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WAP Insight Vol: 4 Issue 132 September 23rd 2002NEC says 3G should emulate i-modeA White Paper entitled '3G the way they want it' aims to outline how 3G solutions that will win customer share. With infrastructure development well underway, NEC is shifting attention towards developing the complex service models that will be needed to make 3G technology both acceptable and attractive to subscribers – and ultimately generate revenue for operators and their business partners. The White Paper calls for a four-sided partnership to develop the new 3G services between operators, handset manufacturers, infrastructure specialists and content providers, borrowing from NTT DoCoMo's i-mode model. The paper covers issues such as making volume-heavy video content easily downloadable; anytime, anywhere data access and exchange; and the security concerns that might shake consumer confidence in using 3G devices as transaction tools. “The first 3G networks have been built, the first calls made and the first subscribers billed. 3G deployment is no longer an outlandish fantasy spun by a handful of visionaries, but will soon be a business reality,” claims Kevin Buckley, head of operations with NEC's 3G Mobile Systems. “Only by beginning the process of developing appropriate partnerships and business models, and testing new technologies now, will operators be able to win the all-important early customer share that will ultimately generate return on the investments already made in 3G.” UK testbed for Hutchison's location servicesThe first serious attempt to provide location based applications to mobile phone users in the UK has just been announced by Hutchison 3G which is expected to launch its commercial 3G network, 3, in October. The company has put together a complex deal with multiple suppliers in order to ensure it can offer a wide variety of applications - not just a navigation service for car drivers, for example. Significantly the user's location will be provided by an assisted GPS system rather than by the network's base stations. This means that Hutchison will have to announce which of its handset providers - Motorola, NEC/Siemens, or Sharp - is going to add a GPS capability into its 3G smartphones or terminals. The UK has been chosen by Hutchison as the first country to roll out this service for several reasons. One advantage is that digital maps - courtesy of Britain's Ordnance Survey and traffic information (courtesy of Tele Atlas) are already available. Having a map isn't the complete answer so Hutchison has called on the service of Belgium Java specialists, Ionic, to create an application which will display maps on the small screens possessed by PDAs and smartphone. The next piece of the puzzle is finding a way from point A to point B, so the system will take advantage of Telcontar's 'Drill Down' routing engine. Then you've got to have some way to translate the information from the satellite based GPS system into an X,Y co-ordinate which your system can understand and this technology is provided by Telecommunication System's Xypoint servers. So you know where you are and how to get from A to B, what next? This is when the aptly named Whereonearth comes in. According to the company's COO, Dev Patel, his company supplies the 'intelligence' for the location based system. For example, if you are driving and want to know where the nearest restaurant is, the system could look for a location as far away as 10 miles but if you are walking then it would suggest locations in nearest half mile. Dev Patel wouldn't be drawn on exactly what 'exciting' new location services 3 will be offering but was pretty convinced that 3's subscribers would be prepared to pay for them!Press releases ... Hutchison location Whereonearth Nokia reaches new level of hype with MMS bookIn just the kind of spin Dr Spinola would be proud of,
Nokia has helped to create a book about multimedia messaging (MMS) called 'see
what I'm talking about'. The book came to fruition through the simple expedient
of Nokia loaning four of its 7650 cameraphones to its ad agency in London -
Contra. The cameraphones were then handed over to four students - two girls and
two boys - attending the St Martins College of Art and Design in London.
Naturally the students took wacky pictures of each other for four weeks and the
results have been loaded into a book which Contra is, of course, more than happy
to publish. But hang on a minute, surely all they did was take pictures with a
phone rather than a traditional camera? Not according to art student Jo Jackson,
"We've successfully documented the birth of a new mode of expression,"
she claims. And fellow student Harriet Banks says, "It puts the human back
in e-form communications." Strange, we thought MMS was just a means to add
photos to text messaging. Instant messaging stalls in EuropeIt’s a re-run of the SMS wars between rival mobile telephone network operators. It took operators around five years to realise that blocking the delivery of SMS (text) messages between networks operating in the SAME country held back what has now become a billion dollar market. Determined to retain control over revenues, the mobile Telcos are presently blocking the spread of Instant Messaging onto mobile handsets. So we now have a ridiculous situation whereby a European with a fixed Internet connection and an Instant Messaging (IM) ID can communicate with his or her buddies on their mobile phones only if they happen to live in the USA and subscribe to the Verizon network. That’s not much use to Europeans since Verizon uses cdmaOne technology. It’s not as though the IM client software isn’t available because there are versions available for Symbian, Java, Pocket PC and Palm which could be potentially downloaded to smartphones or wireless enabled PDAs. Why are IM systems blocked? The reason is that mobile network operators want to charge each other for delivering text messages to their subscribers and IM systems don’t belong to that close coterie of operators. So the mobile operators are contemplating adding IM to their WAP portals. That’ll be just like the old email wars when subscribers to Compuserve couldn’t message MCI Mail users. The reality appears to be that IM represents a threat to MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service) on which the handset vendors appear to have bet their socks. If free IM software can do everything MMS can, they why pay extra for a handset? Fight over Mobilcom's survivalSwedish infrastructure supplier, Ericsson, recently warned that it felt a single country market wouldn't be capable of supporting more than three separate 3G network operators. A rule of thumb would be that figure is made up from two existing 2G network operators and one newcomer. Unfortunately Germany awarded no less than six 3G licences. One of these licensees, part owned by Spain's Telefonica and Finland's Sonera, has decided to put its 3G network on ice. So it would seem logical to let another German 3G new entrant, Mobilcom, quietly fade away. That's certainly what France Telecom appears to think. But the French haven't reckoned on Germany's impending national elections and the possibility that some 5,500 jobs might disappear. Hence a last minute deal has been struck by Mobilcom with two German banks to keep it temporarily safe from insolvency. The EU is now looking into the deal to check for illegal subsidies. There must be some method in this madness, one would assume. Even 3, the UK network operated by Hutchison 3G, has yet to launch and one would assume that without the promised financial backing from France Telecom, Mobilcom is still a long way from a 3G launch. It's a particularly interesting fight since France Telecom owns the Orange mobile network. So Germany could end up forcing France to build one of its 3G networks which could deprive Britain's Orange of much needed funds to roll out its own 3G network.SnippetsThe United Nations' telecommunications agency, the ITU has, in a report published this week, warned mobile operators that the commercial rewards for 3G and the mobile Internet may take more than a decade to come through. The report states that as with many technological developments, operators should not expect to see the mobile internet bear commercial fruit for 10 or 15 years. www.itu.org ...Sentiments behind recent comments made by Ericsson’s CEO Kurt Hellstroem are becoming clearer. Sony has just launched two new digital cameras – the CyberShot U range. They’d be ideal tools for sending images to a mobile phone. But do these cameras feature an infra-red port or Bluetooth interface? No. So how could you transfer images from a Sony Cybershot to a Sony Ericsson phone. By manually swapping over memory sticks. How quaint. www.sony.com/di ... Unclear revenue streams and bad interoperability dictate caution in the MMS market, argues Marc Vanlerberghe, CEO of Quios, and recent advertising campaigns to sell MMS, like one featuring Steffi Graaf, may be doing more harm than good. He cautions those involved in the MMS industry that damage is being done to the fledgling market through over-selling of services not yet fully ready for market and a lack of understanding of where the true consumer-market for MMS lies. www.quios.com Press release ...Steffi Graaf wasting her time? In Site of the Week (By Geoff Dennis)This week... Phone greetingsRemember the early days of answerphones, when everyone used to have a pre-recorded joke greeting from a celebrity? Well those days are back except that the idea has migrated to the mobile. Celebrity voicemail greetings can be set up on any UK network. A new twist has been added, allowing you to have a spoof call sent to a mate, relating maybe to an occasion in their life such as a birthday or arrival of a newborn. Starsonyourphone offer such a service and list the choices on their WAP site. You then call them to send the message on your behalf. There's so many 'B' list celebs around these days we're surprised no-one's offering the real thing. |
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