Fixing problems plaguing media-intensive, web-browsing mobile handsets

There are about 4 billion mobile devices in the world today, said Len Lauer, of which about 830 million are 3G today, but the vast majority of the remainder will be migrating to 3G in the next five to seven years. The COO of Qualcomm was speaking with Stacey Higgenbotham a staff writer with GigaOM during the Mobilize 09 conference held in San Francisco on Thursday September 10th defending the position that there’s plenty of life left in 3G now that 4G has begun to appear in the market. I was a fly on the wall listening to their conversation over the Internet thanks to LiveStream.com.

As with previous wireless technology transitions, 4G handsets will be a multimode devices switching from 4G to 3G when outside a 4G service area, which for the near future will be limited to dense metropolitan areas such as LA, New York, London, Paris, Mumbai… Lauer referred to the CTO of Verizon Wireless, Tony Malone, speculating that 3G networks would be carrying voice for the next decade. The major difference between wireless generations is in the bandwidth provided users: from 56 kbit/s up to 114 kbit/s for the previous generation 2G networks, up to 348 kbit/s to 7 Mbit/s for 3G depending on whether the handset was mobile or stationary, respectively. Next generation 4G will see bandwidths of 100 Mbit/s for mobile operation and 1 Gbit/s for stationary. These 4G data rates will certainly be required if social networking users begin capturing and sharing HD video and still images on their favorite on-line community.

However, bandwidth expansion is not a well-ordered process, more a series of fits and starts as the troubles plaguing AT&T in the wake of the new iPhone 3GS launch attests: dropped calls, extremely slow connections and a generally unpleasant experience. This contradicts the incredible, amazing, awesome… experience touted at the Apple rollout. Today the problem exists in the backhaul, the link between the cell tower and the wireless carrier’s network core, which routes the call to its final destination. AT&T needs to invest in boosting its backhaul capacity and it’s investing elsewhere—increasing the number of cell sites, etc.—to the chagrin of Apple.

And you can kind of understand AT&T’s behavior. The Smart Phone represents only 15 percent of the total market and contrary to the popular notion, a good many iPhones are being brought by the well-heeled consumer that can afford the acquisition cost as well as the $100/month subscription. According to the Wireless Association CTIA, there were 270 million wireless subscribers in the U.S. at the end of last year and 85 percent of this total, 229 million subscribers, are also demanding service providers’ attention.

What’s the problem with wireless carrier backhaul? As bandwidth speeds on cellular networks increase and packet-based mobile services attract more users, traffic growth is making traditional backhaul network designs unmanageable. To accommodate 3G build-outs, service providers are reengineering the mobile backhaul infrastructure using Carrier Ethernet technologies. The problem with Ethernet has been that packet delivery was non-deterministic. If the network got overloaded packets could be dropped, something voice packet cannot tolerate.

The problem is now being addressed with Ethernet IEEE 1588 Precision Time Protocol (PTP) and Synchronous Ethernet ITU G.8261, two standards that make Ethernet packet delivery more deterministic. Used together, the two achieve a high level of frequency synchronization a common defined time. Realistic studies in large-scale deployment scenarios indicate an accuracy of 50 ns—more than sufficient to ensure voice packets are delivered as effectively as the existing circuit switch delivery used today.

Still the technology may be available, but the will to implement lies with the service provider. Their concern as Lauer points out is getting a sufficient return to justify the investment. Lauer observes that for the service providers to reach a larger subscriber base, they have to reduce monthly access costs, while making larger infrastructure investments. It’ll be interesting to see how they solve the problem.

Augmented Reality, Do I Want to Join in?

I’ve been interested in the next big enablers of the mobile Internet and I keep reading that they are likely to be LTE—the 4G wireless replacement for 3G and location technologies—augmented reality (much more intriguing). LTE is simply next generation technology replacing the previous and we can take that as a given. Everything will run faster; you’ll be able to move large files around quicker, etc.

Augmented reality, on the other hand, suggests something unique. According to Wikipedia, AR is a “real direct or indirect view of a physical real-world environment whose elements are merged with, or augmented by, virtual computer-generated imagery.” Your phone knows where you are using its on-board GPS and by accessing Google maps, it can determine what’s around you and can—with a touch-enabled screen—tell you about what’s around you.

I connected the term, which I heard today, with the Apple iPhone 3GS ad "Travel" in which the voice over asked if you want your own personal tour of Paris and declares “there’s an app for that” at which time the iPhone articulates “you’re standing at the center of Paris…” with a picture on the iPhone of the front of Notre Dame and the legend below “Point Zero & Notre Dame.” The iPhone app has a series of sites installed which pops up when the phone comes within range of the landmark (using its onboard GPS location finder) and voila!

I get the impression that the ultimate realization of AR will be a phone that is tied into a cloud-resident data base of all landmarks—not a preselected few a free app on the iPhone can store away. With the right app on your portable device, you will be able to ask the phone about anything you’re in the vicinity of—natural or man made—and it will give you all the relevant facts.

The reason AR will be successful is because of the enormous commercial potential the technology affords. The system that knows the exact location of Notre Dame in Paris will also know the location of nearby coffee shops, restaurants, and every other commercial establishment. Furthermore, the software that can tell you about the world around you is also cleverly evaluating you to determine whether to present you an offer for 10 percent off on a Latte from a nearby merchant or a special deal on a French author the software has determined you might like.

The great problem of becoming an integral part of an AR is that you’re being marketed to by the behavior you exhibit in the augmented reality. And the phone is the device that’s enabling it to happen. The device has not become big brother yet. All it currently has is GPS—the network knows where you are at all times (ironically, the average honest citizen is better monitored than nearly every parolee from a correctional institution), a compass—so the network knows which way you’re going, and an accelerometer which could detect if you’re moving or stationary. In the future, the plan is to attach biometric monitors—great for detecting medical emergencies, but wonderful for marketing to you if your blood sugar is low and you need a sugar fix—the patisserie is offering croissants at 10 percent discount with coffee purchase.

I begin to feel as if I’m part of a closed loop feedback system in which I respond to stimuli that are then readjusted to achieve some kind of behavior in me. The Stimuli are marketing incentives and the response from me is the purchase of a good. Great, I’ve become an element in a machine works that’s designed to endlessly cycle virtual coinage.