RunningWithBulls.com - The curse of Sanfermin

This is funny, exciting and fun all at the same time.

Someone asked me something today about Charlie Schick. I check out his blog (I am subscribed to his internal Nokia blogs and also his external blogs).

I see a really interesting and useful post about mobile tinyurls, and mobile browsing.

I did some wavesurfing (following outward links) and came across esyurls integration with Mowser, Russell Beattie’s mobile formatted browsing tool (I remember Russell from way back when he was writing on his Notebook).

So, I post the link to Jaiku, and sofar I see 3 people using it.

esyurl integrates with Mowser to allow you to see either a mobile formatted website, or a “normal” PC sized site.

Martin already likes it so let me know if you use it too.

It’ll make sending links around to mobile browsers much much easier.

Thanks Charlie, Russ, Filipe, and Martin!

Technorati Tags: mowser , charlie schick , martin sauter , mobilesociety , mobile browsing , esyurl

Pat Phelan of Cubic Telecom, and Roam4Free fame is off in Vancouver at the moment and he sent back for news from the coalface.

Cubic Telecom and Celtrak Global Roaming are joining technical and logistic forces to release new services to overcome the monoply traditional mobile operators have had in the roaming/long-distance calling business since the inception of mobile phones.

These new services will offer significant savings to those who are currently paying a fortune for International roaming.

Pat’s mantra is “a world where anyone can call anyone at anytime without worrying about the cost”, and in todays world of “blah blah” talk, its a pretty good one.

CelTrak seem to compliment Cubic Telecom’s business well. They offer 3 basic packages, combing in different ways cellphone, SIM card, and call credit.

CelTrak then also offer instant onair top-up, which effectively means that instead of having to get a pin to top your phone up with, your credit is automatically increased over-the-air. Nice and simple.

CelTrak’s SIM works in any GSM phone. CelTrak has over 700 GSM roaming agreements with mobile operators all over the world, which gets them competitive roaming rates in different international locations. These romaing rates offer between 50-90% savings over normal rates.

A question to ask is, why are other companies not seeing the possible benefits to be made by striking roaming deals with mobile operators?

CelTraks ambition is “of offering low-cost roaming to consumers everywhere”, which sounds pretty much like Pat’s mantra!

CelTrak have views of also offering data services for roamers, another area which is a lucrative cash-cow for cellphone operators.

It looks like Cubic Telecom get some good benefits from CelTrak, like the roaming agreements, while CelTrak also get good benefits from Cubic, like the good foothold in Europe, and the MaxRoam SIM products.

For me, if they were able to offer a VoIP service in the form of a software application, this would make a big difference to me.

I am interested in seeing their virtual PBX service, a service that CelTrak seem to have on offer also.

My current VoIP provider, Blueface, also have a virtual PBX, which is also a nice feature.

Congrats Pat, hope to hear more news soon!

Technorati Tags: cubic telecom , celtrak , voip , mobile phones , cell operators , telecomms , pat phelan

If I had a few of this phrases the first time I went to Finland, I would have saved myself some problems.

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A pint of Lapin kulta please - Pistä yks Lapin Kulta, kiitos.

Winter is my favourite season - Talvi on mun lempivuodenaika.

I love taking saunas - Mä tykkää saunoa.

Would you mind swatting me with birch leaves? - Voitko vihtoa minua?

I want to move to Finland. - Haluan muuttaa Suomeen.

My name is XXX - Minun nimeni on XXX

A house is not a home without a sauna - Koti ei ole koti ilman saunaa.

I like beans - Minä pidän pavuista.

Reindeer are cute - Porot ovat söpöjä.

Cheers! - Kippis!

Some salmiakki, please - Saisinko salmiakkia?

Could I have this dance? - Saanko luvan? (Ahem…not one for those of us who have partners!)

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Technorati Tags: finland , finnish language , suomi , languages , runningwithbulls.com , nokia

For work we use Checkpoints VPN-1 SecureClient (NIRA VPN) access for remote secure connection to the corporate network.

We also use iPass for assured WiFi connection to multi-vendor WiFi networks.

This week in Helsinki I was staying in the Radisson SAS hotel (great as always), and was trying to use the Sonera “homerun” WiFi network.

My laptop was getting connected to the Sonera network, receiving an IP address, but I was unable to route any traffic to the Internet, also to the VPN network.

After calling BI (NSN IT support), and finally calling Sonera Customer support (both people really friendly), I found out the reason for the issue.

Sonera told me their wireless network is “having problems with users connecting to it when Checkpoint Secure-1 VPN client is running.

I was told:

1. The Secure-1 VPN client client needs to be switched off.
2. Then you need to connect to WLAN.
3. Then you can switch it on.

Once you do that, bingo all works. You can connect to the Internet, or VPN as you wish.

Technorati Tags: checkpoint , secure-1 vpn , nokia siemens networks , nokia , runningwithbulls.com , sonera , wifi

I thought this was my mistake, but it seems like its setup by Vodafone.

Vodafone give subscribers 300 free text messages when they log into their website. A simple-ish web interface. Enter the message and the number and Bob’s your uncle (of course they don’t guarantee delivery, but hea, thats all SMS traffic anyway..more or less).

But now, it seems that Vodafone want to tell you where you can send your free text messages.

Here it seems that they are only allowing you to send them to Irish mobile numbers. I wonder why? Is it because they don’t want to you to actually send them to competitors and therefore cost them money? If you send text messages to other Vodafone subscribers, it costs them nothing.

o2.ie on the other hand, don’t seem to have any restriction on sending text messages, (they give 250 free text messages).

Thats pretty mean if you ask me. They want to tell you what you can do..

Technorati Tags: runningwithbulls.com , vodafone.ie , vodafone , ireland , irishblogs, gsm , 3g , mobile phones

My Cubic Telecom WiFi/GSM phone arrived yesterday. Thank you Pat for sending one on to me. I promise I won’t drop it in the loo

Cubic Telecom, I’m sure is pretty famous now within the various blogging/t’Internet circles.

The Cubic phone, Pirelli Discus DualPhone DP L10, is manufactured by Pirelli, yes the tyre and calendar people (thank God for Pirelli!). Why they have made a WiFi/GSM handset only God knows, but its pretty nice. They have brought the convergence of VoIP to GSM giving you a choice of which medium to use for your telephone calls.

I won’t go into the reviews of the actual handset, as there are reviews available that are infinitely better than I could do. Saying that, the only *bad* thing I will say about the device (and this is more the design of the device and not of Cubic Telecom’s fault) is the audio quality from the device speaker. It seems as if the speaker is set a little too deeply into the handset, and therefore it gives the audio a slightly muffled quality.

Technical specifications of the device are:

Network Connectivity: GSM 900/1800/1900 (Full Tri-band GSM using standard 3GPP) + WiFi VoIP (802.11 b/g) using SIP

Data: GPRS + WiFi Data (on the Cubic phone there is a WAP browser. While WAP is not widely used anymore, it is still available)

Screen: 128×128 pixels, 65K colours

Camera: 0.3 megapixels

Size: Standard candy bar 106×46x18mm / weight not specified

Messaging: SMS, MMS, WAP, E-mail

Mobile setup: OMA/OTAP (Open Mobile Alliance Over The Air Provisioning)

From a technical point of view, the phone is pretty good. The phone supports both open standard VoIP SIP, and 3GPP GSM network connectivity, both open standards and so inter-operable with all networks, unlike Skype.

The possibility of roaming/handover from GSM to WiFi (UMA or GAN) is not possible with the phone, as Pat said, Cubic would need access to the actual mobile network, and also the WiFi network.

In the US, T-Mobile offer an interesting service T-Mobile@Home, where you can use your home WiFi for mobile phone coverage for free, also unlimited access to their other WiFi mobile hotspots, and then your plan minutes when out of WiFi coverage.

Of course, you buy the WiFi router from them so, they get both your WiFi and your cellphone bills.

Setting the phone up on WiFi:

To set-up the phone on your WiFi network is pretty easy:

To connect to wifi:
Menu
Click symbol that looks like “mobile phone Eiffel tower”
Hotspots
Edit active settings
Scan and security
Scan
Find a hotspot
You will see you hotspot
Click save

If you hot spot is open:
Menu
Click symbol that looks like “mobile phone Eiffel tower”
Click “sip status”
You should see sip profile and register server

If your hotspot is closed:
Click symbol that looks like “mobile phone Eiffel tower”
Hotspots
Edit active settings
Scan and security
Security
Enter your WEP/WPA key

Mobile provisioning:
I got it set-up within about 2 minutes when I arrived home. The phone will work with all WiFi networks that are open, or require a WEP/WPA password. I want to try it out with my Fon router to see if this works. If Cubic were able to get this working with Fon WiFi routers(the issue seems to be that Fon “public” SSID requires you to enter your Fon user/pass details into the device. If Cubic were able to get something like aDeviceScape client for this phone, it would be a big help, they would have coverage all over the UK, and other countries.

At the moment I am using it both as a GSM phone, (with my operator SIM inside) and as a WiFi phone. The OMA OTAP really becomes useful when the phone is provisioned as a MaxRoam mobile phone. More of that later.

Up to now, its all pretty standard new technology. Its a GSM mobile phone, with a VoIP client inside.

Cubic VoIP service:
Cubic Telecom are also a SIP registrar, meaning they are a VoIP carrier (with their networks hosted inInterFusion). They give you a geographical dial-in number (mine being +353 1 5262819). Their carrier partners as both traditional hardwired and IP switching, giving them (and effectively the customer) good savings and range of path over which to send the call traffic.

Useful features:
One nice feature is when they provide you with a foreign dial-in number. Pat provided me with a Finnish dial-in number (+358 942 599550).

So, you have a local call number in two countries. Since all the calls are being routed over WiFi (which I am already paying for) and over SIP (through Cubic Telecoms softswitch in Dublin) calls cost nothing.

This is all standard enough technology, done with Asterisk, softswitches and other hardware. Things get interesting when you add Cubic Telecom’s new product MaxRoam - the SIM that doesn’t know you are roaming.

This is really just part 1 of a few parts. Next week, I am going to Helsinki for some work, so I will see how we get on.

Technorati Tags: runningwithbulls.com , cubic telecom , maxroam , pat phelan , voip , gsm , mobile , 3gpp

The Economist has a very good article on the current state and future of big telecoms hardware manufacturers (the Alcatel-Lucents, the Ericssons, the Nokia Siemens Networks, the Huaweis, the ZTC, the Nortels etc), specifically Alcatel-Lucent’s results and their plan for the future.

The Economist has it spot on. AlcaCent’s news in September disappointed its saying they woud barely have any growth and that there would be almost zero operating profits in the third quarter.

Alot of their problems were due to two companies from totally different cultural areas joining to make one telecoms company. From listening to the “grapevine” there were stories about people not being able to “talk” to each other, that they were just too different.

Ericsson, however, also showed very poor results. 36% fall of third quarter earnings. And this is the current leader in telecoms carrier grade hardware, with a services company that owns alot of the industry’s services area.

With regards NSN financial results, they are rolled into the Nokia results.

Like the Economist article says, the honey-moon period (maybe thats not the right word for it) is over between the mobile operators, the industry and the manufacturers.

Gone are the days (almost!) that the operators can charge 1.00euro per minute for roaming charges. This therefore makes the operator a little less willing to pay millions for carrier grade hardware (alot of the time, proprietary hardware and software). The manufacturers therefore have to find new ways of getting their hardware and software bought-services, consultations, profit sharing, cost sharing all are being used.

The operators are also getting tough with the manufacturers, instead of buying the hardware straight away, they are delaying or renegotiating the purchases.

MVNO Networks like Blyk, Tesco, Meteor, Virgin Mobile (Blycroft Publishing announced that there were roughly 230 active MVNOs, as of June 2006) are all networks that have no network hardware, no upgrades, no outages to worry about.

These networks all use services like Nokia Siemens Networks carrier grade data, multimedia and application services hosting facilities. The outcome? NSN gets a percentage of the revenue as does the MVNO.

Blyk, which has launched has launched in the UK market for the 16-24 year olds, and is “fully” financed by advertisements, has their core network hosted with Nokia Siemens Networks, mostly in the Austrian hosting facilities.

For radio access, the local part of the network for the UK, they are then using Orange’s infrastructure.

They don’t own the majority of the network. This allows them to focus on their customers and making money

I don’t know if Alcatel-Lucent have a hosting business but that might be of help to them.

The other problem, again like The Economist article mentions is the new competition from China - ZTC and Huawei being the biggest. No longer are they the “cheaper competitor making weird boxes”.

Huawei won the contract for Vivo’s (the mobile telecommunications services provider in the Southern Hemisphere owned and controlled by Telefonica and Portugal Telecom) GSM roll-out in Latin America, in the same space as the current CDMA networks in Brasil. They currently provide service for 28.5million subs in all of Latin America.

Another issue for the carrier grade telcos is the commoditisation of their products from other manufacturers. This same argument can be used for Cisco. When they bought Linksys, the argument was made that they were buying a consumer company which would eat away at their market. People will spend less money to get better quality if they can.

This is true, and some operators do seem to run core networks from “consumer” grade hardware, but eventually this would come back to bite them in the ass. From this point of view, its NSNs job to seperate the commodity grade hardware (like the Siemens consumer grade broadband hardware) into another business.

As long as NSN can get their ATCA platform hardware released, which will take away some of the propritary-ness of their systems, this will reduce costs. Using open source software systems like Linux, Redhat linux will help also.

If the telecoms hardware companies can “show the operators” the best way to move in with the technology and the pricing they have a safe future.

Its just who will be there in 10 years is the big question.

Technorati Tags: runningwithbulls.com , nokia siemens networks , nortel , telecoms , the economist , huawei

NTT DoCoMo admits to crisis over subscriber losses: “A senior executive at NTT DoCoMo said on Thursday the Japanese mobile carrier is in crisis over subscriber losses in the last year.”

NTT DoCoMo admits to crisis over subscriber losses: “Despite the subscriber losses NTT DoCoMo isn’t in danger of losing its top spot anytime soon. With 53 million subscribers at the end of September it had a 53 percent share of the market. But executives at the carrier are conscious that the days when they could rest on their laurels are gone.”

Wow..after loosing 1million subs, NTT DoCoMo are getting worried about decreasing.

NTT DoCoMo admits to crisis over subscriber losses: “Among the new phones is the L705iX from South Korea’s LG Electronics. The phone is notable because it supports 7.2Mbps HSDPA (high-speed downlink packet access) data transmission. DoCoMo plans to offer the service, which is double the speed of its current 3.6Mbps service, from April next year”

NTT are currently offering 3.6Mbps (I wonder if it is full 3.6Mbps HSDPA!), and in the next year they will be offering 7.6! I would love to see the radio network planning that is required for that.

(Via InfoWorld: Top News.)

Technorati Tags: runningwithbulls.com , NTT DoCoMo, Nokia Siemens Networks