitalize on it.

I manage BlackBerry servers for 3 different companies. As soon as I knew the outage was a RIM issue, I sent text messages to all of my BlackBerry users letting them know that the issue was not a problem with their device or their servers. Tuesday evening I had received several text messages thanking me for the heads-up. Wednesday morning I had only one call complaining about the outage.

The carriers have the tools to send blanket text messages to their users. They also have the ability to put a canned message in your voice-mail box. Would it have taken some time to discern the BlackBerry users from their database? Sure, but I bet the loyalty returned for the effort would have been payed back in hard, measurable dollars.

I'm still a fan of RIM and their solution. I just hope that they do as thorough a post-mortem on their public response as I know they will on the outage.

VoIP Too Complicated? Tell That To The Cable Companies.

2007-04-11T12:24:00.000-07:00

Interesting article, but I think it is a bit off base. Comparing Skype and other computer based VoIP to phone service provided by my cable provider is like comparing the first kit pc's to the Digital VAX you used in college at the same time. Today's computer VoIP apps are like those kit pc's, the test bed/playground of tomorrows Microsofts and IBMs. Skype will look a lot different in 2 years and cable phone service will too. The one thing I will almost guarantee is that they will be much more alike in 2 years. Skype will be scaled to a carrier grade service, and with that add additional services. Cable phone service will probably add some interactivity as cable providers continue to give customers the ability to self configure the other services (data, video, etc.) they push through their cables.

The author does expose a challenge with marketing VoIP services. Users expect their phone to work, ALWAYS. If you pick up the phone and don't hear a dial tone, you fear that someone cut the lines, or some other nefarious act. You don't expect the phone company to have a problem. Also, you want to be able to pick up the phone, push 7 or 10 keys and then talk to someone. With VoIP being more a child of computers than telephony, it is being overburdened with features and thus complexity. While cable phone service is VoIP in that it is your voice transported over a data network, most people will look at VoIP as a service, and thus look for the unique features and calling price plans. Where features are pushed ahead of simplicity, complexity will be the norm.

Eventually our concept of simplicity will broaden a bit to include some VoIP processes while VoIP processes will improve in the areas of user interface and functionality. Remember our current land line phone process is MUCH more complicated than it used to be. In the past I only picked up the phone and told Marge who I wanted to talk to. Now I have to know all of the numbers to dial. Man progress sucks.

Wireless Convergence - The Rough Road to Improved Wireless Communications

2006-06-10T21:17:00.000-07:00

On Tuesday, April 4th, I attended a WiFi Mobility Conference as part of the CTIA show in Las Vegas. While the conference was called WiFi Mobility, the real issues and opportunities extend beyond the WiFi standards to include WiMax and other wireless standards. Nonetheless, WiFi mobility refers to the ability to use one phone to place a call regardless of whether it is using the cellular carrier’s network, your home WiFi network, a city wide wireless network, or any other compatible wireless network. The reason this is important is because you are living at the time when two “wireless” industries are about to collide. Wireless is no longer just cellular voice and data services for those of us in telecommunications, and wireless is no longer just wireless networking to those of us in information technology. Regardless of the industry you are in, wireless will soon encompass features and capabilities of both industries.

The new wireless has several parts with several different names and acronyms. Here are the main ones:

VoIP or Voice over Internet Protocol refers to any time voice is transmitted over the internet.

mVoIP or mobile Voice over Internet Protocol is when the traditional VoIP call is handled with a mobile connection.

wVoIP or wireless Voice over Internet Protocol refers to traditional VoIP calls handled over a wireless connection. There is no real distinction between mVoIP and wVoIP.

UMA or Unlicensed Mobile Access refers to using VoIP over unlicensed wireless frequencies such as 2.4 GHz (used by 802.11b and 802.11g) and 5 GHz (used by 802.11a).

WMC or Wireless (or WiFi) Mobile Convergence addresses the handsets and systems that facilitate voice “roaming” between WiFi and cellular networks. Where UMA refers to all unlicensed wireless networks, WMC refers specifically to the WiFi standards

IMS or IP Multimedia Subsystem is the underlying infrastructure that allows any Internet Protocol network to handle multiple types of multimedia content.

W-LAN or Wireless Local Area Network is a common name for a network that uses wireless connections to link computers and other network resources, including the internet, within a home, office or business campus.

W-WAN or Wireless Wide Area Network is really the computer industries term for computers connected to a network over a cellular carrier’s data network.

Now I will try to use these in context with current examples:

Vonage provides VoIP service by connecting your home phones to your internet connection. Skype also provides VoIP service, but it uses your computer as the “phone.” If your computer is connected to the internet using a home WiFi network, then your Skype call is being carried from the computer to the internet over your W-LAN. Research in Motion markets the BlackBerry 7270 which does VoIP over 802.llb WiFi. Because the 7270 uses a wireless connection (WiFi) to carry the call to the internet, and because you can move the 7270 from room to room without losing a connection to the network, it then becomes a wVoIP or mVoIP call. This same BlackBerry call is using UMA since WiFi uses unlicensed spectrum. Most companies, however, will limit the definition of UMA to using a cellular capable phone to make a VoIP call over WiFi. The 7270 does not support cellular calls, so some people will not consider it a true UMA device.

A notebook computer connected to a company’s network over the internet is part of the company’s WAN. If the same notebook is connected to the company’s network over the internet, over a cellular data connection, it then becomes part of the company’s W-WAN.

All of these examples are available and work today. The two acronyms that are just over the horizon are WMC and IMS. When a cellular phone is capable of connecting a call over a WiFi or cellular network, that convergence of technologies in one device is called WMC. IMS refers to some of the infrastructure that the cellular and other wireless companies can use to treat calls and multimedia applications similarly. IMS is only a base component that will help improve how the rest of these services work.

Why do individuals and businesses want WiFi mobility? Here are some of the reasons.

Decreased or at least flat rate (predictable), long distance charges.

Ability to provide employees with mobility at work, without having to pay for their cellular service.

Better in-building coverage.

WiFi mobility has the potential to deliver on all of those promises. In fact it should answer those needs right out of the gate. As with any horse race though, it takes a few lengths for the horse to get up to speed. The same will be true for WiFi mobility. It’s obvious that there is a lot of hype about all the miracles that these technologies will be able to perform. My primary goal at CTIA this year was to find the truth within the hype. I found out that “the truth is rarely pure and never simple.” O.K., so Oscar Wilde must have been at the show too. What I found was two very distinctly different “truths”.

I encountered the first truth at the WiFi Mobility Conference I attended on Tuesday. The panels at this conference generally consisted of technical executives with infrastructure companies like Cisco, Nortel and Level 3 Communications. These are the folks behind the technologies. The consensus was that the technology is not ready for prime time. There are two overlapping reasons that they shared.

Standards – I thought “standards” were supposed to clarify technology. Unfortunately, there are several standards for WiFi (802.11a, 802.11b, 802.11g, and many more in the pipeline). Amongst these standards are different frequencies, different bandwidths, different signal processing technologies, and different security protocols and requirements. The fact that there are several standards with several different user experiences for VoIP will keep the Unlicensed Mobile Access (UMA) experience from being pure or simple.

Quality of Service – If “standards” have you confused, consider all of the non-standard issues that will also come into play for WiFi mobility.

Interference – Since WiFi is unlicensed, there is no regulation or control over who puts an access point where, or how high or low they tune the power output. Cellular companies spend millions of dollars in time and equipment to make sure that one cell site doesn’t interfere with another. No one is responsible to make sure that Joe’s personal WiFi network doesn’t interfere with the coffee shop’s “hot spot” downstairs, or with the cities “Muni-WiFi” network. WiFi is like third world politics, anarchy rules.

Security – There are several security standards, but there are no standards on how to implement them. One network may use WEP for security while the next network down the street may use WPA, or WPA2. Yet another network may not use any security at all. Another challenge is how to know which network uses which security protocol and what my access rights are to that network. If you haven’t used WiFi for data, you haven’t had the fun of being redirected to a security page for entering your Username, Password, SSID, WEP key, and maybe even MAC address just to log onto the web. Imagine doing all of that on a phone, just to answer, or place, a call. Now imagine doing it every time you enter a new network.

Capacity – Even though WiFi can support 11 Mbps or 54 Mbps, depending on the technology used, most WiFi networks don’t connect to the internet at anything near that speed. My WiFi connection at home, using a cable connection, can provide as much as 6 Mbps download speed, but rarely exceeds 1 Mbps outbound. T-Mobile uses at least a T1 connection at all of its HotSpots. This means that you start with 1.5 Mbps available for your call. But wait, there is a woman in the corner downloading the songs she just purchased from Starbuck’s Hear Music website, and there is a young man sipping a latte near the door playing an online game with his buddy across the country. Add the store manager submitting reports in the back room, and you have at least 3 other people competing for that precious 1.5 Mbps. Divide that 1.5 Mbps by the 4 people using it, and you are stuck trying to make a quality call on a mere 350 Kbps. Of course that is assuming that the coffee shop has implemented quality of service settings to ensure that the bandwidth is shared equally. To make matters worst, some “hotspots” use connections as slow as 128 Kbps.

Here are some more “truths” from the Mobility conference:

“Seamless may be sexy, but it’s unrealistic.” According to almost everyone on the panels, a seamless handoff between a cellular carrier and a WiFi access point makes for good marketing, but the technology is not ready for prime time, yet.

“Hotspot voice” is very unlikely, or at least will be very unstable. The “cool factor” will draw disproportionate attention to this. This attention will actually make the technology seem far worse than it really will be.

SpectraLink, a manufacturer of wireless VoIP handsets for 6 years, has no plan to manufacture a “dual mode” handset. They do not foresee a large enough market in the near future to justify it. They also feel that corporate customers will continue to prefer proprietary systems in order to protect the investments they made in their respective systems.

While end-users are O.K. with unpredictable performance for a data connection, they expect solid, predictable performance from their voice connection, regardless of the network they are on.

CTIA Show Floor

Now that we have heard from the techies, what do the folks in Sales and Marketing say? The truth according to every handset vendor with a converged handset is that they already have the ability to do seamless handoffs with great sound quality. If you had only spoken with them, you would wonder why there aren’t dozens of handsets on the market already. I’m a techie sales guy, so I know that the truth is somewhere in between the two extremes. Does it work today in the lab? Absolutely. Will it provide a more flexible communications option to the early adopters? Again, absolutely. Will it be trouble free when it hits the street? Absolutely not.

Early User Experience

So let’s look at what I believe these converged phones will go through in a normal day.

6:00am (Services) Joe wakes up and turns on his phone. As his phone starts up, it searches for networks that it can connect to. It finds the cellular network and Joe’s WiFi network. The phone recognizes, and connects to Joe’s network because Joe programmed his network information into the phone when he brought it home. It is early in the day, so Joe has plenty of bandwidth on his home network to handle any calls he needs to make. He calls his voicemail using the short code (123). His WiFi network doesn’t recognize 123 as a legitimate dialing string, so the call is rejected. You see, Joe’s phone doesn’t look like one of the carrier’s phones when it isn’t on the carrier’s network. This means that voicemail (123), customer care (611), and even services like #MIN* won’t work when the phone is attached to another network. In order to get his voicemail, Joe will need to dial into the voicemail service the same way he can from a land line phone, or he will have to switch his phone over to the cellular carrier’s network before trying to retrieve his voicemail. Joe decides to call the 10 digit voicemail access number and then enter his 10 digit phone number to access his voicemail from his WiFi connection. The rest of Joe’s calls from home work fine. He gets the benefits of cheap flat rate calling in the U.S. and abroad. He also knows that he will have great coverage because it is his own network. If he needs better coverage in another room of his apartment, he can move his wireless router (the WiFi equivalent of a cell site) to another part of the apartment.

7:00am (Capacity) Joe gets into his car and begins his drive to work. Joe stops by his favorite coffee shop and buys a large hot chocolate for the rest of his drive into work. As Joe walked into the shop, his phone tried to negotiate a connection with the shop’s WiFi network. The phone and the shop’s network both work with the same technology, and the coffee shop has no security on its network so that all of its customers can take advantage of the service. Joe’s phone connects to the shop’s network. While Joe is waiting in line, he returns one of the voicemails he retrieved earlier in the day. Joe’s connection is choppy. While there is no one sitting in the shop, the person in front of him is downloading a song to his PDA phone, and the tenant in the apartment upstairs is watching his favorite Japanese anime cartoons streaming over the coffee shop’s network. There just isn’t enough bandwidth for Joe’s call to sound good. Joe gets his hot chocolate and heads outside to get onto his cellular carrier’s network so that the call will clear up. If the coffee shop had a bigger connection to the internet, or there wasn’t as much demand on the wireless network, Joe’s call probably would have sounded fine. The capacity of the wireless network will be a variable with most hotspots. As more and more people begin to use “hotspots” for voice and data, coffee shops, bookstores, and the like will find it important and valuable to upgrade their internet connections to give their patrons a good wireless experience.

8:00am (Security) Joe arrives at work with a whipped cream mustache and a sugar buzz from his Cocoa Grande. Joe’s IT group has configured his phone to be his desk phone when he is in the office. This means that Joe’s phone now handles his cellular phone number and his desk phone number at the same time. Whether I call Joe’s cell phone or desk phone, when he is in the office, he only has one phone to worry about. Today, however, his phone is not able to attach to the wireless network at his office. Over the weekend the IT administrator changed the network passwords. It seems that someone had posted the network’s security settings on a gaming website and there was a caravan of cars sitting in the parking lot on Saturday night. Once the passwords were changed, the caravan moved on. Since Joe’s phone can’t connect to the company’s network, all of his calls for the day are carried over the cellular carrier’s network. That normally wouldn’t be a big deal except that today he was finalizing the details of a contract with their partner in Denmark. Joe will not find out about this issue until he receives his exorbitantly expensive cellular bill in 3 weeks. Converged phones will have some sort of “roaming” indicator, just as they did in the old analog / digital days. Just like then though, it is up to the person with the phone to know which network they are on before they place or answer a call.

12:00pm (Roaming) With his cocoa buzz wearing off, Joe heads out for some lunch. There is a new restaurant down the street that not only has a great BLT, but also has a hotspot from another cellular provider. Joe sits down with his sandwich and his phone and tries to connect the phone to the WiFi network. The phone fails to connect due to “security issues”. Because Joe’s phone is from another carrier, the carrier who hosts this hotspot will not allow Joe’s phone to connect unless he pays $50 a month to use the service. He laments that the BLT was the best he has ever had, but another one just isn’t worth an extra $50 a month. He finishes his pickle and walks back to the office.

6:00pm (Interference) Back at home, Joe’s phone connects to his WiFi network. Joe picks up the phone and calls his parents to make plans for the weekend. His dad answers the call, or is it his mom, he can’t tell because there is too much static on the line. They try to talk, but the quality is just so bad, that they hang up and try again, and try again, and try again. Finally, Joe switches his phone over to his cellular carrier and completes his call home. His phone has worked fine for months. This is the first time he has had this problem. Obviously something is wrong with his wireless network, but who does he call for support? His cellular provider made it very clear that they don’t support personal WiFi networks. They did tell him about a bookstore half a mile away where he could make the call on their hotspot. He tried to call the manufacturer of his WiFi equipment, but they couldn’t understand why he was calling them about his cellular phone. His cable provider was also no help. They told him that they partnered with a different carrier, and that if he switched service, they would be happy to help him. Later that night, Joe meets his new neighbors when they tell him that HIS WiFi network is interfering with THEIR phone service.

Conclusion

WiFi mobility is definitely going to be a benefit for many people. Like any new technology though, it will be a slow, and probably bumpy, start. The key to our success through this transition is to set realistic expectations with our customers and our partners. There will be people who will see immediate benefits from convergence. There will be early adopters who are willing to suffer through some of the hassles to have the features and benefits of these new technologies. Just like wine, technology improves with age. Eventually the technology will improve to the point that the customer doesn’t know, and more importantly, doesn’t need to know, what kind of network is carrying the call. Like his home phone today, pick it up, dial, talk, it will be that easy.

Instant Messaging

2006-06-10T21:10:00.000-07:00

Instant communication seems to be elusive in our personal and business lives. The telephone and e-mail were both supposed to be the solutions to these challenges, yet it seems that “instant” is a moving target. Every time a new technology promises “instant” communication, something else promises us delays. Let me explain.

Once upon a time, the telephone was the pinnacle of instant communication. For almost a hundred years, when a phone call was answered, it was a person you spoke with. Changes in business, society and technology introduced delays to this method of communication. People no longer stay near a phone at home or the office throughout the day. Answering machines, voice-mail and caller ID help us to politely delay conversations. The onslaught of telemarketers make it understandable, if not necessary, to screen our phone calls. For many of us, voice-mail has become the “in-box” that collects our phone conversations until we have time to reply to them. The cellular phone has compensated for our wandering ways, but it has maintained the delaying controls of voice-mail and caller ID.

As businesses adopted the internet into the office, e-mail became the end-run around the phone and voice-mail. It was once the norm to read e-mail as soon as it popped up in your e-mail box. Soon, changes in business, society and technology introduced delays to this method of communication too. E-mail, a useful tool on the desktop was useless on the road or at home. The wireless industry extended the reach of e-mail to your wireless phone or PDA, but even with this enhanced availability, spam has made e-mail as frustrating as your home phone at dinner time.

Phones and e-mail will always have there place as communications tools. Their ability to provide instant communication seems to have passed.

Don’t worry, as with any technology, the children shall lead the way. Today’s “instant” communication technology is Instant Messaging (IM), and it is a big hit with the “tweens” and teens. In fact, it is this demographic that accounts for the vast majority of Instant Messages sent worldwide. So, why should you care about the latest teen craze when you have work to do? The reason is all in the name: Instant Messaging (IM). It seems, at least for now, that IM really is instant.

Remember that high school and college aren’t that different from today’s business environment. They have classes, you have meetings. You both have extra-curricular activities, be they a softball team or association. And both of you need to find time for friends and family. The common denominator is too much to do in too little time. With the demise of the phone and e-mail as instant communication tools, kids have discovered that IM fits the bill at home and away. In fact, many teens spend more time IMing on their wireless phones than they do talking on them.

How can you take advantage of Instant Messaging? Start with kids. If you have “tweens” or teens of your own, or students you coach or volunteer with, get their IM names and start to Instant Message. You will be amazed at the response you will get. That teenager who would rather go to the dentist than answer a phone call from a parent, will actually converse with you via IM. Where a phone call with the parents in front of friends is sooo obvious and embarrassing, IM is private. Your teen can now IM back and forth with mom or dad, and the friends are none the wiser. The other key is the “instant” aspect. The materials they needed for their first hour project will escape their memory before lunch. With IM, they can inform mom or dad of the needed materials immediately after class and still forget about them by lunch. Although now, they will rest assured in the knowledge that someone will remember for them.

Instant Messaging does have its business benefits as well. When you are looking for a quick answer to a question, the last thing you want is to have your message filed away in voice-mail or behind a plethora of Prozac ads. Even if you simply need a “yes” or a “no” from a colleague at another office, today’s communication isn’t always instant. Chances are that the sooner you need an answer, the longer it will take to get it. Instant Messaging is a great tool to address these types of situations.

You may see IM as a kid’s craze, but the transistors in my pocket radio eventually revolutionized computing. This generations Instant Messaging may actually be the “instant” communication that stays instant. If you don’t believe me, IM one of tomorrow’s communications managers.

RIM vs. NTP - a few observations

2006-01-26T04:35:00.000-08:00

There has been a lot of press about the RIM lawsuit this week. Most of the press is accurate when it comes to past events, and the current situation. Much of the coverage is painting the future with fear, uncertainty and doubt. Welcome to the No FUD Zone. I was going to steal the No Spin Zone label, but the fact of the matter is, no one can accurately forecast the future. Any attempt to prognosticate the future of this law suit is going to entail some level of spin. With that said, here is my spin on the situation, with a heaping dose of support for my contentions.

1) BlackBerry service will not shut down. I firmly believe this for MANY reasons

a) The Federal Government will not allow any action to take place that threatens their daily communications.

i) The Justice Department has filed a “statement of interest” which recommends that the injunction shouldn’t be enforced because doing so will harm the federal government. "This is nearly unprecedented," says professor Mark A. Lemley, director of Stanford's Program in Law Science and Technology. "I can't think of another case in which they have weighed in unsolicited on whether a court should grant a particular injunction.” Actually, there are at least three other recent cases where the Justice Department filed these statements of interest with the courts. In two cases, judges denied plaintiffs' calls for injunctions and gave the feds all they asked for. (No ruling in the third case, yet.)
ii) NTP has promised that government employees would not be shut off. While NTP claims that the wireless carriers can tell the difference between government users and non-government users, the Justice Department says the only viable way to differentiate is to create a huge “white list” of permitted users. I can’t imagine certain government agencies (CIA, NSA, FBI, White House, etc.) giving a list of their employees and their respective phone accounts to the carriers for ANY reason.

b) Shutting down the service would be a damaging blow to RIM’s sales, and thus, a damaging blow to the potential royalty revenue of NTP.

c) RIM will settle before it shuts down its service, and stops selling the device. This is purely a wishful, but educated, desire on my part. Note: the injunction would not only turn off the RIM service, but would also put a halt to BlackBerry sales. While the press focuses on the shutting down of the service, sales would be directly impacted by the injunction as well. Just another reason to make sure the service stays alive.

2) RIM is working on a work-around. Should an injunction be placed on the BlackBerry service, this work-around is supposed to maintain a comparable level of service without infringing on the patents in question. RIM has not revealed any detail regarding the work-around. One blogger believes that he knows the solution that RIM is testing (StealthBerry). Caution, the StealthBerry link points at a blog. It is not a RIM document, it is not necessarily fact, it is just another person’s perceptions and opinion.

3) The parties are moving closer together despite the war of words.

a) NTP, in a recent court filing, said it would support a 30 day grace period between the announcement of the injunction, and the enforcement of it. NTP claims this is to give customers time to migrate to other solutions. Since NTP has royalty agreements with some of RIM’s competitors, this may be a savvy move. One catch to this theory is that one of RIM’s biggest competitors, Microsoft, does not have a royalty agreement with NTP. If customers flee RIM, and run into the arms of Microsoft, there is no guarantee that the migrated customer will ever generate revenue for NTP. At the same time, it gives RIM an additional 30 days after the ruling to settle with NTP before being shut off.

b) The District Judge in the case had ruled that RIM would have to pay royalties of 8.55% to NTP. NTP, in a recent filing with the court, said it would accept a 5.7% royalty settlement.

NOTE: This is just my opinion. It does not reflect the views of RIM, my employer or any other organization. It is just my opinion, based on some heavy reading, my exposure to RIM for over 4 years, and my 9 years of wireless data experience.

RIM’s spin can be found at http://www.rim.com/news/press/2006/pr-23_01_2006-02.shtml.

Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics

2005-10-16T19:32:00.000-07:00

This blog is about statistics.

On page 23 of a recent Wireless Week there is a chart of PDA shipments by operating system. The market share numbers look something like this:
Windows CE - 45.7%
Research In Motions - 23.2%
Palm OS - 18.8%
Symbian - 7.6%
Linux - .8%
Others - 3.9%

On page 24 there is a chart of operating system market share. It presents the following figures:
Symbian - 76%
Linux - 14%
Palm OS - 4.6%
Windows CE - 4.5%

What the heck? Did the market change that drastically in the time it took me to turn the page?

Actually, the subject of this blog has to do with this discrepancy. If you read the notes under the first chart, it tells you that devices like the Treo and BlackBerry 7100 are not considered PDAs, but smartphones, and do not count for the purposes of this study. Who reads the notes to a chart? I do, for this reason. The second chart did not have any notes, but it should have. There is no mention of the BlackBerry OS in the second chart. The reason is because the BlackBerry is manufactured by only one vendor (RIM) and therefore is considered a "proprietary" OS. Even though the BlackBerry would have had equal market share with Windows and Palm, it was left out.

So, what are the real numbers? There is only one real number I can speak to; the percentage of people who believe these numbers = 100% too many. Know what these studies say, and know why they are wrong. People should never buy a solution based on percentages. Where they see the Palm OS languishing in a distant third place, the reality is that the Treo, the number 2 selling wireless phone (see another chart on page 23) isn't being counted in this figure. Where Symbian looks to be dominating the pack, understand that that study includes almost every phone manufactured by Nokia because Symbian is the operating system for many of their phones. Understand that these numbers will do nothing more than taint a buyer's view of reality. Buyers should make sure that their choices and decisions are based on hard facts. Don't let these statistics get in the way of buying the right PDA, er. I mean smartphone, um I mean wireless PDA, or was that a … too heck with it.

Don't let the statistics get in the way, period.

Cell Phones In Flight

2005-05-28T21:10:00.000-07:00

As a wireless company executive, and a frequent flier, this is not what I've been looking forward to.

There are some reasons I would like to see this happen. First, I would like to keep up with my e-mail, and browse the Internet while I have 2 or 3 hours to do nothing better. Second, I make money selling cell phones.

There are a lot more reasons why I think this is a bad idea. First, and foremost, I don't look forward to listening to half a dozen "important business" conversations. I can't say my flights are always quiet, but magazine pages and laptop keyboards, even the occasional infant who is just as annoyed with their ears popping as I am, are tranquility compared to an airplane with dozens of simultanious cell phone conversations. Sorry, I just thought of something worse. There will also be dozen's of phones ringing in these tight quarters. "Ma'am, please don't stop your baby from crying, it's a lot more soothing than that guy's "old fashioned phone" ring tone." My second reason why its a bad idea is that after everyone (FCC, FAA, TSA, FDA, USDA, Etc.) has approved it, it may not work anyway. As the article linked above mentions, the cellular networks were designed for people in cars, not in airplanes. There needs to be some studies to see if this will work, or if it will mess up the cellular companies networks. Heck, I know spots where the cellular companies can't hand off a call from one tower to another when I'm travelling at 70 miles per hour on the road. How much luck are they going to have when I'm 36,000 feet overhead and traveling 350 MPH? The answer is "not much". I have left my phone turned on durring some flights. A couple times it was intentional. I can tell you from personal experience, your phone won't work at 36,000 feet and 350 miles per hour.

For better or worse, it will work someday. Companies have been working for years to find out what they need to do to make it work. If you can get satellite TV (Jet Blue) or WiFi (Virgin Atlantic) on an airplane, a phone conversation should be a piece of cake. If they limit usage to wireless data applications, I can live with that. In fact, I'd be elated. If the airplane becomes a flying phone booth, I'm buying a ton of Bose stock.

Wireless operators hate business

2005-03-20T21:33:00.000-08:00

Tom Yager, in InfoWorld, gives a fresh perspective on why businesses seem to be an afterthought in the wireless carriers plans. For the majority of this article, he identifies real issues that carriers need to address, and businesses need to consider. Then he makes some suggestions. Tom, stick with observation.

Here are some of Tom's suggestions:

"Purchase devices at full price instead of going for a contract. Even though it costs a little more, paying month-to-month gives you the freedom to switch service plans or operators at will. "

I'm gonna let you all in on a little secret. A free phone is cheaper than a full price phone. Now, before you think I don't get Tom's point, let me illustrate otherwise.

Free phone without contract = $50 to $100
Rebate without contract = zip, zilch, nada
Salesperson's commission without contract = Whatever he thinks your wallet will bear, because the carrier isn't going to give him one penney, let alone the $100 to $200 bucks they pay him if you sign the contract.

Honestly, you could pay more than a $200 premium for a phone without a contract. It will cost you $200, at most, to cancel your contract. If you want to pass on a contract, also be prepared to pass on evening and/or weekend minutes, hundreds of text messages, free accessories, or whatever differentiates that carrier from the other guys that month. Many of the features that the carriers advertise on their commercials, and in their newspaper ads are ongoing promotions that aren't available without a contract.

"ask that mobile-pro devices be delivered to you unlocked -- capable of moving from one operator to another"

Another reason to go with the contract is that the (Carrier's Name Here) phone you buy, only works with (Carrier's Name Here). Why pay full price for a phone so you can go to another carrier, and pay full price for their's. Tom thinks he has this one covered with this suggestion, but there are only 2 ways to unlock a cell phone, and only one of them is legal. The legal way is to sign a contract, and fulfill 3 months to a year of service before the carrier will let you unlock the phone. Some people think that if you pay "full price" for a cell phone, you have paid for the right to get it unlocked. Wronnnng! The carrier sold it to the dealer for less than it costs. The only way the carrier makes the money back on that phone is if you sign a contract. The illegal way is to find a web site that will sell you an unlock code. If this method sounds good to you, don't come crying to me when they start charging full price for the phones for everybody.

The fact of the matter is that full price phones would be the easiest, fairest, and best thing the carriers could do. Not many of you probably remember the days when your parents, or you, paid a couple bucks a month to "rent" your AT&T home phone. (If you're under 40, think about your cable box.) At some point many, many years ago, you were given the option to buy "your own phone." They were so expensive that only businesses purchased them. And then, only because they had special features that the carrier (AT&T) didn't have with theirs. Eventually prices came down and everyone purchased their own phone. Tom's observations suggest that businesses should lead the way in the new telecommunications ownership revolution. The problem is that the carriers are the only ones who sell BlackBerries, and .... Hey, you can buy an unlocked Treo from palmOne and you can buy unlocked Windows Mobile Pocket PC's from Mobile Planet. Maybe Tom's suggestion has some traction, but while you can buy these same devices for hundreds less from the carrier, Tom's suggestion is still a long distance from practical.

Paris Hilton / T-Mobile Sidekick Hacked

2005-02-21T21:35:00.000-08:00

Well, the forums are abuzz with voyeurs and conspiracy theorists trying to figure out the latest T-Mobile Sidekick hack.

It's a hoax or a twisted PR move. I looked at the pictures. Ya, all of them. I don't think these are all Sidekick pictures. In fact, I not sure any are. Here's why.

1) EVERY picture is of Paris. Where are the pictures of friends at an event, or at a bar? Also, her makeup and hair are perfect in every picture. Where are the no makeup, hair down, pictures? She would have to be as self centered as the "media" says she is for me to believe these.

2) The topless pictures seem to have a fog around the edges. I know there is a special lens that does this, but I've never seen it on a Sidekick.

It's real.

1) I've read too many forum entries of people gutsy, err inconsiderate, enough to call some of the phone numbers. Filled mail boxes, real people hanging up on the caller, and disconnected numbers all point at these being real numbers. Even if these aren't the numbers to the stars, it is unlikely a planned PR stunt would include the phone numbers and e-mails of real people.

2) If T-Mobile was complicit in this "stunt", it would be like staging a train wreck in hopes of getting your railroad some additional press. Unfortunately, celebrities who wish to stay in the spotlight DO stage train wrecks in search of publicity. Maybe this point should go under "undecided".

Undecided. That's where I'm at today. Some things look mighty fishy, but this is just too ugly to be a stunt or a hoax.

Now for the Wireless take on this.

This is not the first news of T-Mobile's Sidekick users getting hacked. I blogged this same issue a month ago. I also posted some precautions to take.

My recommendation: If you are a T-Mobile customer, be assured that all indications are that your personal information is safe. That being said, I would recommend that all T-Mobile subscribers who use My T-Mobile or the SideKick services change their account passwords, more for piece of mind than necessity. Besides, it is always a good practice to change passwords periodically anyway.

I would also add that as long as you are not a publicity starved model, or absent minded Secret Service agent, you shouldn't need to worry too much. But again, it's better to side on the safe side, and change your passwords more than once in a lifetime, don't use your dog's name for your password, and if security is at all a concern, get a BlackBerry. Some of the media outlets have referred to Paris' phone as a BlackBerry. This is wrong. It was a Sidekick.

I though T-Mobile dodged a bullet with the deafening silence around the last hacking story. I think people will pay a little more attention to this shot.

"Bleeding Edge" isn't painless

2005-01-25T06:56:00.000-08:00

This blog is for the whiners on the HP iPAQ forum linked above.

Let me preface this posting with the fact that I don't work for HP or for T-Mobile. I have been a T-Mobile customer for 7+ years, and I have personally owned several HP Palmtops and Pocket PCs since my first 95lx. This means that I have had several opportunities to see both companies at their best and worst. I am also a happy HP iPAQ 6315 user.

The 6315 is neither! Sure it has glitches. Sure it rides more like a truck than a sedan. It needs some work to make it ready for the masses. If you didn't expect this when you purchased the first product to integrate WiFi, Bluetooth and GPRS, consider this a lesson learned. If you didn't expect a few bumps in the road for HP's first Pocket PC Phone Edition, wake up and smell the coffee. If you expected either company to market this product as anything less than a terrific marriage of technology and a terrific personal productivity tool, you're fools.

I have 3 points I want to make to all of the whiners in this string.

1) If this is the first time you have purchased a "technological first" product. I'm sorry to say you have just learned a lesson that will be repeated as often as you continue to purchase first generation products.

2) If this is not your first time riding the bleeding edge, get out the band-aids and get over it. You have choices you seem to dismiss too easily. If the company over-promises on features and stability, and you discover this with the product, RETURN IT while you can. Why should you believe the company's claims that they will fix it for you, when they couldn't deliver on their claims that it worked right the first time. If you think that you know more than the company (as many of you seem to) and you think that you can fix these problems when they can't, then do it.

3) I don't think the term "bleeding edge" technology comes from a lab incident, or a company's slow hemorrhage of funds on an unproven product. I think "bleeding edge" is defined in this string. You all have your nicks and cuts. I do too. I've seen many of the issues you have articulated. I've also worked through most of them. My iPAQ ain't perfect, mind you, but it is better in it's current state than any other product on the market. The reason I'm not bemoaning the unfortunate demise of marketing or customer service ethics is because I EXPECTED IT. I knew this would happen. I knew my product wouldn't be perfect. I knew that the corporate marketing machine would paint a pretty picture, kiss our little ouchie, and tuck us in for a little nap. It happens every time a first to market product is launched. It's called product development. I have shelves and shelves of first release products. I've not only been through this battle before, I seek it out and jump in knowing full well that I will not get to sleep some nights because my router and my PDA are incompatible and no one told me. Or that I will have wasted time with an accessory (or many in my case) that isn't compatible with my specific model, although it wasn't printed on the box. You know what I did with those accessories? I returned them!

If you want your technical world to be comfy and cozy, there are many, many great HP iPAQs that will fill your needs. T-Mobile has phones that are in their umpteenth generation, and they will work wonders for you. If you want to live life on the technological edge, put on your body armor, put on a large pot of coffee (or a 12 pack of cold caffeine in my case) and be ready to do battle with your product, your patience and the company’s customer care team.

By the way. I don't want to discredit the legitimate product claims that many of you have. They need to be aired out here. What I do despise is the arrogance of those who think that companies aren't aware of the spoils of first product releases. Or those with the audacity to think that there is some level of malicious intent to releasing a less that stellar product. Worst of all, is those of you who have been here before, and have not yet learned the lessons. The fact of the matter is, the best place to test new technology is in YOUR hands, not the limited hands they employ. No matter how it is spun, version 1 of any product is always a wide release beta, and most of you should know that by now. If you don't want to test, don't buy rev. 1, or at least return it within the allotted time. 30 days is plenty to calculate how many sleepless nights it will take to make the product tolerable

HP and T-Mobile do read these strings. Do you want to know how I know? See what version 2 of the product brings, then tell me they didn't pay attention.

Maybe you don't get what you pay for

2005-01-13T18:44:00.000-08:00

Verizon Wireless customers are suing the mobile service provider, claiming that it is selling a cell phone with fewer Bluetooth short range radio features than they expected, the plaintiffs' lawyer said on Thursday.

There are two interesting points to this story.

The first point is that Verizon is a technological contradiction. The company that is blazing the "3G" trail in the United States with MB per second performance in several major markets, is the same company that introduced its Bluetooth phone 2 years later than everyone else, and then doesn't support it once its out. Here is my first hand experience with this phenomena. I had a customer who wanted the Verizon Bluetooth phone mentioned in this article. He wanted to use it as a wireless modem for his computer. I had setup dozens of Bluetooth phones as modems, so I said "no problem" and drove to his office to get him on the road to wireless bliss. After about half an hour of trying different configurations, reading the manual (in that order), and sitting on hold with Verizon Customer Care, I was told that Verizon did not support using the phone as a modem using Bluetooth. As a geek, I don't take "it can't be done" as an answer. I take it as a challenge. I tried a couple more things, and then some other things, and then some time on hold with Motorola. I wanted to see if the feature was still present even if Verizon didn't support it. It wasn't. A couple more calls confirmed that the only Bluetooth feature Verizon supported was the wireless headset. My customer ended up paying extra for a phone with Bluetooth, and then extra again for a cable to get his phone and computer to talk to each other.

Kudos to Verizon's Network team. Raspberries to Verizon's Product team.

Now don't cancel your plans to buy a Verizon Bluetooth phone because of my little tirade. The second point I want to illustrate is that geeks will buy anything sparkley based on anything another geek says even if the vendor doesn't say it does what it doesn't. Got that? Let me illustrate. In 1997, Nokia introduced the 6100 series phone in Europe. It had an infrared port on it so that you could connect it to your computer as a wireless modem. When they released the U.S. model (6190), they used the same housing, infrared window and all. They omitted the actual IR module from inside the phone though. Nokia never said the phone was IR compatible. The carriers never said it was IR compatible. Some geek on some bulletin board said it was. The internet was awash with geeks lamenting the hours they were spending trying to get the missing IR port to work. There were bounties for information leading to the discovery of the secret to IR on the 6190. Some phone geeks were convinced that Nokia and the carriers were keeping the IR function a secret because if word got out, people might actually use it. Heaven help us! I'm convinced that these are the same people who thought that Capricorn One was a documentary, Elvis is a Unix programmer at AOL, and that Verizon is now intentionally pissing off customers because it's good P.R..

Here are some hard truths for the geeks and blog readers out here in cyberspace.

1) Blog is not necessarily equal to Fact. Forum posting is not always the same as Reality. And (gulp) some bloggers and forum posters are merely self proclaimed experts who's technical education comes from spending too much disposable income on too many bleeding edge gadgets, and playing with them until too early in the morning. These "experts" put more faith in Engadget than they do the product feature list, and consider the technical specs mere marketing propaganda. Of course I'm only speculating on this since I have no first hand experience to base this on. Honest!

2) Many (not all) technology sales people actually do know their products. Yes, even retail employees can often contribute some technical knowledge to your buying decision. Ask them about features before you drop your hard earned cash, and hours of frustration, on the latest gadget. And if the product doesn't do what you thought it would . . . return it. It's cheaper than a lawyers hourly rate for a law suite you have no chance to win.

I wonder if these people will sue the lawyers when they lose because they told them they "might" win.

T-Mobile Hacked

2005-01-12T21:27:00.000-08:00

SecurityFocus.com just broke a story of a pretty significant breach of T-Mobiles computer systems. Life in the wireless world just got a lot tougher. For users, their comfort and confidence just took a big hit. For those of us who sell wireless, security just moved from the benefit column to the challenges column. The main reason for this level of impact is not because of this incident alone, but due to the implications that it could happen again. It's hard to worry about something that has never happened. It's easier to worry when you can point at even one situation where it did happen.

Even though T-Mobile has not responded to the story yet, I do want to share some of my observations to help put this in a proper perspective. The sky is NOT falling in wireless security. Some plaster has been shaken loose though.

The Bad News: The hacker got names, Social Security Numbers, and birth dates for many customers. The hacker also got pretty deep into the SideKick server. This server relays messages for SideKick users. It also can store on-line copies of the users contact list and calendar if the customer chooses to do so. Here, the hacker got SideKick account passwords, SIM numbers and IMEI's. These are basically serial numbers for the SideKick and the "Subscriber Identity Module" that is in the SideKick. The biggest news is that one of the SideKick users that the hacker monitored was the Secret Service agent tracking the hacker. The hacker also copied some of this agents SideKick e-mails off of the SideKick server. Some press reports make it sound like the hacker pulled them directly off of the SideKick. This is HIGHLY unlikely, and unnecessary since all SideKick e-mails pass through the server that was hacked.

Good News: According to T-Mobile, everyone who's accounts were compromised has already been notified of the breach. If you haven't been notified, you are probably safe. Although the breach of the SideKick server is serious, there is no indication of a breach of the BlackBerry Web Client (BWC). The BWC is a similar server for BlackBerry users and is hosted by RIM. Knowing quite a bit about the security involved with the BWC, it is safe to say that this breach had little, if any, impact on the BlackBerry services. Here is a great reason to choose BlackBerry and a BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) over any Web Hosted solution. The BES is a server that the customer hosts themselves, behind their own firewall, and that they have total control over.

My recommendation: If you are a T-Mobile customer, be assured that all indications are that your personal information is safe. That being said, I would recommend that all T-Mobile subscribers who use My T-Mobile or the SideKick services change their account passwords, more for piece of mind than necessity. Besides, it is always a good practice to change passwords periodically anyway.

This is not a pretty situation, but understand that this kind of breech is not unique to your wireless carrier. I know, that is not very reassuring, but the truth is that these same kinds of breeches have occurred with banks, airlines, medical insurance companies, and many other businesses. For those of you directly affected by these events, I understand the tragic impact this can have. For everyone else, understand that this is one of the risks of the information age. For anyone interested in law enforcement, may I recommend cyber-security as a career. This truly is the "wild west" of modern crime and lawlessness.

I'll probably comment more when I see what T-Mobile and others have to say over the next couple days.

You get what you pay for.

2005-01-05T17:17:00.000-08:00

Anyone who knows me, knows that I am as big a BlackBerry geek as most people will ever meet. I love the devices. I love the solution. Avis is trying to find love, or money, with the BlackBerry as well.

Avis is giving away BlackBerrys. Specifically, it's giving up to five 6710 models, each with an $85 rebate toward service activation, to travelers who rent between Jan. 1 and March 31 and who sign a one-year telco service contract.

I'm sure someone's mother said the following in the late 60's, "Free love is neither." Here is why I think this applies to the Avis offer.

There is nothing about this offer that I can't get at the cart in the mall. Avis is co-opting 2005's most successfull brand (according to the Newsmaker Brands survey) to build it's own. All the while it's clearing outdated product out of someones warehouse, and someone is collecting a respectable commission for your 1 to 5 lines of data, and probably voice, activations. All you are getting is an old product, at a retail price, with no set-up support.

If you want a BlackBerry, go to a respectable dealer, pay a respectable price for a respectable device, and get the help you will need to get it working with your e-mail and communications needs. I promise, you'll respect yourself in the morning.

My First Blog

2004-12-27T09:10:00.000-08:00

Welcome to my first blog. As much as I love computers and the internet, I didn't see the point in stashing away my opinions until some time that I could get on my desktop and surf to my blog post site. And I sure as heck don't want to subject these opinions to just a few people, when the entire world is waiting, with bated-breath, to hear my tome on the state of 2.75346593 generation wireless GPS services for the food services industry. (Oohh, that does sound good, doesn't it?) Real life happens in real time, not at 11:30 pm when I'm surfing. Even I admit that my late night surfing is pretty disconnected from my real life. Then again, maybe I'm just impatient, and want to move on after an event of note.

Well, now I can share my observations via e-mail posts. I live with a T-Mobile BlackBerry 7230 on one hip for constant communication, and a T-Mobile iPAQ 6315 on the other for reference and entertainment (MP3's and work documents). Between these two devices, I should be able to update this site when my mood and my technology move me. I will not post every day. And then again, I may post several times a day. Only time will tell.

Despite my blog url, there are no luddites here. Quite the contrary. This is a Wireless Wonk Weblog. Luddites are welcome to join the conversations, but will find little support or sympathy in these postings.

Please feel free to comment on my thoughts and opinions. Despite my confidence in their undebatable fact and accuracy, you may disagree. Please do. As a geek, I have come to terms with the fact that I see technology from a different perspective than most people. If it appears that I see technology through rose colored glasses, understand that it is just the glow of all of the LEDs on my desk, in my pockets, or at my office. I don't want this to be just a blog with pictures of my latest PDA, and my review of the Bowling For Soup concert I downloaded in .avi format to my 12 GB SD micro-mini card so I could play it on my Captain Cody 2006 Decoder Ring. There is PLENTY of that out here somewhere, I'm not interested in that any more than you are, I hope.

Thanks for hanging with me this long. See you soon.