| Computerworld: Marketers of 3G networks will enjoy this story. Business travelers are reluctant to use Wi-Fi because hotspots are hard to find and setup can be difficult. Wi-Fi also can be relatively expensive if the traveling employee must pay for a whole day's use for the few minutes he or she is in the coffee shop or waiting for a plane. The billing infrastructure is also fragmented, which tends to discourage use. Service providers courting the business segment are trying to alleviate these problems. They best hurry, however: 3G, although slower, avoids these issues — and is far more ubiquitous. | Sponsor: IT Manager Development Series | | Maximize Your IT Management Career
This collection of 10 PDF-format books is packed with real-world advice that will help you realize your full potential as an IT manager. And the bonus IT Manager Toolkit includes 80 Word and Excel tools you can use right away. > Click here to learn more. | Processor: This piece offers several well-grounded tips on managing a mobile workforce. IT departments must realize that the breadth of mobile and handheld devices is far greater than it was in the past. The variety of places where workers can use these devices also has grown. The goal is to secure data access without slowing users down to the point that mobility's advantages are frittered away. IT departments must catalog which mobile devices are in use and then find software capable of efficiently handling application distribution, updates, and inventory status and data synchronization. The package should fit well with existing mobile infrastructure. Security, of course, is a huge issue. Strong passwords, virtual private networks and encryption software all are recommended. Companies should consider software capable of wiping out data on lost or stolen machines. The piece concludes with two sidebars. One goes over survey results on the growth of mobility and the other offers five tips for implementing mobility in the organization. EDN: This is a technical story that's also worth a look by non-experts and planning executives. Wi-Fi equipment testing procedures become more diversified — and far more difficult — as the wireless world evolves. The piece says that Wi-Fi is more complex than traditional Ethernet infrastructure, which is the ultimate reason more extensive and complex testing is required. The reality is that Wi-Fi requires both radio frequency (RF) and data testing tools. Test repeatability is a prerequisite for diagnostics to be viable for commercial use. Such tools, the piece says, are becoming available. | | Special Offer: Free White Paper VoIP: Creating a Strategy That Enables Future Voice Applications
Enterprises are discovering that the most critical component to evaluate as it forges a solid VoIP strategy is the underlying architecture of the unified messaging system. The architecture determines system performance, IT overhead, and future application readiness. This informative white paper outlines the architectural components needed to create a foundation for future advanced communications applications. Check it out today! | | | | Reuters: The founder of Greenhill Capital Partners, the private equity arm of the Greenhill & Co. investment bank, says the wireless tower industry is very fragmented and that much consolidation lies ahead. The piece cites American Tower Corp.'s plan to buy SpectraSite. The important takeaway from this piece, of course, is the recognition that cell towers are an important issue that will directly affect the quality of wireless services. Beside the consolidation issues mentioned in the link, the tower industry is changing as 3G platforms emerge and the penetration of cell phones continues to increase. The bottom line is that more towers are needed. However, communities are starting to resist what is considered by some to be an eyesore and a health hazard. It's an important topic, since a shortage of towers will affect the services mobile workers can expect. InformationWeek: The ability to pack more features into shrinking mobile devices is one of the great challenges facing vendors. Often, this problem is discussed in relation to power. It's also an issue for memory manufacturers. Chipmaker AMD and vendor Fujitsu are offering what they say is a new type of flash memory designed for the smaller devices. The approach — called Package-on-Package (PoP) Flash — combines system memory with the logic chipset. The joint venture, Spansion LLC, says that PoP is available now for vendors to put into wireless phones. No pricing information was included in the story. mobilepipeline: The increasing power of mobile devices and the flexibility of underlying protocols are slowly erasing the line between "mobile" and "stationary" devices. One particularly clever class of devices can extend cell phones to be used as traditional landline units. The cell phone sits in a cradle and transfers incoming calls to a handset that comes with the system. The subscriber's wireless minutes are used. This is a positive report on one such system, the RCA Cell Docking System. This piece says the system differentiates itself by working with 60 phones from Nokia, Motorola and Sony Ericsson. The piece, which describes a variety of system features, says that the system's audio quality was about as good as a traditional cell phone. This makes sense, given that the signal travels over the cell network. | IT Marketplace | | | | | Tell the IT Business Edge audience of technology decision makers about your product, service, event, or job. Click here to list it in the IT Marketplace! | | 3 QUESTIONS:
House Calls
With Matthew Theall, president of the HomePlug Power Alliance and powerline initiative manager for Intel. Question: HomePlug 1.0 has been around for some time, but the HomePlug Powerline Alliance is creating new specs. Tell us about them?
Theall: Millions of chipsets and dozens of products are available for purchase today based on the HomePlug 1.0 standard. We've seen a tremendous industry interest in powerline [technology] and the number of potential applications. We see interest in using HomePlug technology for additional uses. These uses include extending the capacity of HomePlug or in-plug networking to HomePlug AV technology. So that's the first area. The second area is HomePlug for use over powerline applications. The third use of HomePlug is as a technology for home automation. That's HomePlug Command and Control. The organizational changes announced reflect the industry interest in HomePlug in those three principal areas. The Alliance announced workgroups to focus on each of those areas. Question: Does this affect telecommuters?
Theall: Yes. We see one of the principal areas of interest in home networking is using HomePlug AV technology to provide the ability to move information around the home in a seamless way for telecommuters. It may mean from one PC in the home to a second or third or it may mean transport of more personal data such as MP3s, family photos or other information from one electronic device to another. Allowing this kind of connectivity in the home is one of the strengths of the Home AV technology. For telecommuters, Home AV is one of the most applicable technologies for in-home networks. Question: What are some potential uses of HomePlug specs, and what is the group doing about security?
Theall: HomePlug 1.0 has been shipping for five years. Now there is a need for a next generation. HomePlug [BPL] can be used by utility companies streaming information to the home. They may be interested in streaming high-speed Internet to the home over power lines [or] they may be interested reading meters remotely without sending people to homes. It may be used for VoIP as well as other home automation applications. It may be used for turning on and off the lights or controlling temperature. The HomePlug AV spec was just ratified several weeks ago. It runs at 200 megabits per second. "1.0" has a data rate of 16 megabits. The BPL and command and control specs are being defined now. We see security being an important requirement for any new technology. This includes not only applications such as streaming data, but also protecting things like copyrighted content. Service providers may want to send HDTV to multiple TVs in the home. If the content is streamed around the home, we want to make sure that the content is secure. Whether HomePlug AV, Command and Control or BPL, there needs to be a security methodology and HomePlug is working to that goal. | | Also from IT Business Edge: Voice & Data Convergence Voice & Data Convergence examines the strategic and tactical implications of emerging IP telephony technologies, from VoIP services to advanced CRM systems to security considerations. Find out what every IT decision maker should know. Click here to sign up! | By the Numbers
30,000 Access points in the GoRemote Wi-Fi network worldwide. The company signed an agreement to give customers access to 6,000 T-Mobile HotSpots. $26 million State of California spending on cell phones, walkie-talkies and related devices during the next two years. The state claims it will save 38 percent over existing contracts. 62.57 million Mobile phones in India, according to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India. Total wired and wireless phone penetration in India has reached 110 million, more than 10 percent of the population. Breaking Headlines
Geekzone: Nokia is taking aim at Research In Motion and its BlackBerry wireless e-mail device with the Nokia Business Center, a system for pushing e-mail to subscribers' cell phones. There will be two levels of service. The standard client will be licensed on an unlimited basis with each Nokia Business Center Server. It will include rudimentary e-mail functions such as composing, reading and deleting e-mails. It will support English, French, German, Italian and Spanish. The professional version includes functions and features of the standard version and adds graphics, support for meeting requests, sorted views, and other features generally associated with desktop e-mail systems. The service will be available in the Americas during the fourth quarter. ExtremeTech: It's important to keep abreast of developments in the military because much of the technology common among consumers and teleworkers today is first evident this sector. 3Way has developed a short-range 3G network, the DBX-m, which creates a Universal Mobile Telecommunications Service (UMTS) network capable of supporting 100 users. The device, enclosed in a 30 x 56 x 80 cm case, supports 3GPP Release 5. It operates in conjunction with NATO-approved encryption and can be used alone or in conjunction with outside wireless networks. The package includes a ruggedized case, 6.5-inch display, power connector and keyboard.
vnunet.com: This news story positions the acquisition of PalmSource as inevitable, and the fact that it was bought by a Japanese software maker — Access — as no big surprise. The $324.3 million cash deal teams PalmSource, which makes the Palm OS used in the Palm Treo and Garmin iQue PDA, with the maker of the NetFront browser for mobile devices. An IDC analyst says that PalmSource has been ripe for acquisition for a year or two, and that there were questions about whether it would survive. PalmSource sold rights to the Palm brand name to PalmOne. The company's troubles started when Sony exited the PDA market last year. New owner Access said it would continue PalmSource's development of a Linux version of its operating system. Emerging Trends
Mobiledia: The impact of this announcement is a ways off, but researchers in the UK have developed an approach to memory that could lead to storage gains by a factor of 200, from 500 MB to 100 GB. The research is driven by the desire to enable video phones to store longer clips. The approach uses nanowires to create complex interconnected networks similar to departmentalization in the brain. The system uses spin — the magnetic properties of electrons — instead of electric charges to create the ones and zeros of computing.
Center for American Progress: The failure of the telecommunications both on Sept. 11 and during and after Hurricane Katrina may convince some folks that keeping a network up and operational when it is severely stressed is impossible. Reed Hundt, the former chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), says that this isn't so. Indeed, he says the answer to the problem is apparent and can be put into effect without inventing anything new. The first step would be to dedicate a chunk of spectrum to first responders. This would make it much more likely that personnel would be able to electronically find each other during emergencies. Hundt calls assigning spectrum in this way a "no brainer." The second step would be to use Wi-Fi or a Wi-Fi-like technology to create networks that can keep ticking even if some nodes are rendered inoperable. Los Angeles Business Journal: It's rather surprising that California isn't ahead in broadband over powerline (BPL) technology, since it has a history of backing innovation. The reality is that until a San Diego Gas and Electric pilot earlier this month, California was the only large state with no ongoing BPL project by a public utility. The state's Public Utilities Commission has proposed guidelines that may encourage more activity. The proposal streamlines what can be a difficult regulatory process, allows the entities involved to keep the revenues, and reassures potential participants that the PUC won't try to control the technology. The PUC says that Pacific Gas and Electric, South California Edison and the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power are preparing pilots. IT Business Edge: Empowering a Mobile Workforce
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| | About the Editor
Since late 2001 Carl Weinschenk has been a freelance information technology and telecommunications writer. His work has appeared online and in print at mobilepipeline, America's Network and a variety of other publications and sites. He is a contributing editor to Communications Technology magazine. Previously, Weinschenk held staff editing and writing positions at InternetWeek, tele.com, Cable World and Cable Marketing magazines. You can reach him at mobile@itbusinessedge.com. | | |
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