Another mobile video captured with a Nokia N95 8GB recorded locally featuring Louis Libin who discusses the challenges with coordination of all wireless communications at both the Democratic National Convention and the Republican Natonal Convention this summer.
In less than a week, CTIA 2008 kicks off in Las Vegas. The conference is self-proclaimed as the largest wireless conference in the world. Some might argue that “the conference formally known as 3GSM” is bigger. I’m not sure. What I can say for sure is that the big boys from the wireless industry are getting together in the desert, and this uptight overly formalized event needs a big dose of Social Media.
CTIA is an organization primarily representing the America’s carriers by a bevy of lobbyists and lawyers. It isn’t the free wheeling environment of SXSW, and certainly not the event where social media practitioners preach to the converted. All of which I believe makes it the idea event to go all out with social media and indy production. So, next week in Las Vegas Bena Roberts, founder and chief editor of the awesome blog GoMo News and I, as the newly appointed US Editor for GoMo will bring a compelling social media experience to the conference.
We kick off with an invitation only party Sunday night, March 30th at the Hard Rock Cafe to unveil our mobile video broadcast studio. An RV brightly marked will cruise up to the Las Vegas Conference Center and pick up our interviewees who will be whisked away from the saturated towers serving the CC. We’ll set up to stream from the RV and go live with a variety of pioneering people and innovative companies along side the big brands that fuel mobile content and services.
Watch GoMo News for all the up to date information on where and how to watch the broadcasts. The Sprint EDVO Rev. A network with it’s 1.8MB upload capability will provide the bandwidth we need and a couple of Nokia N95s will be the video capture devices. How are we using N95s on a CDMA network? I’ll reveal that during the week. In addition, Flixwagon is a sponsor of GoMo News on Wheels! and will be used as the service to stream from the device, store the videos and alert Twitter followers or Flixwagon fans that a new video is LIVE.
The interviews and product demos are designed to be informative and conversational. Our audience will be invited to join in with their own questions through chat during the broadcast. We want to encourage respectful participation and exchange. Ask your own questions, and I’ll pass along as many as I can. As a preview, Tuesday, April 1st between 9:15 and 9:30 AM I’m interviewing Louis Libin, who serves as Chairman, Political Conventions Communications Committee. The Committee is responsible for coordinating all the wireless users for the Democratic and Republican Presidentials Conventions and events surrounding the conventions. The users include the broadcasters, Law Enforcement, the organizing committees and others.
We start March 30th approximately 9PM Mountain Daylight Time, MDT, (GMT -7). See you there.
We are grateful to GoMo News on Wheels! sponsors: Flixwagon, mPulse, MCN, and Smaato. And to the GoMo News Blender sponsor JumpTap.
While speaking at The Progress and Freedom Foundation Aspen Summit on August 21, 2007, Eric Schmidt states that Google plans to make good on their 700 MHz bid of 4.6 Billion with a caveat. He explains that the FCC’s final language will be “important.” The principles that the FCC embraced need to be reflected in the actual rules when they are published. At about 30 minutes, you’ll hear the confirmation. In addition, Schmidt seems to indicate Google is collaborating with others on their bid.
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9uy1o6-azI 325 250]
He also explains the power of the same features highlighted by John Stratton, CMO of Verizon Wireless that the combination of phone, camera, data network and GPS makes the advertising delivered to mobile subscribers enormously valuable.
The Independent reported that Orange is at odds with Nokia over its new music service which is scheduled for launch today. The paper claims to have “seen” a memo from Orange to Nokia that threatens to derange an 8GB device to be debuted today. Orange insists that if Nokia doesn’t agree to a trial measuring the performance of Nokia’s music service against Orange’s own music service their handset business will go elsewhere. The operator set a deadline of 31 August for Nokia’s reply.
The memo said: “We are still to see a working demo of the music store; we would expect a significant level of customer confusion and increased calls to customer services as a result of housing both players on a device and our data tariffs would be negatively impacted as they were not designed to deal with such large individual music files. In short, if this was an Orange service, we would definitely not launch yet to protect our customer experience.”
As Nokia prepares to launch an iTunes competitor today, Orange wants to ensure that their handset provider doesn’t cannibalize the operator’s revenue from its own music service. One has to wonder if the “trial” will infact result in the trottling of Nokia’s service to ensure a better subscriber experience for Orange. So, perhaps when it comes to Nokia’s internal narrative, We have 800 million customers outside the US and only 4 customers inside the US, Orange seems to be rewriting that statement. The network owner is still in charge regardless of what Nokia think.
Many mobile prepaid service plans in the US still require a per SMS charge. Most charge for sending and receiving and include a premium charge for sending to other countries. Have you ever sat down to figure out how much you’re really paying for this frictionless and convenient mode of communication?
The Plans
A Bit of Math
SMS max message size is 160 characters. One character equals one byte. There are 1024 x 1024 or 1,048,576 bytes in 1MB.
So there are 1,048,576 / 160 or 6553.6 SMS messages in 1MB of data.
NOTE: this assumes you use all the characters available in every message which none of us do. Some examples of really short messages show up on my phone frequently like “Ready?” “You home?” “Let’s go.” For illustration purposes and easier math, I’m assuming all 160 characters per message are used.
Calculating message traffic per MB these prepaid subscribers are paying the following rates.
Fun Facts
Note the unlimited amount depends on how many are sent, but for illustration lets’s say you sent and received 1000 SMS. You’re per MB charge is $131.07.
No wonder the Internet is jealous of mobile data! Oh! and Happy 15th to SMS.
FCC Chairman pledges open access for part of 700 Mhz auction.
“Whoever wins this spectrum has to provide … truly open broadband network — one that will open the door to a lot of innovative services for consumers,” Martin said in an interview Monday.
What this would mean in practice: “You can use any wireless device and download any mobile broadband application, with no restrictions,” Martin explained. The only exceptions would be software that is illegal or could harm a network.
Here.
The opposition:
Verizon Wireless - We don’t need no stinkin’ open access
The doubters:
Wired - FCC Champions Open Access (Wink, Wink) - Read the fine print folks
The BREW Conference is traditionally focused on developers. Past events brought together operators, handset makers and developers working with Qualcomm’s BREW platform for the delivery of content, namely games and other applications. There were several new aspects to the conference in 2007 that distinquish it from previous years. A clear signal of the change in the conference and for BREW, itself, was the choice of Keynote speakers, notably H3 and Time Warner Music.
BREW and GSM Operators
The addition of GSM operators this year was a first for the conference. You might wonder what the attraction for a GSM operator would be in a platform designed to deliver applications to CDMA subscribers. The answer is found in Qualcomm’s move 18 months ago to break BREW into three components: UiOne, DeliveryOne, and QPoint.
UiOne has been deployed by O2, Telecom Italia and apparently there is a deal in the works between Qualcomm and Three for use of the platform (no official announcement, yet). In Europe, the UI is determined and controlled by the handset manufacturers, but UiOne places that critical aspect of the user experience back into the operator’s domain. UiOne allows for customization through theme development as illustrated by Alltel Wireless’ Celltop application. The availability of the scripting language TrigML from UiOne’s SDK makes the UI extensible. Third party theme development, enhanced discovery and web services delivery are simplified which is very attractive to operators regardless of their underlying network technologies.
Welcome Media/Content Providers
Also, a new addition to the conference this year was the participation of media companies like keynote presenter Time Warner Music (TWM). This is foreshadowing to the future of BREW plus MediaFLO. A number of other media companies were present as attendees changing the BREW audience and definitely the conference session lineup with broader coverage than in past years. The BREW Conference has been technology centric, but with the expansion of participants new topics arose focused on solutions over technology and seamless user experience as the path to monetization.
