Communication Breakdown
Communications from the world of, er, communications. And other stuff.
Wednesday 13 June 2007, 10:15 AM
RIP 3GSM
That uberfest of all things mobile, 3GSM (held annually in both Barcelona and Macau) is officially a thing of the past. 'What?!' cry tech-lovers and hacks alike across the globe... but fear not. Rising like a phoenix from 3GSM's ashes are... the Mobile World Congress (Barcelona) and the Mobile Asia Congress (Macau). Whew.
It makes sense. The name 3GSM was of course an earth-shatteringly witty conflagration of 3G and GSM, and while those technologies are still major players they are no longer the sole focus of the exhibition. This year there were scads of WiMax vendors and their ilk and, while the conference is run by the GSM Association, even they will have had to bow to reality.
Of course, "Mobile World Congress" doesn't have the same potential for slightly off-colour pronunciation as "3GSM" (mull that one over), but you can't have it all...
Tuesday 12 June 2007, 3:52 PM
Hello Wibree, and goodbye
Remember Wibree, the "little brother" to Bluetooth that Nokia announced last year? Nope, thought not - it's not even become commercially available yet. And it won't, because it's now been sort of subsumed into the Bluetooth standard itself.
It's now called Ultra Low Power (ULP) Bluetooth, which is pretty much exactly what it was anyway. Just to recap, Wibree/ULP Bluetooth was designed to let devices such as wireless keyboards and wearable technology talk to each other (well, not necessarily in the case of those two examples, but you get the point). The difference was that this technology was designed for non-constant bursts of communications, unlike the constant streaming for which Bluetooth proper is so useful, and was therefore supposed to be more power efficient.
Now Cambridge Silicon Radio has sampled the first ULP Bluetooth and Nokia has folded the Wibree Forum into the Bluetooth Special Interest Group, and Wibree as such is no more. Don't really know how much of a difference that really makes (aside from guaranteeing interoperability, which I suppose is quite useful), but it does help with one particular issue. In a week's time there's a Wireless Symposium on the topic: "Why do we need so many short-range wireless technologies?".
Well, one less to worry about now!
Tuesday 12 June 2007, 12:45 PM
Ultrawideband - almost ready
Last year we exclusively broke the story that ultrawideband (UWB) is to be legalised in Europe. It all became official in February of this year, and all systems are just about ready to go.
Lest we forget, UWB will form the basis for all sorts of goodies like wireless USB and the next generation of Bluetooth, so I think most people in the industry are of the "sooner the better" mindset. Ofcom's pretty much ready to fire the starting gun on the whole thing, so all that remains is for no-one to raise any serious objection to the regulator's final proposals, which can be found here. (Of course, UWB operates on frequencies allocated to other users, but the idea is to keep it low-power so as to not interfere with other people's equipment).
Anyone got a problem with it? Well, do ya? If so, do let the good folks at Ofcom know about it before the 6th of July...
Monday 11 June 2007, 12:49 PM
Mobile Linux gets kiss of life
The LiPS (Linux Phone Standards) Forum is releasing its first API set for applications on Linux mobiles today. Just as a reminder, the LiPS Forum includes such luminaries as France Telecom, Texas Instruments, ARM and Freescale, while rival organisation the LiMo (Linux Mobile) Foundation includes Vodafone, Motorola, Samsung and Panasonic...
Get the picture? For initiatives that are supposed to see a degree of application standardisation - quite handy for pushing Linux-toting mobiles out into the marketplace - there does seem to be an awful lot of fragmentation here. Both sides are heavyweights, so heaven knows who will come out on top, but lets hope they play nice for the sake of their common goal.
Friday 8 June 2007, 3:46 PM
Work phones for personal use?
Research done by Aurora Kendrick James has shown that workers in the UK spend £400m a year on personal calls from their company mobiles. As AKJ is a "telecom expense management specialist", it does of course have all sorts of solutions to stop this happening, but I am of course not going to tell you about them. They do have one valid point, though - firms who allow this sort of thing are potentially breaking tax rules by claiming back the VAT from their whole phone bill. Naughty naughty.
It's an interesting thing really, personal calls from company mobiles. Many companies offer that as a perk, while other take a dim view... what sort are your employers?
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