Mobile Letter

Open Terra Team Connect

Open Terra’s mSolve on-demand mobile framework is a set of modules that interface with a company’s existing application server platform to seamlessly extend enterprise applications to mobile devices.

Using mSolve, Open Terra has unveiled today the release of TeamConnect™, a business application for mobile collaboration.  TeamConnect is geared to eliminate the need for company office boards and “While You Were Out…” sticky notes that pile up on employees’ desks while away from the office.   Using their mobile devices, employees will have instant access to the status, whereabouts, and availability of their co-workers – known as presence technology – as well as the ability to send each other alerts utilizing the highest level of security and AES encryption, all within a graphically rich and dramatically simple user interface.  While in the field, employees can update their status and view their teammate’s availability anytime and anywhere.  Also included with the TeamConnect service is a Web interface that provides a dashboard, especially crucial for receptionists, dispatchers, and managers, whom will have immediate visibility into their co-workers’ whereabouts and their availability, and the ability to push “While You Were Out” messages and critical alerts, wherever their co-workers may be. 

Insight: Open Terra is another example of a company that has figured out how to develop applications that can help an organization solve a nagging problem in mobility.  Enterprises don’t typically buy platforms with the intent to build their own applications.  Rather, they want to find solutions to a given problem that can be easily adapted to their own operating environment.  TeamConnect is such an application.  The company says it is developing a series of applications to solve specific mobility problems in the enterprise.

Motorola and Oakley Introduce First Bluetooth Sunglasses

Cutting-Edge RAZRWire Line Offers Consumers On-The-Go Connections
Motorola, Inc. and Oakley, Inc. today unveiled a new line of premium Bluetooth(R) wireless technology eyewear designed to keep consumers comfortable and connected. Named RAZRWire, the invention frees the wearer from cumbersome wires and allows active users to quickly answer or place calls with the touch of a button. RAZRWire represents the fusion of world-class Oakley optics with Motorola's industry-leading Bluetooth technology. [Thanks to Michael Noonan].

Insight: Somehow, you just knew this was going to be done by someone.  But, we’ll look back at this in 4-5 years and wonder why the device was so large.  Eventually, we’ll see a Bluetooth headset incorporated into the rim of the glasses.

FCC Spectrum Auction Falls Short

The US government raised $2.25 billion in an auction of wireless airwaves that ended on Tuesday. The process, which began January 26, was expected to draw between $3 billion and $3.5 billion in total bids. The FCC auctioned a total of 242 licenses in the 1.9 GHz spectrum that were returned by previous winners. The Los Angeles market received the highest bid, $374.5 million, offered by a partner of Metro PCS Communications, Royal Street Communications. That company was the single biggest bidder, offering $387.4 million for six licenses.

Verizon Wireless, the second-largest US wireless carrier and a joint venture of Verizon Communications and Vodafone Group, directly won 26 licenses with bids totaling $364.9 million. Another entity with ties to Verizon, Vista PCS, won another 37 licenses by bidding $332.4 million. A company with ties to Deutsche Telekom's T-Mobile USA unit, Cook Inlet, won 36 licenses with $255.5 million in bids.

Insight: Why is the government being anti-market development in wireless?  While they certainly have the right to tax the airwaves, the FCC should be auctioning off the operational tax rate rather than requiring winners to pay up front.  Why? Because the upfront tax takes capital from the winner that would be put into building out the market.  Then, a tax would be placed on the use of the airwaves with the government getting paid after the infrastructure is built.  The government should play along side private industry and incent the private sector to use their capital to build out the network and infrastructure and not displace the use of capital by putting it into their own coffers. 

SiRF New Single Chip GPS Solution

SiRF Technology, a leading supplier of GPS-enabled location technology, today unveiled a new family of highly integrated, low-power GPS products - the GSC3f and the GSC3 - based on the company's SiRFstarIII architecture unveiled last year.  The SiRF GSC3f for the first time combines a complete A-GPS digital baseband processor, RF front end and 4 megabits of flash memory in a single 7 mm x 10 mm package, providing makers of cell phones, PDAs, digital cameras and other portable and wireless devices with a drop-in A-GPS solution they can use to deliver real-time location and navigation capabilities in a simpler, smaller design with extended battery life.

Able to track more than 20 satellites, the SiRFstarIII architecture achieves a remarkable TTFF of one second for aided starts in outdoor GSM environments and acquires signals down to -159 dBm, making real-time navigation practical in challenging environments such as urban canyons and dense foliage. Unlike the lengthy sequential search process of traditional GPS architectures, the SiRFstarIII architecture, with the equivalent of more than 200,000 correlators, enables fast and deep GPS signal search capabilities, resulting in significant improvement over today's architectures that contain a few hundred to a few thousand correlators.

Insight: We also spent time looking at the entire opportunity in the cell phone arena.  So far, only Nextel has incorporated GPS into their phones and while the carriers have a Federal mandate called e911 that must be met within the next year, most vendors have decided to not to incorporate GPS in the handset because of added cost but, rather, adopt a network centric solution for positioning which isn’t as accurate but meets the mandate requirements.  Thus in order to get a good GPS solution, you need to buy a GPS module that uses Bluetooth to communicate to the cell phone (or notebook PC).  Sprint has announced its intention to acquire Nextel and, therefore, the location determination solution is up for grabs.  I expect that GPS chipsets will dominate in the SmartPhone arena as the cost structure will allow for high end units to incorporate GPS.  And, as location determination becomes pervasive in wireless handsets, then location based services (LBS) will begin to explode into the market.

Briefing with Symantec re: AntiVirus Handset Service

Wireless networks and mobile devices are the two technologies that facilitate increasingly mobile workforces. New capabilities such as expanded memory, increased battery life, stronger computing power with access to wireless connections, together with enterprise application support, are bringing down initial barriers to adoption. Past the initial adoption phases, wireless and mobile devices will give way to more mobile, more connected and more computerized workforces.

Open operating systems are driving new applications and revenues for carriers.  Mobile virus/trojans on Windows CE, Palm OS and Symbian OS have emerged. Inadequate security will be an issue for mobile enterprise and consumer adoption.  Enterprise/Carrier needs to extend security policy to other mobile end-points.

Symantec Antivirus for Handhelds 3.0 provides secure mobile computing through comprehensive, reliable protection against malicious code for Palm OS, Window Mobile Pocket PC and Symbian OS mobile devices.

Symantec antivirus technologies protect device-resident data and prevent malicious code from entering the wireless network. It protects against malicious code downloaded from the Web or email via GPRS, Wi-Fi, via Bluetooth or infrared connections and offers on-device alerting function, enabling users to respond to potential threats. It also provides automatic and up-to-date virus definitions via Wireless LiveUpdate and is optimized to preserve mobile devices and network performance.  Symantec Client Security 3.0 also provides a firewall and over the air management of the device.

Insight: It’s clear that as SmartPhones and other wireless devices incorporate open operating systems, significant internal memory and storage that viruses and other intrusions will happen.  It’s like spy vs. spy.  The good news is the white hat folks (Symantec) are addressing the security and antivirus requirements for wireless handheld devices with both consumer and enterprise solutions. 

“Insights into Mobile Spam” Report Published

The study entitled “Insights into Mobile Spam, World’s First Collaborative Empirical Study” was released today by the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland, and Intrado subsidiary bmd wireless. Results show that spam - a well known problem from the Internet and e-mail world - will increasingly infect the mobile world. The study indicates that more than 8 in 10 mobile phone users surveyed have received unsolicited messages and are more likely to change their operator than their mobile number to fight the problem. With complaints about mobile phone spam on the rise, both consumers and businesses see wireless operator self-regulation as the most important action against unsolicited mobile messages or spam.

A total of 1,659 completed consumer surveys and 154 surveys from mobile service company professionals. Conducted in November and December 2004, the study includes results from Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Canada, the United States, Singapore, China and Saudi Arabia.

Insight: And you thought that the cell phone was immune to virus attacks?  Think again.  This reports shows that with the cell phone becoming a powerful computing platform which makes it a target for those who build viruses.  This reminds me of the “Spy. vs. Spy” cartoon in Mad Magazine: the virus producers (black) are trying to outdo the Spy catchers (white).  What’s being done about it?  See the write up of the next briefing with Symantec regarding (the white hat guys) on what they are doing to stop viruses and other intrusions by the bad guys.

Smart2Go by Gate5 Provides Navigation in a Cell Phone

Gate5 has developed a low-cost GPS-drive personal navigator software that runs on SmartPhones and PDAs such as the Treo 650, Microsoft Smartphone and Nokia 6600 and HP’s iPAQ line of PDAs.  GPS location is provided via their partner, Socket via their Bluetooth GPS receiver.  Maps and software are stored locally on the flash storate card in the wireless device.  System provides directions and map similar to what’s provided in vehicles and self-contained portable systems.  It also provides “points of interest” plus hotel and restaurant review for over 250 city guides via partnership with Wcities.

Insight: While in-dash systems provide a larger display for GPS-based navigation, such a system can’t help when you’re out of the car when walking or riding a bike say when you’re visiting another city or hiking – or when you’re in someone else’s car that doesn’t have in-dash navigation.  Smart2Go brings a powerful navigation system to the palm of your hand and allows you to use it no matter what car you’re in or where you’re walking or hiking.  It won’t be long before you’ll expect personal navigation to be built in to any SmartPhone or other wireless handheld device you’re using. 

RFID Initiative by Sybase iAnywhere Solutions

iAnywhere Solutions, Inc., a subsidiary of Sybase, announced RFID Anywhere, a middleware platform that helps enterprises plan, develop, deploy and manage radio frequency identification (RFID) network solutions.  With an advanced service-oriented architecture, RFID Anywhere speeds the deployment of RFID solutions through easy integration with existing applications and processes – even those that are highly distributed.  In addition, the software directly manages RFID and other data collection and control devices, such as barcode readers and printers, so that developers and integrators are insulated from low-level interfaces and can focus on business logic.

Support for RFID standards and protocols, including EPC Reader Protocol 1.0, ALE 1.0, ISO-15693, ISO-18000-3, and ISO-11784, is managed through a unified interface, greatly simplifying the challenge of integrating and managing numerous devices, applications, standards and protocols.  The network simulator allows the impact of data loads and content on existing networks and applications to be assessed early in the project – even before readers and other RFID-enabled hardware have been acquired.

A service-oriented architecture enables easy integration into the existing infrastructure including feeds into multiple existing applications and interfaces with system and network management software.  With its support for distributed configurations and edge processing, RFID Anywhere allows multiple locations to collect RFID data whether or not the rest of the enterprise is available to receive it.

RFID Anywhere’s connectors and controllers handle the interfaces with commonly-used RFID hardware components, such as readers and printers, letting developers and integrators focus on business logic and not the code-level complexities of evolving devices and standards.  As a result, companies can confidently select RFID hardware based on features, price, support, and reliability criteria without sacrificing functionality, usability or performance.  Further, support can be provided for other network devices such as barcode scanners and programmable logic controllers, allowing RFID technology

Operating as a network service, RFID Anywhere provides extensibility so that the physical network of readers can be leveraged in additional, future RFID use cases allowing multiple business scenarios to be addressed with a single solution.  Companies are able to adopt new uses for their original RFID network, continually improving their return on investment.

Insight: RFID is finally getting respect when big organizations like Sybase’s iAnywhere Solutions makes a market entry.  This, along with start ups like Blue Vector, demonstrate that in order to solve the RFID problem correctly, the entire problem has to be addressed from the individual tag all they way through to the back end information system that defines the business process. 

1GB Flash Chip

Toshiba Corporation and SanDisk Corporation announced on Feb. 7 (2005) an 8-gigabit (Gb) or 1GB NAND flash memory chip fabricated with 70-nanometer (nm) process technology that ushers in the new era of gigabyte chips: 1-gigabyte data storage capacity on a single chip.  Performance is maximized by adoption of fast writing circuit techniques, which reduce data write times and support a fast write speed of 6-megabytes per second. Read speed of 60MB/sec.

Insight: It’s amazing to see the advances in flash technology.  This announcement is a breakthrough of sorts because it puts the “G” word – “gigabyte” – into the equation for solid-state flash storage.  We’ll soon see sub-$100 prices for a GB of flash storage.  It causes you to ask the question, “How much storage is enough for the application?”  In digital cameras, for example, 5-6MP (megapixels) should be enough image density for most users.  This takes around 2MB to store in JPEG format.  At 1GB, that’s 500 pictures on an (SD, MMC, MemoryStick) card, more than most people take in a week’s vacation. Higher Flash storage capacities will begin to address the camcorder market.  It takes around 40GB to store an hour of video.  Someday, camcorders will migrate from tape to Flash, but that’s still years off to make that much solid state storage affordable.  A small 1” Microdrive will likely get their first but someday, solid state storage will be used in camcorders (or should we say the camcorder function in a future digital camera since stills and digital movies will be integrated into the same camera).

MeshDynamics Multi-Radio Mesh Technology

MeshDynamics announced on Jan. 31 (2005) the availability of an innovative mesh networking solution that yields greater than a 50x bandwidth improvement over traditional mesh networks.  The MD-300 family of 3-Radio Structured MeshTM software and systems features a unique multi-radio, multi-channel backhaul (relay) path with automatic channel selection, providing a significant performance improvement for VoIP and mobile data applications, including Public Safety networks.

With one radio to relay packets through the mesh, a conventional mesh node can’t send and receive data at the same time.  In addition, all mesh radios share the same spectrum in conventional mesh, causing even more degradation when traffic is high.  MeshDynamics’ 3-radio Structured Mesh employs a (patent pending) set of algorithms that uses 2-radios per backhaul path per node (both 802.11a) as well as separate service radios (typically 802.11b/g) – all on different spectrum – eliminating both problems. 

MeshDynamics CEO Bob Osann sees VoIP as the ‘killer application’ for mesh networking. “When compared with cellular, Structured Mesh solutions offer more than a 100x advantage in cost-per-minute-per-user when supporting dense VoIP.  Compared with conventional mesh solutions, our cost-per-Kb-per-user exceeds 10x for an entire deployment, given realistic traffic levels.”

Insight:  Mesh technology is driving the roll out of Wi-Fi metropolitan area networking (MAN) in major cities around the world from companies like Tropos, BelAir, Strix Systems and Firetide.  MeshDynamics appears to have an architecture that will provide more robust support for networks in which significant traffic or VoIP is anticipated.  MeshDynamics is a young start up but if they can get customers and additional capital, then they could become a major force in this important, fast growing new market.