Network Noise

The increasing importance of Android to the business mobile experience was reflected this week with two UC vendors launching new apps for the platform.

Vidyo was first to take the plunge, announcing the general availability of VidyoMobile on the Android market, allowing business customers to offer mobile workers the ability to participate in video conferences from selected Androids, including Motorola's Xoom and Samsung's Galaxy lines.

The app also interconnects with Apple iOS devices and HD room systems from vendors such as Polycom and Cisco.

Vidyo claims the app can deliver up to 720p HD resolution, and in common with other Vidyo endpoints, enables conferences of up to 100 participants.

Meanwhile Swyx also released its SwyxIt! Mobile app into the wild this week, enabling single contact numbers and UC functionality such as presence and faster call-set up capabilities based on a GPRS, 3G of WiFi connection to a central server.

Business customers must already be running SwyxWare 2011 R2 with corresponding SwyxWebAccess and mobile licences, the firm said.

In a new guest blog, Dan Cunliffe, head of BE Wholesale, looks at the growing assertiveness of the networking sector at the heart of the IT proposition, and explores some of the trends that will continue to shape the industry in 2012.

2012 will certainly be a defining one for the IT industry. As a number of key trends, such as 'cloud mobilisation' and the 'consumerisation of IT' gather momentum in the British workplace, the most important challenge of our time is the fast-changing makeup of our customer base and how channel players can and must adapt to these changes.

As the so called Generation Y begins to take hold and leave its stamp on the corporate workplace, it presents providers with their biggest test yet. Today's users are online 24/7 and live and breathe digital and social, so connectivity plays a massive part in their day to day life.

This new generation also has its own expectations of the workplace. Their newfound love for technology means they increasingly expect to be able to use their personal devices at work; something almost unheard of just five years ago. They expect business applications to work like their consumer counterparts, and they wish to interact and collaborate with each other in the way they do with their friends on social networks. While this 'consumerisation of IT' was bubbling away for a while, the smartphone revolution brought it to the fore last year, so it just goes to show how quickly we need to move to capture the imagination of the latest trends.

Over the last year, the UK has also seen personal laptops and tablets enter the workplace, driving the need for greater connectivity. Earlier this year, industry analysts IDC conducted a survey into the consumerisation of IT and found that 95% of the workers surveyed have used technology they purchased themselves for work, meaning that employees now expect to be able to connect to work data from wherever they are.

As cloud computing continues to mature, the mobile cloud is becoming increasingly important. Smartphones and 'apps' may have driven cloud adoption amongst consumers, but this trend will continue into the business arena. 4G implementation is planned for 2013 and mobile data traffic growth is expected to mushroom 26-fold by 2015.

As a result, quality bandwidth is not enough in isolation - connection quality will continue to increase in importance as people look to maximise their online footprint. Another factor to consider is that as customers do more demanding tasks on their devices such as video calling and VoIP calling, factors like low latency, jitter and packet loss also become more important.

Every transaction is powerful - if got right, it will help a company grow during 2012 - but get it wrong, and an organisation's reputation can be seriously damaged. Being able to offer customers added choice, flexibility, and above all, good service, will guarantee resellers a competitive edge. Companies are searching for the products that can help them adapt and lead in this new environment, and it is our job to ensure we give them everything they need to stay ahead of the game.

I want to applaud Claranet for its honesty, earlier this week the managed services provider gamely owned up to having provided web services to Channel 5 for the latest disastrous series of Big Brother, which let's be frank, had pretty much run its course 10 years ago.

The firm stepped up to provide Channel 5 with a high bandwidth, high availability infrastructure for a new website with OD video capabilities, and a Facebook app, backed up on an Amazon Web Services IaaS platform.

It was designed to handle 45,000 page impressions a second, said Claranet, although given the size of the Big Brother audience, I can't help thinking this wasn't much of a challenge for them.

Paul Thornton-Jones of Channel 5 drew the short straw when the press release was being drafted: "The application hosting needed to be able to cope with huge and unpredictable traffic spikes.

"To be affordable however, this capacity needed to be scalable so that Channel 5 were [sic] not paying considerable sums during periods of low demand," he said.

Or any demand at all, in fact.

Still, at least it wasn't the website of something truly hideous, eh? Some poor sod must be hosting Simon Cowell's website. I wonder where their press release is.

Many in the industry felt Britain's mobile operators over paid for their 3G licenses on 2000, writes Nick Booth. 

At £5 billion each in the UK, the general consensus was that Vodafone and Orange would have some serious renegotiation to conduct. Teams of fearsome lobbyists were unleashed.

(I wonder if any of the mobile operators received any tax breaks as a result.)

As 2012 approaches, the bell is about to go for the next round, at the start of 2012. This time Ofcom will auction off two chunks of 4G frequencies.

On offer is a 72 megahertz (MHz) chunk of the soon-to-be-cleared UHF analogue TV band (near 800 MHz) and a much larger chunk in the microwave band near 2.6 GHz, a tad above the Wi-Fi band. The UHF frequencies will be good for expanding wireless internet coverage into rural areas, while the microwave addition will fuel better urban services.

Will it be headless chicken time all over again? Unlikely. All the operators are older and a lot wiser. Vodafone has obviously come a long way. Doubtless they've evolved from 3G to 4G negotiating skills.

Whatever happens, they won't be adhering to any standards.
 
The new 4G on offer won't be the 4G standard of the UN's International Telecommunications Union or any variant of LTE proposed by NTT Docomo or the Third Generation Project Partnership (3GPP).

Still, at 100 megabits per second, who cares? Dive in and fill your boots. We'll pay the consequences later.

We've haven't learned much have we?

On Tuesday this week the Apple faithful gathered in California to watch what they thought would be the unveiling of the much-anticipated iPhone 5. But they were to be disappointed. In the words of one famous nerd, it might have been Apple's "worst launch ever."

Now, I've never used an iPhone. My first smartphone was an HTC Desire and a few weeks ago I traded up to the Samsung Galaxy S2. The Galaxy is a far, far better device than the iPhone 4, and beats the new iPhone 4S pretty handily as well. If you don't believe me, check out this graphic from Engadget which lays it all out.

But I have little doubt that the industry's disappointment at the absence of the iPhone 5 will be swiftly forgotten, and that brings me on to Steve Jobs, who as you will know by now, died late Wednesday after a long and brave fight against cancer.

In the coming months, I think we will see a rush of innovation from other smartphone vendors as they look to exploit the long gap between iPhone models. In that time Apple's tech wizards will be hard at work, too, making the number 5 the best iPhone yet.

Jobs' genius, you see, was to force everyone around him, including his competitors, to innovate. In the last few years he pushed the boundaries of mobility through Apple, and that has enriched all our lives, whatever we thought of his company.

In 2005, Jobs stood before Stanford University graduands to deliver a commencement address during which he told them to: "Stay hungry, stay foolish."

Now is the time for us to live by that mantra. I believe the industry figures that hunger to invent and are brave enough to screw it up once in a while will be Steve Jobs' true legacy.

As you will probably know by now, Nokia today announced that it will close a factory in Romania and lay off over 2,000 employees, with another 1,000 jobs expected to go elsewhere in the business as a result of changes to its Location & Commerce business.

Parts of the media have been quick to paint this news as further evidence of a company in near-terminal decline. And while it is true that the mighty Finnish mobility firm has got a lot of things wrong, we may all have been too hasty in writing it off completely.

Last week MicroScope sat down with Carsten Brinkschulte, founder and chief executive officer of Synchronica, the mobility software developer that bought Nokia's operator-branded messaging business earlier this year, and discussed just this issue.

Synchronica specialises in carrier grade software that connects users to email, messaging, social media, social gaming and location apps and more, across smartphones and less sophisticated feature phones.

Its software is white-labelled across the globe by network providers and hard-wired into handsets by manufacturers. It's possible you've used it without knowing, indeed, if you have a Samsung smartphone, you almost certainly have.

It's acquisition of Nokia's messaging business has, at a stroke, more than doubled its annual sales; the $10m firm is now on course to do around $34m this year, as well as bringing it a slew of patents around mobile email, and an ongoing development and support contract for Symbian handsets worth $18.2m over 18 months.

All well and good, but what does this have to do with whether Nokia lives, dies, or is bought by Microsoft?

Well, Nokia's Romanian facility specialised in feature phones, not smartphones, which are off the menu as far as most European consumers are concerned.

However, they are still selling like hot cakes in emerging economies, and according to Nokia, it is keen to ensure "optimal proximity to suppliers and key markets ... as Nokia's high-volume Asian factories provide greater scale and proximity benefits."

Put simply, it wants to be closer to the people who are still buying feature phones.

"Yes," says Brinkschulte, "Nokia's smartphone products have not matched the competition, but in feature phones they are king and that's something that people don't like to talk about because it's no longer sexy."

"Analysts are ignoring 82% of Nokia's volume if they cut out feature phones, and in key markets like Africa and India they are certainly not losing marketshare. This is 90% of the market, and we shouldn't ignore it," he continues.

So while Nokia's smartphone business may not impress the mobility sophisticates of Europe it seems silly to write the company off. Today's decision is tragic for the affected Nokia employees, but a deeper look at the business shows its logic may just be remarkably prescient.

Personally, I'm obsessed with the continuing story of white space, the invention that uses unused parts of the TV spectrum to create a new form of wi-fi, reports Nick Booth.

The upshot is that large parts of Britain - unreachable parts of the countryside - can now get broadband. Well, they could do in 2012.

Am I the only person who gives a monkeys? Write in and tell me.

Boffins have now successfully tested the system at 5.4Mbps, with Cambridge-based firm TTP (The Technology Partnership) successfully streaming BBC iPlayer HD video at speeds of over 5.4Mbps, across a 5.6km white space link from its research centre to a house in the rural village of Orwell.  

The early success of these trials demonstrates the potential importance of white space connections - which take advantage of unused TV spectrum - to deliver fast and cost-effective rural broadband to some 600,000 poorly served homes and business, as well as for new applications such as remote smart metering.  

White space broadband has a practical range of up to 10km, versus just 4km for typical wired ADSL connections and the cost of deployment will be significantly less than fibre over long distances. While white space works much the same way as Wi-Fi, TV spectrum signals travel farther, are better at penetrating walls and require fewer access points.   

"The TTP white space link is very much still work in progress but we expect to rapidly reach speeds of greater than 12Mbps over 6km using a single TV channel," says Richard Walker, head of wireless at TTP.

"Compared to wired ADSL broadband that struggles to achieve 2Mbps with less than half the range."

Consumers will have to purchase a second TV aerial to go on the roof or in the attic, along with a white space router similar in size and price to that of an existing home router, Charges will be equivalent to current ADSL costs.

Where can I get a white space router? Who even makes them? Seeing how this is a British invention, you'd hope that a UK company is knocking out white space routers in some factory in China, but I wouldn't bet on it.

Is this a big opportunity for comms dealers or telcos? Who will sell these services? 

Costis Papadimitrakopoulos, CEO at Globo, examines how the mobile landscape has changed over the last 10 years, the challenges that this has created for mobile device management and the opportunities that lie therein for the channel.

If you looked in most offices 10 years ago, you'd see dozens of people clutching the same, identical, grey 'business' handsets that had been distributed to all members of staff, regardless of job function or needs.

Just like email, the business smartphone was expected to revolutionise the way that firms communicated, making it possible for employees to work on the go, thereby boosting productivity.

Despite their clunky operating systems and poor battery life, the business smartphones of the mid 2000s did make it easier for employees to stay in touch whilst out of the office, but it was mostly via voice and not data services.

With 'poor' mobile broadband network coverage initially many devices were unable to access the internet over 3G, surfing the web or performing other tasks like sending an email could be a lengthy process.

Move forward a few years, and with advances in technology and the growth of convergence, things started to change very quickly, as did the face of business for the UK.

Thanks to the arrival of smartphones, along with the evolution of mobile networks, mobile users were presented with a wider range of mobile devices than ever before.

However, many companies continued to stick with 'business' handsets offering access to a limited range of business applications, citing concerns about how 'consumer oriented' products and services might impact security and productivity and how difficult it would be to manage a multitude of different handsets across an organisation.

Even today this is an issue that businesses are finding tricky to overcome, with many businesses still only choosing to deploy corporate email on employee handsets. Just look at the results of a recent survey of IT professionals by Cisco, in which 45 per cent of the people polled said that they are struggling to implement mobile workforce systems.

With Forrester predicting that by 2015 there will be 649 million mobile workers globally, compared to 375 million in 2010, this presents a golden opportunity for resellers to generate revenue by consulting firms on their business mobile strategy.

With new technology now available that allows companies to securely deploy and manage a whole host of different handsets, not to mention centrally deploy and manage business applications down to a user level, there's no need for companies to stick with a single phone manufacturer. Instead they can select devices for employees based on their role and what they will use the phone for when out of the office, thereby boosting productivity.

Most enterprises understand that mobility can bring enormous advantages and cost savings, yet many are uncertain of how to realise these benefits fully.

The time has come for enterprises to adopt mobility strategies: to standardise, support, plan for and deploy mobile solutions throughout their organisations in ways that control costs and directly support business objectives.

With the ongoing convergence of fixed and mobile technologies, and with the advent of mobile broadband capabilities, the potential for mobility to become an integrated and coherent enterprise tool has never been greater.

Last month Network Noise reported a rush of interest among business owners in buying up their trademarks in the .XXX domain, a new extension designed for the use of the adult services industry.

However, with the 'sunrise' phase of domain registration for .XXX sites now open, IP specialists Marks & Clerk say there is another, little publicised, way for brands to protect their trademarks from "the embarrassing and damaging consequences" of unwanted association with pornographic sites.

Instead of buying up their trademarks, businesses are also able to block their IP from registration under the .XXX domain.

In all other domains this is not an option; you must actively buy your trademark to protect it, a costly and time-consuming process that will ultimately leave you with a website you don't want, according to Douglas Thomson, trademark attorney at Marks & Clerk.

"There is a danger that trademark owners could miss this opportunity. The only sure way to protect their brands cheaply is by blocking them from the .XXX domain. A block can be put on domain names as soon as the sunrise period opens on 7 September," says Thomson.

As if the legless needed any more encouragement to spill their (mental and physical) guts, BT and Heineken have just announced plans to supply a new wireless internet service, the Heineken Hub, to 100 London boozers, and 200 more across the UK by year end.

According to the blurb, customers will be able to get online quickly with any wireless-enabled device and will receive "exclusive, location-specific (you're in a pub!) content including the best stories from news, views, features, business, culture and sports," supplied by The Independent's new sister title, i.

Rick Lawrence, Heineken UK marketing manager, said: "The initiative will provide excellent exposure for Heineken among its key target audience and build greater affinity between the brand and its customers."

It's sweet of Rick to be so optimistic, don't you think?

Cheers!

This Friday a (possibly slightly unhinged) Swede named Hans Eriksson will take to the streets of London to conduct a 24-hour experiment in video streaming and social media engagement.

Hans is the chairman of live broadcasting service Bambuser, and from midday on 9 September will be pounding the capital's streets broadcasting everything he encounters live on his mobile phone.

Hans' itinerary will be set entirely by his online audience, and Hans is encouraging his audience to send him off the beaten track and explore parts of the city that tourists rarely get to see.

"I'm totally at the mercy of the public and their recommendations [and] I'm totally open to suggestions about where I should go," says Hans.

"I know I'm also going to be tired, hungry and thirsty at times, so suggestions about the best places where I can chill out and refuel will be gratefully received," he adds.

The experiment does have a serious purpose, Hans is hoping to test the technical boundaries and capacity of live video streaming, not to mention the power (or lack of same) of social media.

Potential agenda-setters can follow Hans' progress via his Tumblr. But please resist the temptation to send him to brothels, crack dens, or Peckham...

To Worcestershire, this autumnal Monday morning, where a nasty piece of work named Hashim Ali has been locked up after fronting a chip and pin scam while dressed as a BT engineer.

Ali fronted a three-strong gang that first called their mostly elderly victims to tell them their phones would need to be switched from analogue to digital lines.

According to Worcester News, Ali then turned up with a portable bank card reader to take 'payment' for the non-existent service. Once the homeowner had entered their details, it was off to the cashpoint, or Amazon for a spot of good old CNP fraud.

The defence made out that Ali, who pleaded guilty to 32 counts of burglary and fraud, came from a decent family but had fallen in with the wrong crowd, 'yer honour. Either way, he will be spending the next three years, less time spent in custody, in a young offenders' institution.

Police said the very fact a BT engineer had turned up at someone's house was a bit of a tip-off (satire).

Sad news from London, where BT is in the process of taking down the 31 dish-shaped aerials from the BT Tower, before they become unsafe and a hazard to people on the ground.

The telco received approval from its local council back in March, and has already removed half of the aerials.

According to BT, the work has to be done as a precautionary measure, although the Evening Standard claims that many of the bolts and brackets holding the dishes up are at imminent risk of failing, and BT had already discontinued maintenance because of a lack of spare parts.

Of course, the march of progress has now rendered the dishes largely obsolete, and they have long since been overtaken by faster technology.

Happily this doesn't mean the end for the iconic landmark; besides a useful venue for BT corporate jollies and a platform for Comic Relief and Children in Need fundraising, BT still uses the tower to manage and control global TV transmissions around the clock.

And as a Grade II listed structure there is no question of demolishing it.

But for some MicroScope readers the removal of the dishes may have extra poignancy, having literally followed the aerials from cradle to grave. As a small child I remember watching an edition of Blue Peter in the mid-1980s where daredevil presenter Peter Duncan dangled from a crane, hoisting the brand new aerials into position.