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Wireless and Mpbility : Loads of Exciting Times Ahead

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PCQ Bureau
New Update

This is perhaps one of the most exciting areas of IT today, with new products

and technologies being developed left, right and center, new standards emerging

rapidly, and a slew of innovative services being introduced like there's no

tomorrow. It impacts just about every IT user, be it a consumer, enterprise,

service provider, or vendor. The reason for this is the excellent

synchronization between activities in wireless and mobility domains. Both are

leveraging each other's strengths to reach new heights. Mobile penetration in

India has already crossed 350 million users, providing tremendous opportunity

for everyone to introduce innovative applications to leverage this reach. The

latest in this slew of applications is mobile commerce, with services like

Oxygen and ngpay gaining popularity.

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Mobile action



The mobile subscribers in India in early 2008 were around 350 million with an
annual growth rate of more than 50%. This figure is huge and will continue to

grow; which has led to investment of global players including Vodafone's single

largest investment in India. As far as the overall growth in mobile industry is

concerned, we have witnessed several innovations. Let's have a look at what's in

store for us in the future.

Platforms



Mobile phone platforms are moving in two directions. One is open source and open
architecture approach and the other being Windows based or proprietary

architectures. This is credited first with the launch of Android based mobile

architecture and then with the release of the phone based on it. Open handset

alliance has made Android code available for download. Now the question is why

open source? The answer is simple. Mobile applications keep changing and

incorporating those changes is critical to sustain in the market. Mobile giant

Nokia is also joining the bandwagon by moving from Symbian to free licensed

model. Blackberry provides push mail facility; now again the same open source

facility is available in much lower price or even for free which can indeed save

cost of enterprise mobile push mailing. The other platform to look for in future

is WM platform. Microsoft is coming up with Windows Mobile 7. This new version

would be packed with advanced gesture recognition (to counter iphone). The other

feature to look for is enhanced browsing as Microsoft is using Internet Explorer

6 rendering engine, this will enable rich web pages having flash and Ajax

content.

Voice SMS
Many mobile service providers have

launched this service in India and many more to follow. There is a huge

potential for Voice SMS not only in coming years. Mobile users in India

especially in small towns and villages can effectively communicate using

this service. The key highlight of this service is commu-nication of

emotions via SMS that was difficult with plain text SMS (“I miss u and it

hurts”, from the Airtel VoiceSMS Ad.). For instance, if you are an AirTel

subscriber, to send VoiceSMS press '*' button and then write mobile number

of the recipient (don't prefix 0 even in STD VoiceSMS). Press 'calling'

button and record your voice message. Hang up after recording your message.

Receiver will receive auto generated call that plays out VoiceSMS, if

receiver is not able to pick call he/she gets SMS notification. Recipient

need to dial '*0*' to listen to new VoiceSMS and '*1*' for old ones. Users

can send VoiceSMS to any mobile user in India. With price at Rs 0.75 per

voice message this service is quite economical.
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Bluetooth 2.1 based devices & Bluetooth 3.0



The latest products from mobile companies are coming with Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR
(enhanced data rate). Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR will obviouly be popular in near

future. There will be many products integrated with this new specification in

future. This new specification will enhance performance of bluetooth devices by

simplifying pairing of devices and making connection more secure than previous

version of Bluetooth. Bluetooth 2.1 uses 'near field communication' a dedicated

short range connectivity that helps in file transfer between devices. The

benefit of NFC is that, no additional setup is required and single touch can

establish data connection. The other major enhancement is power consumption, 2.1

devices will consume less energy. Bluetooth 2.1 devices will be backward

compatible with previous version of Bluetooth specifications.

On 28 th August '08, Intel with

support of other industry partners started 'Connected Indian' campaign. The

aim of this movement is to connect billion Indians; this is to boost overall

growth by sharing thoughts, innovations and ideas via Internet. Intel has

announced to deliver atom based internet devices on an affordable price tag

of Rs 5,000. For more information visit: www.connectedindians.com

Next version of Bluetooth (v 3.0) will further enhance connectivity, a speed

of around 480 Mbps can be archived in close proximity. This enhanced speed will

make it possible to stream videos using bluetooth.

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Mobile Wan Acceleration



Now a days, more and more users are using their phones not just to make and
receive calls but for more productive needs, such as connecting to the Internet,

doing mobile commerce, connecting to the office network over VPN. But till

today, be it either GSM or CDMA, the speed which we get is not at all

satisfactory, and even the 3G is not going to drastically improve.

The Road Ahead
Future of wireless and mobility is driven by new innovative

technology. In mobile phone domain, the future is clearly in between open

source platforms and Windows mobile with mobile added services gaining

popularity. Among the added services to look for is voice SMS that will

enhance communication between non-English speaking masses in India. For

people in urban areas, mobile as device for paying your monthly bills and

shopping is gaining popularity. Future lies in new standards like WiMAX,

Bluetooth 2.1 based devices and Bluetooth 3.0, though both are completely

different wireless connectivity standards. WiMAX can be of great help in

bringing more Indians under broadband cover. Focus is on rural areas where

Internet can change lives and cable infrastructure is almost impossible to

implement. Bluetooth 2.1 on other hand, can add value to products like

mobile phones, music headsets etc. 3G is round the corner which in turn will

make mobile video calls possible along with live TV on mobile. Further boost

to this domain is given by low power consuming processor technologies, with

Atom and its competitors locking horns ultimate winner would be end user.

Cost of these processors is low making devices built on them economical.

So a new need of a specific type of software has emerged in the market and

that is for software based WAN accelerators which can get installed on the phone

and do bandwidth optimization.

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The WAN acceleration concept is not new and we had first seen appliances

which could be placed at both the ends of two branches. The setup was

complicated, the investment was huge and it was not at all mobile.

REPTOR is essentially a WAN

Acceleration Suite. It includes a REPTOR WAN acceleration appliance -which

is essentially a virtual appliance for VMWare, and an Enterprise Manager,

again a VMWare appliance to manage a large REPTOR Accelerator deployment

with many such appliances and clients. It also has a client which gets

installed on client machines from where you can connect to your services

through the acceleration appliance.

Then we saw the software based WAN accelerators which can get installed on

laptops and do the same task of a WAN appliance. And now, we have started seeing

similar software products which can get installed on a mobile phone and can give

you better WAN experience while using common protocols such as SMB, HTTP, VPN,

etc. Replify is a pioneer in this domain.

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Openmoko is a project aimed at

building open source mobile phones and openmoko Linux is a operating system

developed for smart phone by FIC.

Wireless



The sales of laptops in 2008 were around 700 thousands units with growth of
around 59% over previous year. This market will continue to grow with Internet

based devices which are becoming popular among masses due to low price.

Beyond the Atom



Late 2008 saw sudden burst of products based on Intel's Atom processor, which
has been built for portable devices and designed keeping low power consumption

in mind. This microprocessor is designed for 45 nm CMOS process.

With Intel active in this domain, we can't expect arch-rival AMD to remain

silent. AMD is coming up with x86 Bobcat processor for ultra portable devices,

which is expected to have power consumption of less than 10W.

We already see a war brewing here, because Intel is further enhancing the

processing power of Atom with dual core Atom processors, simplified design and

cost efficiency along with low power consumption. Besides processors, some

standards expected to be in by 2009 inlcude WiMAX and IEEE 802:11n. So, lots of

exciting times ahead.

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