mobile broadband

Enterprise mobility defined by the guy who does it for the (real) USS Enterprise

The clearest explanation of what enterprise mobility means did not come from the line-up of B-list industry speakers who have graced the MobileCon stage this week, but from an Air Force general.

Major General Robert Wheeler is the deputy CIO for C4 and information infrastructure capabilities at the U.S. Department of Defense (c4 stands for command, control, communications and computers), and he was the final speaker at this morning’s keynote session.

Instead of a marketing department-written and legal staff-vetted multimedia presentation, Wheeler treated us to a clear and quick military-style briefing on how the DOD views mobile communications and how they intend to work with the industry.… More

The 21st Century: if you don't get it, it's not for you

9 October 2012 by Steve Blum
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“We’re living life in an ambient data stream,” said Bridget van Kralingen at this morning’s MobileCon keynote session. The 21st Century will be about “creating value from abundant information.”

Van Kralingen is a senior vice president with IBM Global Business Services. Her talk was conceptual and enterprise focused, and provided the perfect lead in to Scott Griffith, the CEO of ZipCar.

For the past nine years, he’s been living that life. ZipCar allows members in certain cities and 300 college campuses – 730,000 members as of last year – to jump into cars, drive for an hour or two, then park and walk away.… More

Mobile broadband claims don't match truth in California

14 August 2012 by Steve Blum
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The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) has finished up its first round of mobile broadband field testing, and the results do not support the marketing claims of the carriers.

Sprint doesn’t hit the CPUC’s 6 Mbps download/1.5 Mbps upload benchmark for adequate service anywhere in California. Verizon does the best at 21% of the state. T-Mobile and AT&T manage 10% and 7% respectively. These real world results are dramatically different from what mobile carriers claim to provide.

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3G networks reach deep into Australia and New Zealand

Travelling through New Zealand and Australia with a smart phone or iPad is painless and relatively inexpensive for a traveller. Three national mobile networks – Telstra, Optus and Vodafone – cover Australia. Optus also markets service under the Virgin Mobile brand. In New Zealand, it’s Telecom NZ and Vodafone, with newcomer 2degrees building out its network.

My assessment of actual coverage is subjective. I used Vodafone in both countries, and Telstra in Australia. Vodafone NZ and Telstra do a very good job of covering the areas I visited: long swathes of both North and South Islands in New Zealand, and Melbourne, Adelaide and the countryside in between in Australia.… More

Thinking forward from CES 2012

If CES 2012 produced one quote that might be remembered in years to come, it was from Ericsson CEO Hans Vestberg: “Anything that benefits from being connected will be connected in the future.” It says two very important things about the consumer electronics industry.

First, going forward, mobile telecommunications manufacturers and core technology companies will be the primary innovators. Computer companies provided much of the innovation for the industry in the past ten years, but they are all but gone from CES.

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Mobile telecoms companies lead consumer electronics innovation

Consumers expect the devices they buy to be connected to their content collections, personal data, interpersonal communications and the Internet and other external data sources. That’s why innovation at CES is coming from companies that wouldn’t even have been considered part of the industry a few years ago.

Since Apple launched the iPhone and followed it up with the iPad, mobile telecommunications manufacturers and core technology providers have been driving profound changes in the consumer electronics business.… More

Embedded impulses

12 October 2011 by Steve Blum
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The machine-to-machine sector is getting a lot of attention this week at the CTIA Enterprise and Applications conference in San Diego. The growth of M2M figured into CEO keynote speeches and panel discussions. AT&T’s Ralph de la Vega called connected devices “the next big thing for mobility.”

The growth is driven in part by the decisions taken by service providers to back out of the hardware and hosting ends of the M2M business, and just provide connectivity.… More

Public perception of broadband rights and dangers challenges regulators, industry

11 October 2011 by Steve Blum
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“Broadband has become to the 21st Century what electricity was the to last century,” said Amy Levine, a special counsel at the FCC and the legal advisor to the chairman, Jules Genachowski. That expectation of universal access was one of the major telecommunications policy drivers identified at the CTIA Enterprise & Applications show today in San Diego.

Levine joined with other regulators and industry representatives for a wide ranging discussion of what each expects from the other.… More

The mobile phone is the set top box

Long-odds prediction for the 2011 Consumer Electronics Show: the mobile phone will be the set top box. Expect a prototype that tethers a large screen display to a media-rich smart phone. You walk in the room and your stuff appears on the screen. You will only have one channel and it will be whatever you want to watch, where ever you happen to be.

If someone doesn’t roll it out here in Las Vegas this week, you’ll see it shortly from Apple (which is too hip to hang at CES these days) or at a mobile phone event in someplace like Barcelona or Orlando or San Diego, at the latest.… More

Computing power can now go wherever people want it

Light Blue Optics debuted its Light Touch technology here at the Consumer Electronics Show, and it is what computers, mobile and fixed, will be ten years from now. As CEO Chris Harris put it, “it transforms any flat surface into a touchscreen.” The concept is disruptively simple. What it really does is unleash computing power from physical, mechanical devices.

Light Touch in an office
 Any table becomes a team work spaceKeyboards, mice and monitors are easily broken and awkward to arrange anywhere except a desk.… More