Wireless Blog

HP ProCurve has introduced a combination wired and wireless client access device for the network edge, along with two new wireless LAN controllers.

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom recently unveiled the first of 1,100 solar powered bus shelters that will be installed throughout the city between now and 2013. The shelters will use the sun’s rays to power their intercom, LED lighting, and even wireless routers that will help blanket the city with WiFi. They were designed by Lundberg Design and contracted through Clear Channel Outdoor, which places ads on the shelter.

The roof is constructed from an innovative 40% post-industrial recycled polycarbonate material embedded with thin-film photovoltaic cells. The panel powers the NextMuni display that tells people when their bus is coming, a Push-To-Talk system so blind people can hear the NextMuni information, environmentally friendly light bulbs, and free Wi-Fi. The old florescent lights in the current shelters use 336 watts; the new LED panels use only 74 watts.

“Transit shelters that use photovoltaics, LEDS, and WiFi are going to be standard in the future and I’m proud that San Francisco is once again acting like the pace car for other cities by trying and implementing these technologies,” said the mayor last week.

The polycarbonate roof structure was designed by 3form Materials Solutions with photovoltaic laminates by Konarka Power Plastic. Neither company had previously implanted photovoltaic cells into a polycarbonate base, but developed a technology that realizes negligible electricity loss, and subsequently patented the process.

The SFMTA’s transit shelter advertising and maintenance contract with Clear Channel will generate at least $300 million for the SFMTA over the 20-year term of the contract, says The City.

Qualcomm has introduced the Snapdragon QSD8650A chipset at Computex, this 45nm chipset is designed for smartphones and smartbooks and will start sampling before the end of the year.

Microsoft has decided to drop the three-application limit it had planned for its entry-level Windows 7 Starter operating system, which is slated for introduction this fall.

Many netbook vendors intend to deploy Windows 7 Starter on the next round of mini-notebook products for price-conscious consumers. Microsoft said it had decided to drop its Windows 7 Starter app limit after receiving feedback from partners and customers asking for an entry-level OS that delivers a richer small notebook PC experience.

Windows 7 Starter customers therefore will have "the ability to run as many applications simultaneously as they would like, instead of being constricted to the three-application limit that the previous starter editions included," said Brandon LeBlanc, a spokesperson for the Microsoft Windows development team.

The 3G Netbook Option

LeBlanc said Microsoft believes the changes will make Windows 7 Starter an even more attractive option for customers who want a small notebook PC for performing very basic tasks, such as browsing the Web, checking e-mail and enhancing personal productivity. However, analysts note that some businesses also are beginning to deploy low-cost netbooks.

"Due to their small size and low price, PC vendors have begun to find some traction for mini-notebooks in the transportation, logistics, repair and servicing, manufacturing and health-care markets," said Tracy Tsai, a senior research analyst at Gartner.

With many wireless operators now subsidizing the price of the netbooks running on their 3G infrastructures, some enterprises may want to consider netbooks running Windows 7 as a way to fulfill some enterprise functions that previously were the exclusive purview of smartphones, noted Shiv Bakhshi, an independent analyst covering mobile devices. "The beauty of netbooks is that as wireless networks provide more bandwidth, you can do a lot of stuff with them which users find a bit more limiting to conduct on smartphones," he said.

When it comes...

RFaxis, an Irvine, California-based fabless semiconductor company focused on innovative, next-generation RF solutions for the wireless and connectivity markets, today announced that it is readying its first two chips for debut: the RFX2401 and RFX2402.

The display company behind Amazon's Kindle electronic reader is being acquired. Prime View International, a Taiwanese-based business, is acquiring E Ink for $215 million, according to the companies.

PVI is providing an equity placement and a convertible bond led by KGI, a Taiwanese securities company. The deal is expected to close in the fourth quarter, once regulatory approvals are met.

PVI and Cambridge, Mass-based E Ink have collaborated over the past few years by developing the e-book displays of the Kindle, Sony Reader and now the Kindle DX, which is slated to be available June 10. Since launching in 1997, E Ink has captured the attention of investors who provided a total of $150 million in funding.

PVI has been on an acquisition path in the last several years to increase the development of its electronic paper business. In 2008, PVI bought a 74 percent stake in Hydis Technologies of Korea, which boosted the company's capacity. Before that, PVI acquired the e-paper business of Phillips Electronics.

On The Agenda

Acquiring E Ink was a natural progression for the company.

"It's good news on all fronts," said Srira Peruvemba, vice president of marketing at E INK. "From a product-development standpoint, this will accelerate our ability to bring out color and flexible display."

Both companies were working independently on color and flexible display with some collaboration. Each company, however, has had to file separate patents along the way. Now, according to Peruvemba, they can focus on the same developments and better attack the market as one entity.

Once combined, the new entity will begin working on flexible displays for e-readers.

"You can have a newspaper device that will be dropped on the floor and it will not shatter; this is the fundamental advantage with flexible displays," Peruvemba added.

The company also plans to go after the newspaper market...

The WiMAX Forum Global Congress, being held this week in Amsterdam, is expected to have 4000+ attendees from 125 countries, two days of sessions, 100+ speakers, and 80 exhibitors.

Meanwhile, WiMAX Taipei 2009 is running concurrently with Computex. WiMAX Taipei 2009 will demonstrate Taiwan’s WiMAX ecosystem and telecommunication solutions aboard Taipei Metro.

• Sequans Communications, the world’s leading WiMAX chipmaker, announced today that it has shipped its one millionth chip. Sequans chips are present in virtually all global WiMAX deployments and powering the world’s most important WiMAX networks.
• Taiwan-based network equipment makers are expected to benefit from the launch of more notebooks with built-in WiMAX modules by brand vendors including Acer, Asustek Computer, Dell and Hewlett-Packard (HP), according to sources within Taiwan’s network equipment industry.
• Alvarion demonstrated mobile WiMAX applications using the company’s WiMAX Forum Certified BreezeMAX base station. Alvarion announced substantial growth of its WiMAX network deployments. Five years after being introduced, Alvarion’s cumulative WiMAX shipments have now reached more than $500 million. Alvarion’s list of WiMAX deployments continues to grow with over 40 commercial WiMAX networks in Latin America, over 60 in Africa, over 25 in North America, over 35 in Western Europe, over 60 in Eastern Europe and over 30 in Asia.
• The Economic Times of India reports that Tata Communications (TCL) has signed up 50,000 subscribers for its WiMAX service.

Annual revenues from WiMAX 802.16e broadband subscribers will exceed $15 billion globally by 2014, according to a recent report from Juniper Research. Juniper trimmed its previous WiMAX revenue forecasts due to spectrum auction postponements in several countries, funding problems from the credit crunch, and slow network implementations. The WiMAX Forum this February announced that WiMAX Service Providers now offer networks covering 430 million people, or POPS, globally and are on a path to nearly double to 800 million people by end of 2010.

Maravedis forecasts an accumulated 75 million WiMAX subscribers by the end of 2014. Select Key Findings (pdf):

• Korean and Taiwanese ODMs accounted for 60% of CPEs shipped in 2008.
• The 802.16e-2005 share of new WiMAX subscribers will peak in 2012 and be dominated by mobile devices with embedded wireless modems.
• Alcatel-Lucent, Alvarion, Motorola and Samsung were the leaders in BWA and WiMAX combined equipment markets,
• The WiMAX equipment market, which includes active WiMAX subscribers, will reach an annual US$4 billion in 2014, from over 2US$ billion at the end of 2008.
• Proprietary and fixed WiMAX equipment markets will continue to grow organically to meet the needs of WISPs and vertical segments.
• Service revenues generated by broadband wireless services will reach US$15 billion in 2014.

Comcast plans to resell Clear’s Mobile WiMAX service in Portland, while Time Warner Cable has plans to do likewise in one of their Texas franchises later this year.

Comcast paid over $1B to get a piece of the Sprint/Clear action while Time Warner Cable put up $550 million. Clearwire has launched WiMAX service in Baltimore, Portland, Ore., and this month in Atlanta.

But the road to 4G has two branches: WiMAX and Long Term Evolution. Cox Communications is going the LTE route, as are most cellular companies, explains CED Magazine.

Greenfield operators, in regions competing with incumbents, expect to provide a positive, ‘out-of-the-box’ subscriber experience. But it won’t be easy. Using protocols defined by the Open Mobile Alliance Device Management (OMA-DM) Working Group, cable operators will support management of small mobile devices such as mobile phones, PDAs and palm top computers.

It enables provisioning, configuration of devices, software updates and fault management. Once the device is registered and operational on the network, the same set of lifecycle management capabilities are available under WiMAX or LTE.

The United States has 64 million basic cable subscribers and 40 million Digital Video subscribers (104 million total) as well as 39 million cable modem subscribers (includes commercial) and 20 million Cable Phone subscribers, reports the NCTA.

The largest Multiple System Operators in the United States are Comcast, with 24 million video customers, Time Warner Cable with 14.6 million, and Cox Communications with 6.2 million customers.

The math of analog reclamation is compelling, explains Cable Digital News. If a cable system converts 40 analog channels to digital and compresses them, it provides enough capacity for about 80 to 100 HD channels, HD VoD, and wideband at download speeds of up to 150 Mbit/s.

In the final quarter of 2008, AT&T U-verse added more than a quarter-million subscribers to exceed the 1 million mark. Verizon, with 1.9 million FiOS video subscribers, is now about the seventh-largest cable operator, with AT&T ranking 10th. Together, they total about 3 million subs vrs the 104 million total of traditional MSOs.

Wholesale subscribers, like Comcast and Time Warner Cable, are projected to comprise nearly half of Clear’s subscriber base in the next few years.

The growing category of netbooks, many of which are built around Intel's Atom processor, is getting a competitor. Qualcomm announced Sunday it is expanding its Snapdragon platform with a new chipset for "smartbooks" and new smartphones.

Smartbooks are smaller than netbooks and will be sold through telecommunications companies.

Improved Battery, GPS

The San Diego, Calif.-based company said its chipset, which will use the new 45-nanometer process technology, will provide devices with faster processing, improved battery life, and other enhancements, such as GPS.

The Snapdragon QSD8650A chipset, expected to be available for sampling by the end of the year, includes a 1.3-GHz processor, which Qualcomm said gives 30 percent higher performance and 30 percent lower dynamic power. The chipset also enables multi-mode UMTS and CDMA 3G, integrated GPS, high-definition video recording and playback, Bluetooth 2.1, Wi-Fi support, high-resolution WXGA displays, and various mobile technologies.

The Snapdragon family also includes the original one-GHz QSD8x50 chipset and the 45nm QSD8672 with dual CPUs of up to 1.5 GHz.

In its announcement, Qualcom said more than 15 manufacturers are developing more than 30 Snapdragon-based products. The first, the Toshiba TG01 Smartphone, was introduced in February. At the Computex trade show currently taking place in Taiwan, Snapdragon-based smartbooks are being shown by ASUS, HTC, Toshiba, and others.

Netbooks are booming as a category, but the jury is still out on smartbooks. Some industry observers have noted that the advantages offered by smartbooks over netbooks, including GPS and long battery life, may be outweighed by several disadvantages.

Where Fits In?

The biggest disadvantage for Avi Greengart, an analyst with industry research firm Current Analysis, is that smartbooks don't offer something better or different.

A smartbook, he said, is "bigger than a smartphone but smaller than a netbook," and its advantages include an ability to boot up almost immediately, a "tremendous" battery life, "hefty computing power,"...

Amazon.com is making major strides in the e-book market, but another Internet giant seems poised to offer some healthy competition. Google is planning to enter the e-book market with a program that would enable publishers to sell digital versions of their latest titles directly to consumers, according to The New York Times.

Google couldn't immediately be reached for comment, but the Times reported the company held discussions with publishers at the annual BookExpo convention in New York during the weekend. During those discussions, Google reportedly signaled its intent to introduce an e-book store to compete with Amazon.

Google the E-Tailer

Amazon is working to dominate the e-book market through its Kindle reader, but some publishers are concerned that the e-tailer's prices are too aggressive and may welcome Google if it sells digital books at better margins.

Amazon peddles best sellers, on average, for $9.99. That's significantly less than the $26 at which bookstores typically sell hardcover editions. Google reportedly would allow publishers to set their own prices for e-books.

As Michael Gartenberg, a vice president at Interpret, said Amazon's pricing strategy doesn't hurt publishers. Amazon may sell the hard covers at $9.99 in digital format, he said, but Amazon takes a loss when publishers won't lower their prices. What's more, he said, the pricing strategy is vital to educating the market.

"The lesson we learned from iTunes is when you are trying to teach consumers a new paradigm, uniform pricing makes a lot of sense," Gartenberg said. "Once you are five or six years down the road and you've taught consumers the notion of buying music at 99 cents and downloading it to your computer and transferring it to your phone or media player, you can get into things like variable pricing."

Google vs Amazon

Google is no stranger to e-books. The company is making available 1.5...