Worldwide IT spending increases were pretty anemic as IT and telecom services spending were seriously curtailed last year. It seems that things are going better. Telecom services spending, which has been curtailed in the past few years, only grew by a tenth of a point in 2012, to $1.661tr, but Gartner projects spending on mobile data services to grow enough to more than compensate for declines in fixed and mobile voice revenues. Infonetics Research Report sees telecom sector growth outpacing GDP growth. Global capital expenditure (capex) by telecommunications service providers is expected to increase at a compounded rate of 1.5% over the next five years, from $207 billion in 2012 to $223.3 billion in 2017, says a new market report from Insight Research Corp.
Europe’s Telco Giants In Talks To Create Pan-European Network. Europe’s largest mobile network operators are considering pooling their resources to create pan-European network infrastructure, the FT is reporting. Mobile network operators are frustrated by a “disjointed European market” that’s making it harder for them to compete.
“Internet of Things” gets new push. Ten Companies (Including Logitech) Team Up To Create The Internet Of Things Consortium article tell that your Internet-connected devices may be getting more cooperative, thanks to group of startups and established players who have come together to create a new nonprofit group called the Internet of Things Consortium.
Machine-to-Machine (M2M) communications are more and more used. Machine-to-machine technology made great strides in 2012, and I expect an explosion of applications in 2013. Mobile M2M communication offers developers a basis for countless new applications for all manner of industries. Extreme conditions M2M communication article tells that M2M devices often need to function in extreme conditions. According to market analysts at Berg Insight, the number of communicating machines is set to rise to around 270 million by 2015. The booming M2M market is due to unlimited uses for M2M communications. The more and more areas of life and work will rely on M2M.
Car of the future is M2M-ready and has Ethernet. Ethernet has already been widely accepted by the automotive industry as the preferred interface for on-board-diagnostics (OBD). Many cars already feature also Internet connectivity. Many manufacturers taking an additional step to develop vehicle connectivity. One such example is the European Commission’s emergency eCall system, which is on target for installation in every new car by 2015. There is also aim of Vehicle-to-Vehicle communications and Internet connectivity within vehicles is to detect traffic jams promptly and prevent them from getting any worse.
M2M branches beyond one-to-one links article tells that M2M is no longer a one-to-one connection but has evolved to become a system of networks transmitting data to a growing number of personal devices. Today, sophisticated and wireless M2M data modules boast many features.
The Industrial Internet of Things article tells that one of the biggest stories in automation and control for 2013 could be the continuing emergence of what some have called the Internet of Things, or what GE is now marketing as the Industrial Internet. The big question is whether companies will see the payback on the needed investment. And there are many security issues that needs to be carefully weighted out.
Very high speed 60GHz wireless will be talked a lot in 2013. Standards sultan sanctifies 60GHz wireless LAN tech: IEEE blesses WiGig’s HDMI-over-the-air, publishes 802.11ad. WiFi and WiGig Alliances become one, work to promote 60GHz wireless. Wi-Fi, WiGig Alliances to wed, breed 60GHz progeny. WiGig Alliance’s 60GHz “USB/PCI/HDMI/DisplayPort” technology sits on top of the IEEE radio-based communications spec. WiGig’s everything-over-the-air system is expected to deliver up to 7Gbit of data per second, albeit only over a relatively short distance from the wireless access point. Fastest Wi-Fi ever is almost ready for real-world use as WiGig routers, docking stations, laptop, and tablet were shown at CES. It’s possible the next wireless router you buy will use the 60GHz frequency as well as the lower ones typically used in Wi-Fi, allowing for incredibly fast performance when you’re within the same room as the router and normal performance when you’re in a different room.
Communications on power line still gets some interest at least inside house. HomePlug and G.hn are tussling it out to emerge as the de-facto powerline standard, but HomePlug has enjoyed a lot of success as the incumbent.
Silicon photonics ushers in 100G networks article tells that a handful of companies are edging closer to silicon photonics, hoping to enable a future generation of 100 Gbit/s networks.
Now that 100G optical units are entering volume deployment, faster speeds are very clearly on the horizon. The push is on for a 400G Ethernet standard. Looking beyond 100G toward 400G standardization article tells that 400G is very clearly on the horizon. The push is now officially “on” for 400-Gigabit Ethernet standard. The industry is trying to avoid the mistakes made with 40G optics, which lacked any industry standards.
Market for free-space optical wireless systems expanding. Such systems are often positioned as an alternative to fiber-optic cables, particularly when laying such cables would be cost-prohibitive or where permitting presents an insurmountable obstacle. DARPA Begins Work On 100Gbps Wireless Tech With 120-mile Range.
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Tomi Engdahl says:
The fourth-generation LTE technology has clearly been the fastest growing mobile technology. GSMA association study, by 2017, LTE will increase the number of users in a billion. At that time one of eight user have 4G phone.
Source: http://www.etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=706:miljardi-4g-kayttajaa-jo-2016&catid=13&Itemid=101
Tomi Engdahl says:
ENISA wants mobes to wander freely between carriers in emergencies
If your network’s crocked, another one picks up the load in the national interest
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/11/29/enisa_in_country_mobile_roaming_plan/
The European Union Agency for Network and Information Security (ENISA) has floated the idea that all mobile phones should be able to roam to another network within their country of residence, in order to enhance the resilience of mobile networks.
The thinking behind the report is simple: “Every day millions of European citizens rely on mobile telephony for work, social life, but also to contact emergency services. Hence outages of a mobile network can have a severe impact on the economy and on society.”
ENISA’s remit is to keep Europe’s communications lines open and secure, which makes mobile resilience of interest.
The document’s central idea is that it would be lovely if all EU members had at least some form of roaming, so that subscribers hit by outages could still connect their phones to a network. Roaming could be be regulatory fiat
The report’s nine recommendations also suggest mutual aid agreements so that all of a nation’s telcos sign up to the same rules. Prioritising voice and SMS traffic over data is also suggested.
Tomi Engdahl says:
NBNCo leak: They would say that, wouldn’t they?
Reported Blue Book leak reads like bureaucrats in denial
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/11/29/nbnco_leak_analysis/
Fairfax Media has published a report on what it says is part of the “Blue Book”, advice from NBNCo to incoming Australian communications minister Malcolm Turnbull.
the objections to the new government’s fibre-to-the-node (FTTN) plan read to me like just the kind of thing an organisation working on one plan would say about an alternative.
Bandwidth-intensive industries will need more than xDSL at 50Mbps
They already do and already buy other connection.
Tomi Engdahl says:
A New Record for Terahertz Transmission
Engineers achieve amazing data rates in a once-inaccessible band
http://spectrum.ieee.org/telecom/wireless/a-new-record-for-terahertz-transmission
The problem with the radio spectrum between 3 and 3000 megahertz is that it’s crowded.
researchers have been working for decades to utilize the 3- to 3000-gigahertz span. In October, a team reported a hopeful sign—a record 100-gigabit-per-second wireless data transmission.
Scientists in Germany, at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Solid State Physics, and the University of Stuttgart, created a wireless connection between a transmitter and a receiver that were 20 meters apart at a frequency of 237.5 GHz.
Terahertz and subterahertz frequencies have also been investigated for decades as a high-speed data-transfer solution, especially for rural or remote locations where extending the fiber-optic network would be difficult and costly.
The team used a device called a photon mixer (borrowed from the Japanese company NTT-NEL), which combines and directs two lasers of different frequencies onto a photodiode. One laser is modulated to carry data; the other is not. Shining the lasers on the photodiode produces an electrical signal with a frequency that equals that of the difference between the lasers—237.5 GHz. That signal is then radiated by a horn-shaped antenna.
On the receiver end, the team used a custom-built integrated circuit made up of high-electron-mobility transistors, compound semiconductor devices that can operate at millimeter-wave frequencies. At just a few square millimeters, the chip is a big step toward the ability to incorporate terahertz receiving technology in smartphones and tablets. The IC amplified the incoming radiation and mixed it with another frequency to extract the transmitted data.
One feature of subterahertz transmission that the German group find especially promising is that this type of radiation is less affected by local conditions like fog or rain when compared with free-space optical transmission, which uses lasers to carry data through the air.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Why Comcast and other cable ISPs aren’t selling you gigabit Internet
Cable tech could hit a gigabit today, but why bother when customers lack choice?
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/12/why-comcast-and-other-cable-isps-arent-selling-you-gigabit-internet/
Gigabit-class broadband is capturing the imagination of Internet users throughout the country. With Google and other companies bringing fiber-based services that deliver a gigabit of data each second to the home, communities are accelerating their push to get the highest speeds.
A consumer who really needs 1,000 megabits of bandwidth is probably a rare creature, but excitement over fiber deployments show there is at least some demand for what is a ludicrous speed compared to most home Internet connections.
Cable companies haven’t been ignoring this consumer demand… but they haven’t done anything to satisfy it, either. Comcast demonstrated the “first ever 1Gbps broadband speed download over a production HFC [hybrid fiber-coaxial] network” two and a half years ago at the NCTA [National Cable and Telecommunications] conference, and the company showed off a 3Gbps technology at this year’s cable show.
Version 3.1 of DOCSIS (the Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification) is expected to support multiple-gigabit download speeds. DOCSIS 3.1 gear isn’t on the market yet, but DOCSIS 3.0 can already support about a gigabit efficiently (or more than a gigabit inefficiently)
Yet the fastest cable offering available nationwide from Comcast is 105Mbps down and 20Mbps up. Time Warner Cable’s top tier is 100Mbps. Cablevision’s Optimum service tops out at 101Mbps.
No technological barrier prevents gigabit cable Internet
“If you want to go by pure technical capability, you could go to very high speeds with DOCSIS 3.0,” he said. “What we think 3.1 brings to the table is a more cost-effective way of getting there.”
DOCSIS 3.0 requires modems to support at least four downstream and four upstream channels. In practice, a typical DOCSIS 3.0 modem bonds eight downstream channels and four upstream ones, providing data rates of about 300Mbps down and 100Mbps up.
DOCSIS 3.0 modems with 24 channels have existed for a while, though.
“16- and 24-channel DOCSIS 3.0 gateways are available and are being deployed in subscriber’s homes now,” a Cisco spokesperson told Ars.
Even if all customers had gigabit-capable modems, back-end upgrades in cable plants are still required to provide that bandwidth. The industry consensus is that it makes more financial sense to perform those upgrades after 3.1 technology is ready, said John Chapman, CTO of Cisco’s cable access business.
Like many cable providers, RCN offers gigabit or even 10 gigabit service to businesses, running fiber to the premises. Business-class service level agreements provide bandwidth guarantees that residential customers don’t get. Technically, residential customers could buy the business-class fiber-to-the-home service, but they’d have to pay a custom price that makes it unlikely anyone would ever want to do so.
“There’s no technical reason we couldn’t,” Jacoby said. As for how much it would cost, “we’d have to look at how far you are from our fiber now. There’s fiber to the node and then we dedicate a fiber at that node and we’d build that fiber to your house.”
Douglas said Comcast’s current speeds already satisfy customer demand. Only 34 percent of Comcast residential customers choose a speed tier faster than 25Mbps, he said.
“We’ve increased speeds 12 times in 11 years. As you’ve seen from our track record, we’ll continue to increase speeds well in advance of consumer demand for them,” he said.
Comcast’s cable modems use eight channels, making the technical limit a little over 300Mbps
Since competition is scarce, why bother matching the speed of fiber?
Although vendors promise that it’s coming (eventually), some observers believe there just hasn’t been enough competition to spur a large-scale shift to gigabit cable speeds. Cable vendors have been forced to offer better deals or upgrade their marketing in communities with competition from fiber. But fiber deployments are still limited, and most US consumers have little choice among Internet providers.
“I think it is a business model issue,” Levin said. “Since the early days of cable Internet service, the model has been scarcity based, designed to sell different packages to different consumers at different price points. Google Fiber is the first package that is designed to sell abundance.”
The type of customer who could use an entire gigabit at a time does exist. As one Ars commenter noted, a gigabit could be used up in a household full of HDTVs streaming content from the cloud, computers downloading torrents, video game consoles, personal Web servers, Voice over IP, and computers updating themselves.
That customer is a rare breed, though. “As I understand it, Google Fiber is basically a science experiment,” Jacoby said. “I have no doubt that there will come a day that gigabit speeds are necessary in our daily lives, but I’m not sure that day is here yet. When it’s here, RCN will be offering it.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
My Opinion on the Internet of Things
http://www.designnews.com/author.asp?section_id=1386&doc_id=269976&cid=nl.dn14
Every once in a while a topic or area of technology crops up that’s the “talk of the town,” so to speak. The topic that’s in vogue at the moment is the Internet of Things, or IoT, or Internet of Everything, as Qualcomm likes to say. The idea of having everything connected to everything is quite intriguing and opens up a wealth of opportunities.
But now there are some better examples — really. One that I like is the concept of wearable computing. I stick my Fitbit into my pocket before I go out for a run
How about the Internet-enabled watch?
On my daughter’s college campus, when her laundry is ready to be moved from the washer to the dryer or the drying cycle has been completed, she gets a message on her phone. That’s pretty useful. Or more so, she can get an alert when there’s a free machine.
Another useful application of this technology is what’s referred to as crowdsourcing. That means that we take information from a group of people, in some cases without their knowledge (sort of), to provide useful information. For example, if you had the right sensors built into the phones of a group of people in a similar location, you could provide really accurate weather reports in real time.
Now take the IoT to a more industrial setting. Having machines on a factory floor linked together has always been possible, and has been around for a while. But the IoT connections are far more simple and can be accessed from anywhere you can access the Internet. Hence, the operations manager doesn’t have to pull out his laptop anymore to check on production.
And that brings up the last point, one that hasn’t been fully addressed yet — the security surrounding an IoT connection.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Accused of Cyberspying, Huawei Is ‘Exiting the U.S. Market’
http://killerapps.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/12/02/accused_of_cyberspying_huawei_is_exiting_the_us_market
The CEO of the world’s biggest telecommunications equipment maker, which for years has been labeled by U.S. officials as a proxy for Chinese military and intelligence agencies, says he’s giving up on America.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Scientist-developed malware covertly jumps air gaps using inaudible sound
Malware communicates at a distance of 65 feet using built-in mics and speakers.
http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/12/scientist-developed-malware-covertly-jumps-air-gaps-using-inaudible-sound/
Computer scientists have developed a malware prototype that uses inaudible audio signals to communicate, a capability that allows the malware to covertly transmit keystrokes and other sensitive data even when infected machines have no network connection.
The proof-of-concept software—or malicious trojans that adopt the same high-frequency communication methods—could prove especially adept in penetrating highly sensitive environments that routinely place an “air gap” between computers and the outside world. Using nothing more than the built-in microphones and speakers of standard computers, the researchers were able to transmit passwords and other small amounts of data from distances of almost 65 feet. The software can transfer data at much greater distances by employing an acoustical mesh network made up of attacker-controlled devices that repeat the audio signals.
“In our article, we describe how the complete concept of air gaps can be considered obsolete as commonly available laptops can communicate over their internal speakers and microphones and even form a covert acoustical mesh network,” one of the authors, Michael Hanspach, wrote in an e-mail. “Over this covert network, information can travel over multiple hops of infected nodes, connecting completely isolated computing systems and networks (e.g. the internet) to each other. We also propose some countermeasures against participation in a covert network.”
The researchers developed several ways to use inaudible sounds to transmit data between two Lenovo T400 laptops using only their built-in microphones and speakers. The most effective technique relied on software originally developed to acoustically transmit data under water. Created by the Research Department for Underwater Acoustics and Geophysics in Germany, the so-called adaptive communication system (ACS) modem was able to transmit data between laptops as much as 19.7 meters (64.6 feet) apart. By chaining additional devices that pick up the signal and repeat it to other nearby devices, the mesh network can overcome much greater distances.
Tomi Engdahl says:
FCC Chair Hints at Spectrum-Allocation Idea
Regulator Indicates He Favors Making Sure Smaller Wireless Carriers Get Airwaves
http://online.wsj.com/news/article_email/SB10001424052702304579404579234650310544752-lMyQjAxMTAzMDAwMjEwNDIyWj
The nation’s top telecommunications regulator on Monday gave his strongest indication to date that he might support limiting big carriers like AT&T Inc. and Verizon Wireless from amassing huge amounts of high-quality airwaves at a coming spectrum auction.
“Spectrum is finite, and the FCC is charged with managing the airwaves that are used for commercial purposes,” Mr. Wheeler said Monday in a speech in Columbus, Ohio. “A key goal of our spectrum-allocation efforts is ensuring that multiple carriers have access to airwaves needed to operate their networks.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
“Even more than ten grand landing” – In Finland, two problems with the phone thefts
Finns want to keep the phone with one European country. For dozens of Finnish users have come up with thousands of dollars of phone bills after the theft.
Theft of smart phones has become quite a pain in the ass, for example, in the United States. The authorities are taking steps to theft and robbery. One example is the recently completed database of stolen phones, which helps prevent the use of stolen equipment.
Virkki says that almost all of these cases have occurred in Spain, and premium rate numbers are generally in Africa.
In Finland, the smartphone theft is caused mainly by two problems, both of which could be easily prevented.
Sim card taken out and transferred to another phone. Now comes the card pin code. Often, it is, unfortunately, been left to the default format, such as 1234 or 0000. When a criminal gets access open, and he can immediately call the expensive premium rate numbers.
The problems could thus prevent the phone security code, and changing the sim card pin code in second place. And if you lose your phone, it should inform the operator immediately when the connection to be closed.
If your phone is stolen, your subscription will be inflicted on the bill is not the only threat. If the phone is not protected, the information in it may end up in the wrong hands.
Elisa Jan Virkki points out that the smartphone may include, for example, a large amount of the employer’s e-mails with attachments. Their end of the criminal or public distribution of the Internet could cause problems.
Theft of smart phones has become quite a pain in the ass, for example, in the United States. The authorities are taking steps to theft and robbery. One example is the recently completed database of stolen phones, which helps prevent the use of stolen equipment.
According to the singer, Finland has been the so-called stolen equipment “black list”.
Source: http://www.tietokone.fi/artikkeli/uutiset/jopa_yli_kymppitonnin_lasku_suomessa_kaksi_ongelmaa_puhelinvarkauksista
Tomi Engdahl says:
Startup Drives 60 GHz to Small Cells
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1320264&
Startup Peraso Technologies Inc. is taking 60 GHz to infrastructure networks with its first product, a module targeting small cell base stations, now sampling.
The device supports the IEEE 802.11ad standard that emerged from the WiGig MAC and PHY specifications. Many of the chip designers behind those efforts are targeting consumer client systems such as PCs and TVs. Peraso sees a higher margin opportunity in back-end networks for the module, which sell for $60 in 10,000-unit quantities.
The PRS212x modules use Peraso’s PRS1021 60 GHz transceiver, which integrates more than 15 discretes. In addition to small cell base stations, the module targets a variety of business nets including point-to-point links for campus, city and mass transit networks.
“The other primary supplier [for 60 GHz back-end networks] is currently Hittite Microwave, and Infineon is expected to release silicon imminently,”
Tomi Engdahl says:
WhatsApp Has Surpassed Facebook As The Most Popular Mobile Messaging Service
http://www.businessinsider.com/whatsapp-facebook-comparison-2013-11
Messenger service WhatsApp has leapfrogged Facebook to become the leading mobile social messaging service.
On Device’s report revealed that social messaging apps, such as WhatsApp, BBM and WeChat, dominated the way people communicate via mobile, eclipsing calls and texts with 86 percent using social messaging daily. 73 percent, 75 per cent and 60 percent said they used their handset daily for voice calls, SMS and email respectively.
Back in April, WhatsApp chief executive Jan Koum said the service had more users than Twitter and carried more messages than Facebook.
The paid-for app (which costs 69p to download in the UK, with a further 65p charge per year) does not carry advertising like its other social media counterparts.
“We do have a manifesto opposing advertising.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
DNA says 4g traffic ten-fold in Finland
DNA indicates that the traffic of the 4G LTE network has increased ten-fold this year. The reasons are actually three.
One reason for the increase in traffic was fast connections to the benefit of the network and the increase in the use of tumescent. These include, in particular video over the network broadcast services, but contribute to the effort to carry the network storage services and network meetings.
The second reason is that the 4G network terminals operating in is now available in a different way than in the past and they are very popular.
Elisa told in October after the 4g devices of its total sales had exceeded the 40 per cent threshold.
The operators have also increased the race to LTE networks coverage.
“LTE network’s coverage of the population is currently around 40 percent,” DNA’s production director Antti Jokinen says in release.
Source: http://www.tietokone.fi/artikkeli/uutiset/dna_4g_liikenne_kymmenkertaistui
Tomi Engdahl says:
Analyst: 100G fueling resurgence in optical network spending
http://www.cablinginstall.com/articles/2013/11/ovum-100g-resurgence.html
The optical networks (ON) market will exceed $17.5 billion by 2018, at a 3.1 percent CAGR from 2012, predicts the global technology analyst firm Ovum. An exceptionally strong 2Q13 in the market signals the beginning of a spending bounce-back, says the analyst; 2Q13 was reportedly the strongest quarter in the last six and was the 7th highest quarter in the last 10 years.
The major technology trend for the new forecast is the ascendancy of 100G, whose revenues exceeded 40G sales for the first time in 2Q13, according to Ovum. “Nearly all new large-scale, long-haul optical networks designed and deployed today will be 100G,” adds Ovum’s Redpath. “100G has assumed the lead position and will not yield within our forecast period.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Three UK offers free data, text and calls while roaming in the USA
http://www.engadget.com/2013/12/04/three-uk-feel-at-home-data-roaming-usa-indonesia-macau-sri-lanka/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Carriers Switch on Small Cells Slowly
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1320274&
As many as 11.5 million small-cell base stations could be deployed by 2018, up from just 168,000 today, according to a status report from the Small Cell Forum. The trade group gave the update and released guidelines on using the systems in businesses as part of a regular meeting in Dallas today.
Small-cell base stations are seen as an inexpensive way to add capacity quickly to cellular networks swamped with mobile data from the rise of smartphones and tablets. The category has been dominated by low-end home versions called femtocells so far, but is slowly shifting toward beefier devices in businesses and public spaces.
To date, 56 cellular operators are using some form of small cells, most of them (44) employing femtocells for residences where cellular coverage is poor. The 168,000 systems deployed are a mix of enterprise-class cells (used by 26 carriers) and public access devices (used by 17) and do not count the much more numerous femtocells.
By 2018, half the small cells deployed will be for non-residential uses, the group predicts.
“What we are starting to see is a significant uptick in the second half of 2013 with carriers moving from trials to deployments,”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ubicom took the Finnish towards the IoT time
Tekes Ubicom embedded technology, the program ends at the end of this year, even if the multi-enterprise project trend continues for the idempään. Programme Manager Kimmo Ahola, the program has taken the Finnish companies strongly towards the future of the embedded Internet IoT time.
All in all, started in 2007 Ubicom has been more than EUR 300 million left the project. Research projects have been about four hundred, and the result has been new companies, a myriad of new products and patented technologies.
Ahola points out that the Finnish electronics happened a lot during the program. – Symbian, marked the end of some kind of spiritual depression in the mobile sector turnover. The best part was that the demand for funding from Tekes and the new development still continued, Ahola says.
In a small country, it is important to choose the application areas where companies can make major products internationally.
Ahola, we believe that by making use of our platform the Finnish companies to develop an internationally significant innovations. – Now we can focus on the sensor solutions or data analytics, when you do not have to worry about the whole vertical, Ahola says.
Source: http://www.etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=739:ubicom-vei-suomea-kohti-iot-aikaa&catid=13&Itemid=101
Tomi Engdahl says:
Sensors and sensibility: Quirky’s Spotter multi-purpose monitor module
Introduction to the ‘Internet of Things’ for folk scared of soldering irons
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/12/04/review_quirky_spotter/
It sounds such a good idea: a compact, battery powered general-purpose sensor pod you can stick pretty much anywhere there’s a Wi-Fi network you have access to, and which will ping you temperature, humidity, sound, light and movement info over the internet to your smartphone.
Heck, it is a great idea, and it’s one that Spotter, a joint offering from General Electric and US-based maker of crowd-voted products, Quirky, was created to realise. Think of it as an ordinary Joe’s easy-to-use introduction to the Internet of Things.
I wanted to try Spotter because it’s based on the Imp IoT platform developed by Electric Imp. I recently reviewed the developer version of Imp, but I wanted to see what commercial entities were making with the platform. Electric Imp makes a solder-on alternative to the developer kit’s SD card-format device, and it’s what is used here.
Quirky’s partnership with GE is called Wink, which isn’t an abbreviation but is meant to make you think of wireless interactive connectivity.
I tried the iOS version, but the approach is the same whichever platform you favour: run it and a wizard walks you through the process of connecting the Wink device to the app over the internet by way of your local wireless network. There’s no direct sensor-to-smartphone link – communication between the two always goes through a server.
You’ll need to set up a Wink account, but that’s a trivial process and one handled within the app itself.
The problem is, the range of actions is currently very limited indeed, and the number of possible trigger settings not much broader.
The app’s only audio-related trigger is “detects a loud noise”, and it will only respond to “detects movement” and “detects movement has stopped” signals from the motion sensor. The temperature and humidity options are better: the app will respond if either go above or below set values listed in one degree or one percentage point intervals.
The Spotter isn’t useless as it stands: the options the Wink app provides enable some basic remote monitoring of events for security or information. But it is basic.
Quirky’s inexpensive sensor pod brings a taste of the Internet of Things to folk who don’t field comfortable wielding a soldering iron. It has the potential to be useful
Tomi Engdahl says:
Huawei Holds #1 Position, NSN and Alcatel-Lucent Trade Rank, and Samsung Gains in Q3 2013 RAN Market
https://www.abiresearch.com/press/huawei-holds-1-position-nsn-and-alcatel-lucent-tra
For the third quarter of 2013 Huawei maintained its #1 rank in RAN market share at 28.1%
Alcatel-Lucent increased its RAN revenue by 20.1% sequentially to gain the #3 spot ahead of NSN which dropped to #4 with RAN revenues slightly ahead of normal seasonality for the market.
Ericsson maintained its #2 rank position with RAN revenues in line with normal seasonality.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Bluetooth 4.1 prepares headsets and more to connect to the ‘Net
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2068491/bluetooth-4-1-prepares-headsets-and-more-to-connect-to-the-net.html
The Bluetooth Special Interest Group said Wednesday that it had published Bluetooth 4.1, which prepares Bluetooth peripherals for the “Internet of Things” by allowing them to serve as both hub and peripheral devices, and paving the way for them to directly connect to the Internet.
Put another way, Bluetooth 4.1 devices like fitness trackers will be able to collate data from sensors like heart monitors and temperature gauges, then report back to a smartphone with their findings. In turn, those phones could be used as sensors that other devices can communicate with and pull data from.
The update is the first major release since late 2010, when the SIG announced Bluetooth 4.0 or Bluetooth Smart, an update that reduced the power consumed by Bluetooth devices. A spokeswoman for the SIG said that she expects to see several chip companies announce Bluetooth 4.1-compatible products as soon as qualifications are enabled on December 10.
And there’s some more good news: “The updates are all software related, so an over the air update can upgrade [Bluetooth] radios that are currently in market,” the spokeswoman added.
The 4.1 release includes better cooperation between LTE radios and Bluetooth devices, to avoid interference.
Bluetooth 4.1 also supports bulk data transfers, so that information collected over the course of a run can be communicated at once from multiple sensors.
Tomi Engdahl says:
We are out of 4 letter .com domains
http://whoapi.com/blog/1413/we-are-out-of-4-letter-com-domains/
What we confirmed that all the 4 letter domains are registered. We haven’t tried numbers, dashes or IDN’s, just 26 letters of the English alphabet.
Tomi Engdahl says:
IBM Will Minimize Impact of Future Disasters
http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/ibm-will-minimize-impact-future-disasters
Not even Mighty Big Blue can stop a hurricane. But. IBM and Marist College are testing a new cloud computing innovation that could help prevent disruptions in voice and data communications services caused by hurricanes and other natural disasters.
Normal reprovisioning of voice and data applications and services can often take days, not to mention that it’s a MAJOR pain. Unfortunately, the window to get it done is usually closer to hours. The solution being tested uses software-defined networking (SDN) technology and is being tested in Marist’s SDN Innovation Lab. SDN enables Admins and data center operators to more efficiently control data flows within both physical and virtual networks. The SDN advancement IBM and Marist are testing will enable an IT professional to remotely access and make changes to network resources via a wireless device and open source network controller.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Coming Soon: Workout Gear That Monitors Your Muscles
http://www.wired.com/design/2013/12/these-smart-gym-clothes-are-the-future-of-wearable-computers/
Regardless of whether or not you’ve got a gym membership, there’s a decent chance that, somewhere in the folds of your brain, you’ve got a vivid picture of the sensor-laden, whiz-bang workout of the future. Here of course I’m referring to the indelible image of Ivan Drago, the Soviet super-boxer, strapped with electrodes in the training montage from Rocky IV.
In that movie, Drago’s machine-assisted regimen is the counterpoint to our hero’s homespun preparation of lifting logs and jumping rope, and yet, allegiances aside, it’s hard to deny the allure of a computer-optimized bod. That’s exactly what a startup called Athos hopes to deliver–not with a lab full of machinery but with Under Armor-style workout gear, invisibly embedded with muscle-tracking sensors.
Tomi Engdahl says:
U.S. telecommunications management agency The FCC has given its blessing to one of the largest in the history of IT on share transactions.
The FCC operator Vodafone may sell its shares to the Verizon Wireless Verizon.
The deal is worth $ 130 billion, or about 95.5 billion euros. The deal is expected to be realized in the first quarter of 2014.
Source: http://www.tietoviikko.fi/kaikki_uutiset/historiallinen+itdiili+hyvaksyttiin/a952173
Tomi Engdahl says:
Smart Power Strip Automates Appliances
http://www.designnews.com/author.asp?section_id=1386&doc_id=270158
Unless you have a degree in engineering or a natural talent at programming things, automating appliances in your home is not an easy task.
Actually, even some engineering students may still have trouble automating things, even with all the current technology available. What could average Joes or Jills do to add some automation to their homes? They can spend thousands on technology to do the job for them, or they can wait some time and invest in Roger Yiu’s Smart Power Strips.
Currently available on Kickstarter, the Smart Power Strip is a simple way users can control home appliances from wherever they are. The idea is simple, a power strip with four AC outlets and two USB outputs for charging. Additionally, inside the strip is a WiFi module along with a 2.4 GHz MESH home automation module. Four relays allow each individual power outlet to be controlled along with four blue LEDs to indicate which ones are currently providing power. There is also a circuit breaker at the end for surge protection.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Intel Revs Up Comms Coprocessor
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1320291&
Intel rolled out Coleto Creek, an update of its Cave Creek co-processor aiming to drive the company’s x86 CPUs deeper into communications systems.
Coleto Creek is made in the same 32nm process as Cave Creek, which was launched in February 2012, but gets significantly higher performance marks. That’s due in part to “beefier accelerators” in the chip and the fact it is paired with Intel’s latest Xeon server processor, the E5-2600v2, which sports enhanced security and virtualization features.
Intel said the chip does not use any acceleration logic for regular expressions, popular in other network processors. Instead it relies on the x86 for such jobs, but Intel does plan advances with its AVX instruction set, use of caches and external memory to enhance reg ex performance in future offerings.
Meanwhile Intel is still working on a Xeon accelerator geared for signal processing, targeting use in base stations. Prototype designs using FPGAs are now in market trials at China Mobile, which is using a server data center as a so-called cloud radio access network.
“We are looking at how to create synergy from big cells serving thousands of users to small cells in metro areas of public networks,” said Price.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Bluetooth Smart Gets Smarter
Version 4.1 enhances IP support
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1320284&
The latest Bluetooth spec update will improve consumer usability and developer access while paving the way for new devices, according to Bluetooth Special Interest Group officials. In addition, the group is preparing the way for Bluetooth to more deeply support Internet Protocol.
Bluetooth 4.1, officially released today, builds on the current low power consumption model to produce data that’s more visible on mobile devices. The updates improve usability with increased coexistence support for LTE and data exchange, and empower developer innovation, said Errett Kroeter, director of global industry and brand marketing for Bluetooth SIG.
Improvements over 2010’s Bluetooth Smart release include the ability for bulk data transfer between Bluetooth devices using the existing low energy feature. Kroeter foresees the technology being used to easily transmit data serially, in real time, in smart homes, heart monitors, and fitness equipment.
“Essentially it allows developers to create all kinds of different scenarios around efficiency of data transfer and creating more flexibility for a scenario where a collector can gather information for period of time and offload it,” Kroeter said. “Information can be stored in a fitness monitor for a whole run, and you can come back and the monitor will be running in the background.”
Data could then be transferred to a smartphone, tablet, or other hub device to be pushed directly to the cloud for sharing.
A key change in Bluetooth 4.1 is the ability for devices to simultaneously act as a sensor and hub device, much as a smartwatch would. With proper software updates, Kroeter said a smartwatch could act as a peripherial and a hub, connecting to a smartphone for text updates and to data from a fitness monitor.
“We created the railroad track and still need to engineer the train on how it’s going to carry the traffic,” he said. “We know people are interested in using Bluetooth to carry IP traffic natively. It’s not necessarily a limitation today…but we want to provide another option for the next generation of technology.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Barcelona Will Be a Big Test For HotSpot 2.0 Wi-Fi Connections
http://mobile.slashdot.org/story/13/12/05/202255/barcelona-will-be-a-big-test-for-hotspot-20-wi-fi-connections
“There are currently several million smartphones certified to run on a ‘HotSpot 2.0′ Wi-Fi network, which promises automatic Wi-Fi authentication and connection, and seamless roaming between different Wi-Fi hotspot brands, and eventually between Wi-Fi and cellular connections”
Tomi Engdahl says:
A few finally find HotSpot 2.0 Wi-Fi connections
But don’t hold your breath for one near you
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2013/120513-hotspot-wifi-276631.html
here are currently several million smartphones certified to run on a “HotSpot 2.0″ Wi-Fi network. In November, about 400 of them finally got a chance to do so — in Beijing, China.
Attendees at a carrier Wi-Fi conference found that their smartphones, from different “home” carriers, automatically authenticated with and connected securely to a Cisco Wi-Fi network hosted by China Mobile.
The next big public demonstration of what’s confusingly referred to as both Hotspot 2.0 and Next Generation Hotspot (NGH) will be in February 2014: an estimated 75,000 attendees at the next Mobile World Congress in Barcelona will be able to take part.
For carriers, a reliable, secure, high-capacity Wi-Fi service that’s as easy for subscribers to use as cellular means that subscribers can be shifted from overburdened cell networks to higher-capacity Wi-Fi networks.
That’s what drew 14 carriers and operators to the Beijing project: when their subscribers walked into the venue with their phones, the phones and access points started an automatic conversation. By the time a user pulled his smartphone from a pocket, the device already had been authenticated to the Wi-Fi network, with full roaming rights, and securely connected. A Cisco diagram (shown above) outlines the network elements.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Agencies collected data on Americans’ cellphone use in thousands of ‘tower dumps’
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/agencies-collected-data-on-americans-cellphone-use-in-thousands-of-tower-dumps/2013/12/08/20549190-5e80-11e3-be07-006c776266ed_story.html
Federal, state and local law enforcement agencies conducting criminal investigations collected data on cellphone activity thousands of times last year, with each request to a phone company yielding hundreds or thousands of phone numbers of innocent Americans along with those of potential suspects.
Law enforcement made more than 9,000 requests last year for what are called “tower dumps,” information on all the calls that bounced off a cellphone tower within a certain period of time, usually two or more hours, a congressional inquiry has revealed.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Cellphone data spying: It’s not just the NSA
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/12/08/cellphone-data-spying-nsa-police/3902809/
Armed with new technologies, including mobile devices that tap into cellphone data in real time, dozens of local and state police agencies are capturing information about thousands of cellphone users at a time, whether they are targets of an investigation or not, according to public records obtained by USA TODAY and Gannett newspapers and TV stations.
The records, from more than 125 police agencies in 33 states, reveal:
• About one in four law-enforcement agencies have used a tactic known as a “tower dump,” which gives police data about the identity, activity and location of any phone that connects to the targeted cellphone towers over a set span of time, usually an hour or two. A typical dump covers multiple towers, and wireless providers, and can net information from thousands of phones.
• At least 25 police departments own a Stingray, a suitcase-size device that costs as much as $400,000 and acts as a fake cell tower. The system, typically installed in a vehicle so it can be moved into any neighborhood, tricks all nearby phones into connecting to it and feeding data to police.
• Thirty-six more police agencies refused to say whether they’ve used either tactic.
Tomi Engdahl says:
WTF is… NFV: All your basestations are belong to us
Intel and rather a lot of telcos want networks to operate like data centres
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/12/09/feature_wtf_is_network_function_virtualisation/
Mobile network operators would have had an easier life if it wasn’t for smartphones and the flood of data traffic they initiated. Apps have led to a massive increase in the volume of data moving back and forth over phone networks – not just from users; the ads in free apps helped too – and operators are struggling to cope.
And this before the Internet of Things really takes off as it’s expected to do in the coming years, adding millions more – particularly enthusiastic forecasts put the total at billions – devices to these networks too. Catering for all this data traffic isn’t simply a matter up widening the pipe, it will require a massive expansion of the infrastructure needed to host these networks.
Quite apart from the time it will take to put that infrastructure in place, there’s the cost. Businesses and consumers want more bandwidth for less money, but the money has to come from somewhere.
Enter chip giant Intel, not with its capacious cheque book at the ready but with a notion to commoditise telecommunications network infrastructure by ridding it of expensive, proprietary, function-specific and purpose-built hardware and replacing it with cheap general-purpose kit able to replicate in software the functionality delivered by the old boxes.
Intel’s motivation is not philanthropic, of course. These new, standard devices will, it hopes, be based on its processors.
Today’s networks are based around boxes designed to do very specific jobs.
It used to be that way in the server business too, but through the 1990s and early 2000s, x86-based commodity hardware running Linux or Windows proved itself to be much cheaper, more flexible, more scalable and easier to upgrade than older Risc-based machines.
Intel’s logic centres on the notion that of relatively low-cost x86 servers can successfully replaced pricier servers running on server makers’ own silicon, surely they can likewise replace all those pricey proprietary boxes currently attached to base-stations and other parts of the network.
Even the chip giant admits x86 servers aren’t going to push out the established hardware in the near term, and not all of it once. But its scents a shift in the mood of the telcos themselves. This change is one that they want, and rather a lot of them are working together to make it happen.
Tomi Engdahl says:
One standard to sync them all: AllSeen Alliance forms to accelerate Internet of Things adoption
http://www.theverge.com/2013/12/10/5194342/one-standard-to-sync-them-all-allseen-alliance-forms-to-accelerate
5
inShare
Eighteen months ago, Qualcomm SVP Rob Chandhok succinctly explained why the internet of things was failing. Instead of working together, manufacturers designed their smart televisions and appliances to only communicate with their own proprietary applications. Instead of building an ecosystem of devices that could talk to one another, they only built for themselves. Is a smart light bulb really “smart” if you need a special switch, too?
Now, Qualcomm believes it can tackle that problem — with a little help. Today, the Linux Foundation has announced the formation of the AllSeen Alliance, a new consortium dedicated to building and maintaining an open-source framework that lets devices of all shapes and sizes seamlessly communicate with each other. Qualcomm, LG, Panasonic, Haier, Silicon Image and TP-LINK are headlining the initiative, which also includes names as diverse as Cisco, Sears, and Wilocity.
But the star member, for now, is Qualcomm — because the entire AllSeen Alliance is based on a piece of Qualcomm technology.
Instead of dictating that devices have to connect with each other over Wi-Fi or Bluetooth or Zigbee and having users painstakingly pair those devices, AllJoyn can do it all, automatically discovering devices and negotiating connections with whichever protocols are available.
Like the browser rendering engine WebKit, like Eclipse, like Hadoop, and like Linux itself, they hope AllSeen can become a standard by getting companies to share the burden of building something they’ll end up needing for their devices and services anyhow.
While the typical trouble with standards has been well-documented, AllSeen might have more of a chance than most. Since its main task of negotiating connections is device, OS, and network agnostic, it shouldn’t necessarily become obsolete when newer technologies come along. Even if every manufacturer calls AllSeen something different on the box — a stumbling block for the Miracast screen-sharing tech — it might not matter as much here. Since AllSeen devices are designed to automatically find one another across whatever connectivity is available, your smartphone should theoretically be able to tell that LG’s Smart Share and Samsung’s AllShare are the same thing.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Out of many, one: how Qualcomm is trying to unite the mobile industry
http://www.theverge.com/2012/6/29/3122035/out-of-many-one-how-qualcomm-is-trying-to-unite-the-mobile-industry
Rob Chandok told a room of developers and press an all-too-familiar story. The Qualcomm SVP was at Computex in Taiwan a few weeks ago, and recalled seeing a handful of TV manufacturers announce new products with the same flagship feature: the ability to send a photo wirelessly from your phone to your TV. It’s a nice feature, but there was a catch, said Chandok: each manufacturer executed the feature differently. “Manufacturer A has their Android app, Manufacturer B has theirs, Manufacturer C has theirs. If I have three TVs, I need three different apps, three different experiences, all to do essentially the same thing.”
This is the landscape in 2012. More companies are creating more products in more categories, but each ecosystem is increasingly cordoned off from the others. Samsung’s TVs work only with Samsung tablets (or at least only Samsung apps); Android apps have to be entirely re-made and re-thought to come to Windows.
As the internet was coming into vogue, it was HTTP and HTML that turned it into the worldwide web. “HTTP and HTML made it so that websites could build differentiation, but I could use the same browser to get around to all of them,” Chandok told me. “It made the ecosystem better.”
As the internet was coming into vogue, it was HTTP and HTML that turned it into the worldwide web. “HTTP and HTML made it so that websites could build differentiation, but I could use the same browser to get around to all of them,” Chandok told me. “It made the ecosystem better.”
Native apps may be what’s common now, but the company also spent time at Uplinq pitching developers on reconsidering HTML 5 as a platform.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Netflix open sources its data traffic cop, Suro
http://gigaom.com/2013/12/09/netflix-open-sources-its-data-traffic-cop-suro/
Summary:
Netflix has open sourced a tool called Suro that collects event data from disparate application servers before sending them to other data platforms such as Hadoop and Elasticsearch. It’s more big data innovation that hopefully finds its way into the mainstream
Tomi Engdahl says:
Transmitter Chip Boosts Optical Fiber Capacity 10X
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1320316&
Increase fiber optic capacity in existing networks by 10-times just by switching to a new kind of transmitter — that’s the claim of a research group at EPFL (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland). Using sinc-shaped Nyquist pulses, information can be encoded on pulses that overlap in the time domain and use a minimum of spectral bandwidth, thus maximizing optical capacity, according to the EPFL research team of Camille Brès and Luc Thévenaz.
Other groups have tried to produce Nyquist sinc pulses to minimize inter-symbol interference, but had to resort to complex signal generators. Brès and Thévenaz claim their spectral synthesis technique works better, plus is the only one that will be easy to implement for commercial optical transmitters.
“We synthesize a spectrum that gives the perfect pulse shape. We do it by using a simple intensity modulator to generate a set of spectral lines, regularly spaced and showing exactly the same amplitude and the same phase. This gives automatically in the time domain the sinc pulse shape,” Thévenaz told us. “This is very simple and straightforward, but nobody thought to do it this way before.”
The researchers claim that designing a transmitter chip that realizes their encoding technique should be a straightforward exercise for optical chipmakers
Tomi Engdahl says:
Open sourcerers conjure up Qualcomm tech to unlock Internet of Things
New alliance AllSeen all a-quiver over AllJoyn
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/12/10/linux_league_leverages_qualcomm_tech_to_open_internet_of_things/
Open sourcerers at the Linux Foundation have established an industry-wide initiative to create an accessible-to-all framework for the Internet of Things – or the “Internet of Everything”, as the Foundation now wants us to call it.
Dubbed the AllSeen Alliance – sounds a bit Harry Potter or Terry Pratchett, no? – the organisation will do what no one company can, the Foundation insisted, and “accomplish the level of interoperability required to support the Internet of Everything and address everyday, real-life scenarios”.
No single company? Ironically, perhaps, the technology behind the initiative does come from just one firm: Qualcomm. The ASA’s software framework will be established upon AllJoyn, an object-oriented API for negotiating peer-to-peer connections between devices. Qualcomm has been hawking AllJoyn since 2011.
Qualcomm is now handing AllJoyn over to the ASA, and the open source code will be available to all. The ASA has documentation and API details for a wide variety of platforms, including Android, Arduino, iOS, Mac OS X, Linux, and Windows 7, 8 and RT. The framework has been written in C, C++ and Objective C versions.
AllJoyn operates over Wi-Fi and Ethernet
other ASA members include consumer electronics outfits (Haier, LG, Panasonic and Sharp), networking specialists (Cisco, D-Link, TP-Link, HTC) and a number of start-ups in the IoT/Digital Home markets.
The ASA’s launch comes a week after the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) announced version 4.1 of the wireless connectivity standard, likewise aimed at the emerging IoT world, which, if you believe the forecasts of market watchers like Gartner, will add $1.9 trillion to the global economy by 2020 and see 50 billion devices connected in broadly the same timeframe.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Bluetooth Smart to tap IPv6-powered Internet of Things after 4.1 upgrade
Smartwatches and other wireless gadgetry to benefit too
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/12/05/bluetooth_upgraded_for_ipv6powered_internet_of_things/
The brains behind Bluetooth have published a new version of the wireless peripheral specification which will, they claim, enhance the standard’s support for the very low-power gizmos that make up the Internet of Things.
Bluetooth’s suitability for wearable kit, from smartwatches to health monitors and fitness gauges, will be improved too.
Bluetooth 4.1’s central Internet of Things (IoT) upgrade is the ability to establish dedicated communication channels between devices. With this mechanism in place, a future version of Bluetooth will be able to direct IPv6 traffic, turning Bluetooth into a true internet-compatible network along the lines of Wi-Fi
positions Bluetooth as the ideal way to link up tens of thousands – if not millions – of very low-power devices, such as the nodes of a sensor network.
This feature is part of Bluetooth’s Logical Link Control and Adaptation Protocol (L2CAP), which in Bluetooth 4.1 also gains the ability to transmit data in bulk. The SIG’s use-case example: a wearable monitor that tracks a swimmer’s progress will be able to fling over details of all those laps once it’s back in the changing room and in contact with the owner’s phone.
Speaking of device connections, the SIG promised Bluetooth 4.1 will improve the re-establishment of connections dropped because the communicating devices temporarily move out of range, or one turns off its radio. The reconnection time interval is now flexible.
“The consumer can leave the room and upon returning, two recently used devices reconnect without user intervention,” said the SIG – and about time, too.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Sensors and sensibility: Quirky’s Spotter multi-purpose monitor module
Introduction to the ‘Internet of Things’ for folk scared of soldering irons
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/12/04/review_quirky_spotter/
Tomi Engdahl says:
CIOs Say Cost, Complexity Impede True Mobile Gains in Enterprise
http://www.cio.com/article/744246/CIOs_Say_Cost_Complexity_Impede_True_Mobile_Gains_in_Enterprise
A new survey of 300 CIOs found that while the majority of IT executives see real value in mobilizing existing enterprise apps or rolling out brand new mobile innovations, they also see the costs and complexity of these initiatives as real challenges.
Carlyn Schroder says:
[email protected]
Tomi Engdahl says:
AT&T chief: We can’t keep doing big subsidies on phones
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-57615114-94/at-t-chief-we-cant-keep-doing-big-subsidies-on-phones/
CEO Randall Stephenson says wireless operators can no longer afford to suck up the costs of customers’ devices. The wave of the future? Drive up network use.
AT&T’s top executive says the era of big subsidies for devices is coming to an end, as wireless operators can no longer afford to fund a constant smartphone upgrade cycle.
Speaking at an investor conference in New York City on Tuesday, AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson said that with smartphone penetration at over 75 percent and soon reaching 90 percent, wireless operators need to work harder to get customers to use more of the network rather than simply getting on the network.
“When you’re growing the business initially, you have to do aggressive device subsidies to get people on the network,” he said. “But as you approach 90 percent penetration, you move into maintenance mode. That means more device upgrades. And the model has to change. You can’t afford to subsidize devices like that.”
Last week, AT&T introduced a new pricing plan that offers an incentive to customers who keep their older phones, allowing them to save $15 a month on their service bill.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Viber introduces Viber Out international calling feature, touts cheaper prices than Skype
http://thenextweb.com/mobile/2013/12/10/viber-introduces-viber-international-calling-feature-touts-cheaper-prices-skype/#!pBZgA
Internet telephony company Viber has officially launched its Viber Out calling service which allows its 200 million-plus registered users to make low-cost calls to mobile and landline phones worldwide from within its mobile apps.
The service — which was first opened in the Philippines last month in the aftermath of a devastating typhoon — is available for all users of Android and iOS smartphones and the desktop app. Viber says it will roll out to Windows Phone customers soon.
There are plenty of VoIP calling services out there — Hong Kong-based Maaii being another — but, aside from messaging app features, Viber has a couple of other nice touches.
Tomi Engdahl says:
G.Fast startup readies silicon as standard signed off
Sckipio Tech hits the ground running
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/12/10/gfast_startup_readies_silicon_as_standard_signed_off/
With G.fast getting formal ITU consent as G.9700 and G.9701, the race will be on to ship production hardware to the standard, and that’s helped an Israeli silicon startup raise $US10 million in funding from US and Israeli ventures.
Sckipio Technologies, incorporated in 2012, is pitching modem chipset and software bundles at vendors and service providers now looking at G.Fast deployments.
Between 2012 and now, Weissman said, Sckipio has worked with 80 service providers including France Telecom and BT, and is a member of Europe’s Celtic-Plus broadband consortium. The company has also been active in G.Fast standard development, with Weissman saying Sckipio had contributed “about 20 percent” of the standard.
Weissman said the company expects field trials of standard (rather than pre-standard) G.Fast technologies to be taking place next year using qualified silicon
The field trials should be followed in short order by live deployments between late 2014 and 2015.
First shipments will use a 106 MHz baseband signal, but Weissman pointed out that the standard has room to move to a 200 MHz baseband signal. However, he said, the acclaimed gigabit performance of G.Fast (within the standard’s distance limitations) isn’t dependent on the higher baseband frequency: “I think we can achieve 1 G without having to go to 200 MHz.”
Weismann said gigabit performance should be achievable in most markets at the standardised distance of 250 metres between the node and the end user.
“G.Fast is excellent for MDUs … it’s aligned to that kind of use-case,” Weissman said.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Is Data Complexity Blinding Your IT Decision-Making?
http://www.cio.com/article/744464/Is_Data_Complexity_Blinding_Your_IT_Decision_Making_
The ever-increasing complexity of data about IT environments is making it increasingly difficult for organizations to make effective IT decisions.
Is the complexity of your company’s data making it difficult to make effective IT decisions? If so, you’re not alone.
There are two main drivers of the accelerating challenges around data complexity says BDNA CMO Mahesh Kumar: innovation and the Internet of Things.
Innovation by both an organization and its vendors (i.e., new products) and the introduction of new complex technologies like cloud, mobile and virtualization are add to the volume and complexity of data.
The addition of new connected technologies like wearable technology, vehicles and even buildings that are part of the Internet of Things will exacerbate the problem.
“Enterprises need to take a step back and honestly assess the magnitude of the problems that lie ahead,”
“Several years ago, outsourcing was going to reduce all the money we spend in IT,” Kumar says. “It really didn’t happen. Then virtualization was going to be the panacea. Cloud computing is it now. The thing that everyone is overlooking is that each of these endeavors is complicating the data behind it all. A lot of the efficiency you gained in virtualization is lost in trying to manage the data or the environment itself. You’re simplifying one aspect but complicating another. We believe it’s the data that’s getting so complicated right now that the benefits of innovation are getting delivered in a very localized fashion.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
No, Verizon Still Won’t Compete With Google Fiber
http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2013/12/verizon_fios/
Last week, Verizon offered a promotional deal on FiOS, its high-speed fiber internet service. Ordinarily the offer — $80 for 300 Mbs internet when bundled with phone and television — wouldn’t be noteworthy. But FiOS development has long been stalled, and the promotion gave some hope that the company would resurrect the project and roll it out to new cities to compete with Google’s ultra-high-speed internet service.
But alas, it was not meant to be. Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam told investors at a conference on Monday that the company still has no plans to expand the service into new cities, Fierce Telecom reports.
Verizon began offering FiOS in some cities in 2005, but deployments stalled after only a few years. Last year, the company told investors that it had no plans to expand the service to new cities.
“I think ex-Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg was very bullish on fiber,” telecom industry watcher Karl Bode told us earlier this year. “But after retirement, he was replaced by executives who wanted to focus more heavily on wireless, given the lower cost of deployment and the absolute killing that can be made charging users a significant amount per gigabyte.”
But Google Fiber, which offers speeds more than 3 times that of FiOS, has pressured some companies such as Century Link as well as mom and pop providers like Wicked Broadband to start offering gigabit connections. Google, meanwhile, is slowly moving into new markets. But don’t expect nationwide roll out to be quick.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Why Is Google Fiber the Country’s Only Super-Speed Internet?
http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2013/01/google-fiber-shaming-exercise/
Google Fiber was supposed to be a shaming exercise. But any shame felt by the country’s big-name ISPs has yet to produce the sort of ultra-high-speed internet services we’ve all been hoping for.
In 2010, Google announced that it would bring a 1,000 megabit (1 gigabit) per second fiber internet service to one lucky American city. That’s one gigabit per second streaming across the wire — or about 10 times the speed you’re used to and more than three times the speed you’d get from Verizon’s existing 300 megabit per second fiber optic service, FiOS.
The search giant insisted it had no intention of becoming an internet service provider. It just wanted to encourage existing ISPs, including Verizon, to run higher speed lines across the country. But although Google Fiber has now arrived in Kansas City, Kansas, the big name ISPs aren’t exactly following suit.
Verizon has stalled the expansion of FiOS indefinitely, and other companies have been slow to invest in ultrafast broadband. Time Warner Cable is rolling out fiber to office building in New York City, and Comcast’s Xfinity Platinum service offers a 305 megabit cable service in some locations for $299.95, but that’s the extent of it.
The good news is that local communities are now trying to trying to find other ways to bring higher speed internet to their citizens at affordable rates. Chicago and Seattle, for example, have both announced partnerships with a new broadband provider called Gigabit Squared to bring fiber internet connections to residents.
Why are things moving so slowly? With communities eager for fiber internet, why aren’t the established broadband companies doing more to bring these services to more cities? The answer is, yes, money.
“Competitors have been overbuilding, investors are wondering where the returns are,” says Mark Ansboury, president and co-founder of GigaBit Squared. “What you’re seeing is an entrenchment, companies leveraging what they already have in play.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
@450 broadband goes closed in Finland – time to switch to two days
Datame bankruptcy in November was known for chopping different operators of mobile subscriptions , and now ranks can be added to the wireless @ 450 broadband service.
@ 450 network service provider in the operating Sonera announced late in the afternoon to have learned broadband services to end 12.12 – that is, on Thursday , that is, for customers unfairly notice.
- Sonera will immediately contact all customers and offers an alternative solution @ 450 service replacement. Sonera customers regrets Datame caused by the bankruptcy of the @ 450 network broadband service to a sudden end, and a short transitional period for the introduction of a new service , the company said in a statement.
Sonera has over thousand @450 customers.
In @450 network has been a few other service providers in addition to Sonera.
Source: http://www.itviikko.fi/uutiset/2013/12/10/@450-laajakaista-menee-kiinni–aikaa-vaihtaa-kaksi-paivaa/201317112/7?rss=8
Tomi Engdahl says:
Finland became an Android-March – “will no longer be dragged back home”
Android has become one of Finland’s most popular smartphone platform. Case survives Market research firm Vision new report.
In Finland, Android has reached 39 per cent stake in the new smartphone market. Finland, however, continue to maintain the special status to be strong Lumia country, as the Windows Phone market share is still 36 per cent.
Android’s position in the world is even stronger, with a market share of more than 80 per cent.
“Maybe the Nokia-Microsoft stores to start to work on the Finnish market of the global trend in the direction of the Android platform of Samsung’s strong brand management is completely dominant from the beginning. It is no longer pulled back home, “Market Vision a leading analyst Toni Nygrén says the release.
On Windows Phone Company position is stronger. It has taken corporate leadership in smart phones, nearly 60 percent market share.
Apple’s iOS and Android share the corporate market, the rest of the relatively equally.
Telecommunications markets are falling
The Finnish telecommunications market will continue to decline overall, a gentle positive period. This year’s total is projected to show a decline of 3.4 per cent, as the mobile services development has been steeper than expected.
Size of the market will end up at the end of the current year forecast by about four billion. Over the 2014-2016 period the market is forecast to fall less sharply.
Despite the overall decline in the market over the next three years of the mobile services market, however, are emerging from the mobile broadband going strong. Fixed-line services continue to fall, even though the entertainment services tend to smooth out the current rate of decline.
Smart phones are expected to be in the market for about 60 percent of the entire mobile phone portfolio.
The tablet market growth continues to be strong
Source: http://www.tietoviikko.fi/kaikki_uutiset/suomesta+tuli+androidmaa++quotenaa+ei+vedeta+kotiinpainquot/a953246
Tomi Engdahl says:
AT&T accused of violating privacy law with sale of phone records to CIA
Consumer advocates want FCC to declare sale of phone records illegal.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/12/att-accused-of-violating-privacy-law-with-sale-of-phone-records-to-cia/
Consumer advocates have asked the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to declare that AT&T violated a privacy rule in the Communications Act by selling phone records to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
A report last month said that “AT&T has turned over international calling records to the CIA. The telecom charges the CIA more than $10 million per year in exchange for access to metadata about calls by suspected terrorists overseas.”