The latest from Telecom-Funda
- LTE, Competition, Sweden and Network Sharing
- Wallets don't crash
- Quick Recap of Self-Organising Networks (SON)
| LTE, Competition, Sweden and Network Sharing | Top |
| Over at Light Reading, Michelle Donegan reports that TeliaSonera over in Sweden who were early in starting their LTE network about a year ago have now gotten competition from Telenor, who has built an LTE network together with Tele2 . From a consumer point of view it's great to see a second LTE network being fired up. I haven't heard of any other country in which two overlapping LTE networks are running and open to the public yet, so that's another first. Personally, I am a bit sceptical about the network sharing part of the announcement because that reduces competition between network operators which in the long term might not only have positive consequences for the consumer. I've done some background reading and Sweden seems to be one of those countries where this is already done for 3G as well. Interestingly, the constelation is a bit different here. While Tele2 shares the LTE network with Telenor, it's 3G network is a shared operation with TeliaSonera (click on Sweden for details). Interesting triangle. And on top, Telenor seems to share it's 3G network with Hutch 3G according to Wikipedia . Is your head spinning? Mine is, so here's a summary: TeliaSonera -- LTE Tele2 + Telenor -- LTE Tele2 + TeliaSonera -- 3G Telenor + H3G -- 3G Pretty much everyone with everyone, except for Hutch 3G who doesn't yet seem to have ties with TeliaSonera. | |
| Wallets don't crash | Top |
| Yesterday evening, I exchanged a couple of debating points with some others in the industry, after one of them had reported hearing a at a conference that Nokia would include NFC chips, allegedly in all its smartphones, next year. ( I doubt that's accurate - if you're racing to the bottom vs Android on smartphone pricing in India, for example, you don't put a few $ of useless bill-of-materals in all your products, especially those sold in markets with no readers ) We've also heard a lot of hype in the past couple of weeks about NFC chips supposedly going to be in the next iPhone and also the next Gingerbread-powered iterations of Android. It's also worth noting that the "official" NFC may sometimes get confused with other short-range RFID solutions. Anyway, all that is outside the point of this post, except as context. And irony, given what happened next: In short, my phone spontaneously turned into a brick. One minute I was taking a photo at an interesting event last night, then switched it off. And it stayed off. Completely black - nothing happened holding the power button, the home button, nor trying the usual trick of physically hitting it against the table. [It was on about 85% battery] This was at about 8pm, just before the start of the dinner & event I was attending. Eventually when I got home, attached to my PC, looked up on the (PC!) web for help & support, and eventually reincarnated it by holding all the buttons down together for about 20 seconds. I was very, very glad that it hadn't contained my wallet, my house-keys, or my Oyster London travelcard. Maybe an NFC chip might have worked with the phone dead. Maybe not. But would I have felt like taking a chance, and staying out until 11.30pm & having a really enjoyable evening, knowing I might need to call a locksmith when I got home? Or if I'd get home, if the tube ticket barriers rejected my defunct psuedo-Oyster? Instead, I was just mildly grumpy I'd have to reorder another phone and I'd lost a few weeks' of photos, phone numbers and other stuff, since I'd last backed up. [Sidenote: would I pay for a network backup service even after this experience? No, probably not. But I am glad I've got the phone from an operator, on a subsidy, with a warranty, who I could have harassed for a replacement. And I will be syncing it with my PC more often] Yes, I know that NFC is supposed to work when the battery is dead. But in this case the kicker was that it wasn't dead.... there was *something* going on in the phone, as when I breathed life back into it, it had dropped to 32% battery, and still felt slightly warm 5 minutes after I'd taken it out of my pocket. Will NFC work when the OS is stuck in a loop or some other software / firmware Hades? Will any phone company want to take the risk that crashed phones render m-wallets and m-keys useless? What's the support cost of that? Could I have charged the locksmith to my telco, if I'd bought its phone-lock service? Or will they try and bill you extra for insurance? The bottom line: I'm very glad that my phone isn't a "single point of failure for my life". Ironic that I had a wake-up call just after a discussion about NFC. | |
| Quick Recap of Self-Organising Networks (SON) | Top |
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