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Friday, August 24, 2012

The Hare and the Tortoise: the race for 4G/LTE in the UK

Robin Kent writes:

With this week’s announcement that Everything Everywhere has been given the green light to launch the UK’s first 4G service, competing operators such as Vodafone and O2 are getting hot under the collar. With every day that goes by, these operators lose vital competitiveness as the market creeps away them towards Orange and T-Mobile. This is a real life ‘hare and tortoise’ scenario.

However, rival operators should take solace from the fact that Everything Everywhere will not be able to launch 4G on handsets, as the handsets are not ready yet. This limits the service it can provide its users. That is, unless the iPhone 5 is 4G compatible upon its release, a day after Everything Everywhere can launch the first 4G service in the UK. Nevertheless, the operator will probably only be able to provide 4G in the form of a dongle until the rest of the industry catches up with the latest developments. First when the gun goes off, but by no means the overall winner.

The real opportunity for LTE is that together with new tools such as deep packet inspection (DPI), operators will be able to move away from the ‘all you can eat’ data plans towards more flexible services and sophisticated pricing plans which will benefit the operator and the user.

Everything Everywhere is committed now and under pressure to deliver. The public may be expecting it to be the first to feed their appetite for 4G handsets so will they be happy with data dongles instead?  But for the remaining operators the delayed 4G auction gives time to plan and strategise. Slow and steady may just win the race.

Robin Kent is Director of European Operations at Adax Europe. Adax has over 25 years’ experience in distributed signalling solutions, offering products that are designed to meet today’s challenges of I/O scalability, cost effectiveness and high availability. Its customers include some of the world’s premier telecom suppliers, value added service providers and system integrators.

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Opinion Articles

‘The Eyes Have It’ at Mobile World Congress

James Rosewell writes:

DoCoMo are one of many network operators and handset manufacturers demonstrating innovative new products as Mobile World Congress. Our eye was caught by the employee demonstrating “Eye Controlled Earphones”. It’s a good job the ladies from the CBOSS stand weren’t walking past at the time.

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'Mobile Money Monday' at Mobile World Congress

James Rosewell writes:

Monday’s Mobile World Congress conference agenda dedicated one of 4 streams to Mobile Money - Transfers, Transactions and Technology allowing all stakeholders to share experiences and debate the future of Mobile and Money.

Two types of service dominated presentations and panel discussions; Near Field Communication (NFC) technology enabling payment at traditional Point of Sale (PoS), and the Mobile Wallet replacing plastic or cash.

Author: The Fonecast
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‘Innovation Corner’ at Mobile World Congress

James Rosewell writes:

Here’s my pick of the 3 most innovative companies I’ve uncovered at the 2010 Mobile World Congress.

Cootek.com win the prize for simplest innovation... an accurate touch screen keyboard. They’re a few months away from being ready to release the software to handset manufacturers, but the demo handsets worked very well. The keyboard assumes the user is not going to press the intended key, but in fact might miss and press another key in the same area. Based on this knowledge and an extensive dictionary of words and language context, it’s able to determine the intended word with surprising accuracy. I sincerely hope their technology will be made available for the Nexus One in the not too distant future.

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Google “Mobile First” from Eric Schmidt’s Key Note at Mobile World Congress

James Rosewell writes:

Google CEO, Eric Schmidt, presented a compelling vision of a mobile centric future. The phone has become the “high value end point” for Google services enabled by a combination of increasing handset power, mobile data networks and cloud computing. By far the scarcest resource is the bandwidth available through the mobile data networks. Google appear committed to work with Mobile Network Operators (MNO) to maximise bandwidth usage, although several audience questions suggested scepticism from the main stream mobile industry. Eric expressed a need to maintain a harmonious relationship with MNOs stating Google could not operate its service on mobile devices without their co-operation.

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The great Windows Mobile 7 conspiracy theory

Mark Bridge writes:

I like a good conspiracy theory. A good one, mind you. None of this “Funny thing happened on the way to Mars” nonsense. Oh no, not me. And, despite occasionally mirroring Jerry Fletcher by balancing a bottle on the door handle, I’ve never been inclined to publish such a theory. Until now.

You see, it’s Mobile World Congress in a fortnight’s time. Which is when the great and the good of the mobile industry – along with their mates and hangers-on – head for Barcelona. Microsoft will be there. They’re holding a press briefing on Monday afternoon. And there’s a lot of talk about Windows Mobile 7 being (unofficially) on the agenda. But where’s the evidence?

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