OnLive will launch services in the US on June 17

There’s been lots of talk recently about how network infrastructure, particularly in the mobile sector, is creaking under the weight of data traffic. Come June, traffic may increase significantly with the launch of a service that promises to revolutionise the gaming experience.

After eight years in development, OnLive will launch services in the US on June 17, during the E3 entertainment exposition in Los Angeles.

OnLive is proposing to make well known video games available over the internet, pretty much regardless of the hardware capabilities of the client device – a direct attack on the console and PC gaming hardware market.

The company’s proposition comes from the cloud, and relies on low latency, high compression streaming technology, which it claims will allow consumers to play high end games almost immediately without the need to download. The initial offering will be pitched at PCs and Macs via a browser plugin, then later in the year the company will introduce a hardware TV adapter as well as a proposition for mobile phone usage.

This week the company also revealed its pricing strategy – a monthly service fee of $14.95, which does not include the purchase or rental of ‘competitively priced’ games. The proposition is sure to cause a kerfuffle among the net neutrality debaters and also hints at how innovative cloud-based services will be responsible for putting more strain on the global network infrastructure.

Tight squeeze
Read the recent feature on what the surge in mobile data and broadband traffic means for network operators

Investors in the firm include AT&T Media Holdings, Lauder Partners, Warner Bros., Autodesk and Maverick Capital.

Virgin to hang fibre from telegraph poles

UK cable operator Virgin Media said Thursday it is trialling the delivery of 50Mbps broadband to rural areas by hanging fibre from telegraph poles.

The old school approach will initially deliver 50Mbps broadband to the Berkshire village of Woolhampton, and will act as a trial for bringing broadband connectivity to consumers beyond the reach of existing fibre optic networks.

Virgin Media has already announced plans to extend its fibre optic network, which today passes 12.6 million homes, to 500,000 new homes and has identified more than one million homes in parts of the UK that stand to benefit from deployment of fibre over telegraph poles.

Neil Berkett, chief executive officer of Virgin Media, said: “This unique trial will allow us to understand the possibilities of aerial deployment and may provide an exciting new way to extend next generation broadband services. With everything from BBC iPlayer to YouTube increasingly demanding reliable ultrafast broadband speeds, we’re keen to ensure that all communities, in towns, cities and villages right across the UK, stand to benefit.”

Interesting that Berkett should quote these two examples, as he is a vocal opponent of net neutrality – once referring to the concept as “a load of bollocks”.

Motorola taps Microsoft for Android apps

All’s fair in love and war, and Motorola may owe its recent upswing to the Google-backed Android platform, but this week the resurgent handset vendor hopped into bed with Microsoft, to deploy Bing on Android devices.

Under a global alliance between Motorola and Microsoft, the US manufacturer will deploy Bing services on Motorola devices powered by Android, with the first offering launching in China before the month is out.

As part of the deal, Motorola users will get a pre-loaded Bing bookmark on their mobile browser and an enhanced search widget with Bing integration. There will also be a focus on Bing powered map functions on the Android-based devices. Devices that are already in market will be able to pick up the updates over the air.

Motorola said it is opening the doors for increased personalization and empowering its end users – a comment which may draw some fire in light of this week’s launch of the Android-powered AT&T Backflip in the US. The Backflip runs a crippled version of the Android-platform, which does not allow users to install unofficial applications. There are also a handful of AT&T specific apps installed on the device which cannot be removed by the user. Then again, the Backflip is not a Google-branded device so perhaps this is par for the course.

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NSN has accused its competitors of overlooking the signalling burden on 3G networks

Most infrastructure vendors are failing to address the signalling burden placed on 3G mobile networks by high end smartphones, according to Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN).

The German-Finnish JV says it has implemented a solution to the problem in its own products based on 3GPP standards and has accused its competitors of overlooking the fix.

“We know what an iPhone can do to an Ericsson base station,” Michael Matthews, head of strategy and business development at NSN told telecoms.com. “It can kill it.”

The correlation between smartphone penetration and signalling burdens was highlighted recently on telecoms.com in this feature. Some estimates suggest that for every bit sent or received a smartphone generates eight times more signalling than a laptop connected to the network with a dongle or embedded chip.

A subscriber using a laptop will likely consume more raw bandwidth than a smartphone user. But the greater volume of smartphones in the market - and the behavioural pattern of those terminals - means that the signalling traffic they produce far outstrips that generated by laptops.

While laptop connections can be kept open as they are often plugged into the mains (or otherwise powered by substantial batteries), smartphones do not have the battery muscle to remain truly ‘always on’. In order that they can give the impression of being so, however, handset vendors have designed smartphones to repeatedly awaken themselves from their idle modes to ping the network for updates before putting themselves back to sleep.

Many of the most popular smartphone applications, social networking and email solutions chief among them, require constant updates from the network. Each update, according to Phil Twist, head of marketing and communications for Network Systems at NSN, can generate 21 signalling messages, which roughly equates to the network usage required by a voice call. With a smartphone typically updating every one or two minutes, he told telecoms.com, the signalling traffic is comparable to 1,000 voice calls each day.

“The reason we’re claiming we have an answer here is because of an intermediate idle state called Cell-PCH. This uses the paging channel and requires only four signalling messages back and forth across the network to do that ping for updates. And it has similar background battery power consumption to the idle state, which is less than 5 milliamps.”

Read the full interview with Michael Matthews, head of strategy and business development at Nokia Siemens Networks

This translates into an 80 per cent reduction in signalling traffic, said Twist, and an improvement of up to 100 per cent in standby battery life for the smartphone.

The Cell-PCH software feature is not mandated by 3GPP and NSN claims it is the only vendor to have implemented it voluntarily. To implement it retrospectively is a non-trivial exercise, Twist said, adding that the feature could save a ‘typical’ network in the region of €45m.

The firm has had the feature activated since 2007, he said, but it has only recently become relevant as smartphone usage and data consumption has started to cause problems for network operators.

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Apple’s secret iPhone developer contract revealed

Apple is at the centre of controversy in the developer community this week, as its über secret Developer Program License agreement is published for all to see. Well, almost.

If you want to develop and application for the iTunes App Store, you have to sign the iPhone Developer Program License Agreement, but the first rule about the contract is that you can’t talk about the contract. This has made its contents somewhat of a mystery, until now.

Privacy advocacy group, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) managed to get a revised version of the document. When NASA recently released an application for the iPhone, the EFF used the Freedom of Information Act to get a copy of the agreement from NASA, one that the organisation was not obliged to sign.

The EFF says the publication of the contract is particularly timely, given the imminent launch of the iPad and the US Copyright Office’s deliberation over whether the DMCA should apply to jailbreaking of the iPhone.

Most of the clauses seem pretty run of the mill “don’t mess with our proprietary technology” stuff, but there are a few that stand out. If a developer builds an iPhone application using the iPhone SDK, which is really the only way to build an application, then that app can only be distributed via the official App Store. It can’t be distributed via something like Cydia.

Apple can also “revoke the digital certificate of any of Your Applications at any time,” and apparently, for any reason, even if the application meets all the requirements. A kill switch for enabling this was discovered in 2008.

Most interestingly, Apple will never be liable to any developer for more than $50 in damages. So if Apple botches an update, accidentally kills an application, or leaks a developer’s entire customer list to a competitor, the contract caps Apple’s liability at $50.

Still, with a few hundred thousand registered, if not active, iPhone developers and over 100,000 apps available in the App Store, Apple must have a market proposition that is attractive enough that it outweighs the restrictions of the developer agreement. Post your responses below.

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Cisco exits WiMAX market. Well, almost...

IP and core network equipment vendor Cisco has pulled the plug on its WiMAX base station operation, further highlighting the ill health of the sector.

Cisco has been stepping up its game in the telecoms sector ahead of the shift to all IP next generation networks, since it missed the boat during the rollout of 3G. The US company has a presence in both the WiMAX and LTE sectors but more as a provider of packet core networking equipment as well as edge technologies like wifi and femtocells.

Well, make that only as a provider of core and edge infrastructure. “After careful review of our mobility strategy and investments, we have decided to discontinue designing and building new WiMAX base stations,” a company spokesman said this week.

The move raises some questions over Cisco’s $330m acquisition of WiMAX kit maker Navini Networks in 2007. Texas-based Navini develops smart beamforming technologies with MIMO (Multi-Input Multi-Output) antennas, making it a strategic player in the Mobile WiMAX 802.16e space.

But Navini might be just as at home in Cisco’s edge technology portfolio where it extends the company’s wifi and wifi mesh portfolios to include WiMAX.

“We are committed to continue with our current service provider mobility strategy to provide a radio-agnostic approach to focus on the packet core and to also focus investment in radio technologies such as femtocell and wifi,” the company spokesman said.

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Spotify comes to TV in Finland

Spotify, the darling of the online music market, has expanded its presence in the Nordics through an exclusive deal with Finnish carrier TeliaSonera that will see the Spotify service deployed on a number of devices from mobile phones to TVs.

The deal builds on a similar agreement struck with Swedish operator Telia in October last year, with both Telia and TeliaSonera given exclusive rights to market and sell Spotify Premium in Sweden and Finland respectively.

The two year deal struck this week will see Spotify and TeliaSonera work together to provide a range of offerings on computers, mobile phones and TVs and comes as Finland’s Sonera launches a new IPTV service, Sonera Home TV.

Sonera Home TV will give around 1.6 million customers access to a range of free and pay TV channels as well as Spotify on the TV and a movie rental service.

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Healthy opportunities in the m-health sector

Opportunities in the global mobile healthcare market are estimated to be worth between $50bn and $60bn in 2010, prompting operators to step up their initiatives in this emerging sector.

The figures come from a global market survey from management consultancy McKinsey & Company, and suggest that mobile health (m-health) opportunities in 2010 could be worth $20bn in the US alone.

To test consumer demand for m-health services, McKinsey conducted a global market research survey of 3,000 consumers in six countries (500 each in Brazil, USA, Germany, South Africa, India and China). The findings indicate that a large proportion of the four billion people using mobile phones today struggle to gain access to good quality and affordable healthcare, both in emerging markets and more developed societies.

According to the research, almost 70 per cent of respondents were extremely or very interested in at least one m-mealth product, with Indian and South African consumers having the highest levels of interest (40-60 per cent across all products). However, US consumers expressed high levels of interest in PhoneDoctor (60 per cent) and HealthWatch (35 per cent) services.

Willingness to pay for such services was also surprisingly high for several products across geographies, with Indian customers willing to pay ten times airtime rates, and US consumers 20 times airtime rates to be able to speak to a doctor via PhoneDoctor. Brazilian and Chinese consumers meanwhile were willing to pay equivalent to a new mobile phone subscription for HealthWatch.

These two sectors - PhoneDoctor and HealthWatch - were found to hold the greatest opportunities, with almost 50 per cent of the market opportunity likely to be captured by connected biosensor devices, representing almost $30bn of incremental opportunity globally. HealthWatch services might include a SIM embedded biosensor watch that monitors vitals, and is connected to the emergency services. PhoneDoctor, which was estimated as a $10bn global market opportunity, allows customers call to speak with a qualified physician for remote diagnosis and advice.

“Mobile healthcare is clearly an opportunity to improve healthcare, manage costs and at the same time drive growth. We believe it is something that mobile operators, hospitals, pharmaceutical and medical device manufacturers, technology players, health insurance companies and governments too should all be looking at closely,” said Alessio Ascari, director at McKinsey’s Milan office.

Vodafone, a founding member of the mHealth Alliance, already has an m-health initiative up and running and Orange recently announced that it too had joined the Alliance - a partnership which uses mobile technology to improve public health and patient care in the developing world.

Orange said it will work on projects focused in West Africa, where it has a mobile presence, including Botswana, Kenya, Senegal, Burkina-Faso and Mali.

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While last week, O2 UK appointed Keith Nurcombe, a former executive at GlaxoSmithKline, to head up its new mobile healthcare division. The new department will launch in May and will examine and develop m-health and M2M initiatives that could be applied to Telefonica’s operations in Europe and Latin America.

Mike Short, vice president of public affairs at Telefonica O2 Europe, recently spoke to telecoms.com about the future of the mobile operator, and said that m-health would be a main focus going forward. ”

If you look at healthcare, national health services cannot deliver all the care we need. It will cost a fortune and, with the ageing population in Europe, there are not enough carers. So we need new ways of looking at healthcare and an understanding of how communications can help these evolve, We think there will be more focus on prevention rather than cure, on health rather than illness. That means wearable devices, or self measurement. It’s about taking some ideas from the sports field and making them mass market,” Short said.

Click for information on Informa’s second Mobile Healthcare Industry Summit, to be held in London, September 2010

The iPad arrives in the US on April 3

Apple’s crack at the e-reader market, the iPad, will become available in the US on April 3 as a wifi only version, and then in late April for the wifi and 3G model.

The device will hit European shores (Germany, Italy, Spain, Switzerland and the UK) as well as Australia, Canada and Japan late in the same month.

The iPad, dubbed as a ‘magical’ device by chief exec Steve Jobs, will sell for $499 for the 16GB, $599 for the 32GB, and $699 for the 64GB versions. The 3G-capable models will be available at $629 for 16GB, $729 for 32GB and $829 for 64GB. International pricing will be announced around launch time in late April.

Apple will open up a new section in the App Store to cater to the iPad, although the device is also able to use 140,000 existing iPhone and iPod Touch applications. However, some have noted that once some of these apps scale up to the available resolution of the iPad (1024 by 768 pixels at 132 pixels per inch) they look a bit like the blocky graphics of the Commodore 64.

Taking the e-reader market head on, the iPad will feature an iBooks app that allows users to browse, purchase and download e-books to read on the device. The screen isn’t up to the same standards as electronic ink, but that’s because it’s being pitched as a jack of all trades when teamed with the iWork suite of office tools, Safari browser (with the same lack of support for Flash and Java that the iPhone suffers from), email client, and photo, video and music player apps.

The iBookstore will be available as a free download and will feature books from the New York Times Best Seller list from both major and independent publishers, including Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins Publishers, Macmillan Publishers, Penguin Group and Simon & Schuster.

In related news, an Android-based, dual screen e-reader made by US-based Spring Design seems to be having some launch delays. The Alex, which features a 3.5″ colour LCD screen with virtual keyboard as well as a paper-like 6″ EPD screen, and connectivity provided via wifi, GSM and EVDO/CDMA, was due to go on sale at the end of February for $399.00. However, the online store has still not launched, but a company spokesman told telecoms.com that the units are ready to go, the firm is just waiting for the website to be completed and some issues with the back-end e-commerce.

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Skype makes quick exit from US Ovi Store

Internet telephony player Skype has demonstrated the importance of its newfound relationship with Verizon Wireless, by pulling the Symbian version of its VoIP app from the US Ovi Store.

Just last week, Nokia highlighted the power of consumer brands, by hopping into bed with Skype to make the client available to some 200 million smartphone users worldwide, allowing users to make VoIP calls possible over either a wifi or mobile data connection. The app is downloadable for free from the Ovi Store, but should also work on Symbian devices from other manufacturers, like Sony Ericsson.

However, the app is not available to Ovi Store browsers in the US, presumably because of the recently struck deal between Skype and US carrier Verizon.

From March, US consumers will be able to get Skype on a wide range of Verizon phones, including the BlackBerry Storm 9530, Storm2 9550, Curve 8330, Curve 8530, 8830 World Edition and Tour 9630 smartphones, as well as Droid by Motorola, Eris by HTC and the Motorola Devour.

The service will allow users to make and receive unlimited free Skype-to-Skype voice calls and send and receive instant messages.

Commenting on the announcement at the time, Dario Talmesio, senior analyst at Informa Telecoms & Media, said: “The Skype/Verizon announcement demonstrates that mobile operators are beginning to change their attitude towards VoIP providers, they have gone from blocking to managing what they consider to be an issue. However, the majority of mobile operators have yet to make a firm decision, but market forces are such that mobile operators can’t avoid Internet-based VoIP.”

The Skype app can still be installed and used on Symbian handsets in the US, it’s just not available as a direct download from the Ovi Store.

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