Steve Blum's Blog

Seven more California regional broadband consortia up for funding

2012-02-05T18:30:00.000-08:00

California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) staff are recommending approval of the remaining seven regional broadband consortia grant requests. The full commission is set to vote on the recommendation at its 16 February 2012 meeting.

In December, the commission funded the first seven of the fifteen applications it received and rejected another that did not meet minimum application requirements. The remaining seven consortia were provisionally endorsed, but told to work with CPUC staff to further develop their proposals, particularly where definitions of deliverables were concerned.

Six of the seven are regional consortia that were nurtured by the California Emerging Technology Fund (CETF), which accounted for thirteen out of the original applications. All of the CETF-backed applicants have either been funded by CPUC through the California Advanced Services Fund (CASF) or are on the list for approval on the 16th. One independent applicant from Los Angeles County – the California's One Million New Internet User Coalition – is also on track for funding. The legislation that set aside CASF money for regional consortia allowed for higher funding and multiple projects in Los Angeles County. The CETF-backed consortium in LA was funded in the first round.

First year funding of $150,000 (or near to it) would be approved for the remaining seven applicants if the draft resolution is adopted as is, with second and third year funding dependent on performance. The total, three-year amounts of the seven grants that the commission will consider are:

California’s One Million New Internet User Coalition - $450,000
Central Sierra Connect Broadband Consortium - $450,000
Connected Capital Area Broadband Consortium - $448,301
Eastern Sierra Connect Regional Broadband Consortium - $450,000
Gold Country Broadband Consortium - $450,000
Inland Empire Regional Broadband Consortium - $450,000
San Diego Imperial Regional Broadband Consortium - $450,000

More information about the regional consortia, including geographic coverage, is available here.

3G networks reach deep into Australia and New Zealand

2012-02-05T18:13:00.001-08:00

Travelling through New Zealand and Australia with a smart phone or iPad is painless and relatively inexpensive for a traveller. Three national mobile networks – Telstra, Optus and Vodafone – cover Australia. Optus also markets service under the Virgin Mobile brand. In New Zealand, it's Telecom NZ and Vodafone, with newcomer 2degrees building out its network.

My assessment of actual coverage is subjective. I used Vodafone in both countries, and Telstra in Australia. Vodafone NZ and Telstra do a very good job of covering the areas I visited: long swathes of both North and South Islands in New Zealand, and Melbourne, Adelaide and the countryside in between in Australia. Vodafone Australia's coverage is less comprehensive. I occasionally checked on Optus' and Telecom NZ's availability, and could not see any significant difference between their coverage and that of Telstra and Vodafone NZ, respectively.

All four companies market their services through their own stores and resellers, and do a good job of reaching out to travellers with iPads and unlocked GSM/3G phones. I have a long standing pre-paid account with Vodafone NZ that lets me use its Australian sister network on the same terms. Just topping up once a year keeps my phone number active.

Getting a microsim for my iPad from Telstra took longer than it should have – I spent about 45 minutes in a Melbourne store going through the bureaucratic steps necessary for setting up an account, and the other three carriers appear to have similar procedures. It's a far cry from Vodafone's UK operation. Travellers there can pop a credit card into an airport vending machine and, for £10 get a microsim and 250 MB of data.

Costs are very reasonable. In Australia, Telstra, Vodafone and Optus all offered a microsim with 3 GB of data for A$30. Published prices are different but, judging from discussions with store staff, all three aggressively meet or beat each other's special deals on the street. There are a few Virgin Mobile brand stores as well, and they're aiming at more even more cost conscious buyers: a A$5 microsim comes with 300 MB of data. Avoid a couple of hotel or WiFi hotspot day use charges and it's paid for itself. In New Zealand, microsim costs range between NZ$20 to NZ$50 for up to 3 GB of data.

New Zealand and Australia have always bee very pleasant places to do business. Ubiquitous, fast and cheap mobile broadband coverage makes it very easy, too.

Thinking forward from CES 2012

2012-01-13T16:26:00.000-08:00

If CES 2012 produced one quote that might be remembered in years to come, it was from Ericsson CEO Hans Vespberg: "Anything that benefits from being connected will be connected in the future." It says two very important things about the consumer electronics industry.

First, going forward, mobile telecommunications manufacturers and core technology companies will be the primary innovators. Computer companies provided much of the innovation for the industry in the past ten years, but they are all but gone from CES.

Second, the business of consumer electronics will focus less on physical products and more on services connected to those products. As technology becomes more capable and cheaper – and it will – the differences between hardware brands and devices will become diminishingly small. Services will be the primary differentiator for products and brands.

Arguably, the most influential consumer electronics company of the past ten years began the last decade as Apple Computer, and finished it as simply Apple, a music, cloud service and telecommunications company. They were so far ahead of the curve that they didn't have to join the other computer-oriented companies in pulling out of CES. They weren't there in the first place.

The first revolution in consumer electronics products equipped with wireless machine-to-machine (M2M) communications and tied to differentiated services will come from home health and fitness devices.

Qualcomm launched its Qualcomm Life subsidiary to provide a cloud platform that will support medical services delivered through mobile communications devices, including but not limited to those powered by the chipsets it makes. It's also putting up $100 million in venture funding to back connected medical device and service start-ups.

But that's small change compared to the amount of money that health insurance companies can bring to bear as they move into the networked personal health care space, and mandate such services for their customers. The digital media and automobile sectors will follow closely behind, providing more opportunities and platforms for the consumer electronics industry.

Vespberg believes there will be 50 billion mobile telecoms subscriptions by 2020, the vast majority for M2M networking. Each one of those subscriptions represents at least one device, and potentially multiple contracts for wirelessly delivered services. It will be boom times for the CE companies that can make the changes necessary to take advantage of this huge new market, and an ever declining legacy business for those that don't.

Qualcomm launches consumer M2M industry with 2net medical monitoring platform

2012-01-12T23:58:00.001-08:00

The first consumer-focused M2M (machine-to-machine) ecosystem is on the market. Qualcomm launched its Qualcomm Life subsidiary last month, folding in its wireless health business. QL's flagship offering is the 2net platform, a medical-grade (it meets HIPAA standards and is FDA listed) cloud server that links personal health and fitness monitoring devices to medical professionals and, when appropriate, directly to consumers.

Qualcomm is building and managing the network and cloud computing infrastructure. The health and fitness monitoring devices on one end and the interface with health care providers and consumers on the other are provided by Qualcomm's customers. Forty companies signed up in 2net's first month, and the list can be expected to grow quickly.

2net partners feed data to the platform any way they choose, but it's clearly built on the assumption that most personal medical monitoring devices will be wireless. It makes sense. The more data, the better, and what could be better than continuous readings from a mobile monitor?

Not surprisingly, Qualcomm is making sure the platform is fully enabled with mobile data links. It's supporting smartphone developers, such as Macaw, that are building apps that directly assess fitness activities (for example, via GPS tools) or that link to a wide range of sensors, from Bluetooth-enabled bathroom scales to blood pressure cuffs to blood glucose meters.

Medical and fitness monitoring devices can also link to 2net via Ethernet (for, say, a home respirator) or an embedded M2M cellular radio or directly from a proprietary platform. To jumpstart the market, Qualcomm Life is producing a wireless Swiss Army knife gateway with a plug form factor. It supports Bluetooth, WiFi, ANT+ and a UMTS radio that's backwards compatible to 2G. First and foremost, QL wants to drive the 2net platform. GSM or CDMA, it doesn't matter: Qualcomm is happy to support it.

Partner companies are already leveraging the gateway device. BodyMedia makes a fitness monitor that takes galvanic skin response, heat flux and skin temperature measurements, and combines it with accelerometer readings to send real time fitness information back to a subscriber's smartphone.

QL makes money by running the platform. Parent Qualcomm will make a ton of dough as M2M drives mobile subscriptions from 6 billion today to a projected 50 billion by 2020 (that's not a typo, it's billion with a B).

Partners make money by manufacturing health and fitness gizmos, selling them to consumers and then, in many cases, charging an ongoing subscription fee to crunch the data and send it to their physicians and other health care providers. You can bet the ranch that health insurance companies will push the technology and buy OEM services for their customers.

Qualcomm is supporting the medical M2M sector with a $100 million venture fund and its just announced $10 million Qualcomm Tricorder X Prize. "The mission is to drive radical breakthroughs for the benefit of humanity," said Dr. Peter Diamandis, CEO of the X Prize Foundation, as he joined with Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs to announce the competition at the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show.

They should have called it the "Medical Tricorder X Prize", because every Trekkie knows that Dr. McCoy's Tricorder was different from the general purpose units the rest of the Enterprise's crew carried.

Okay, for 10 million bucks, we'll cut them some slack.

M2M is about machines. But as Mr. Spock observed, machines are merely servants of people. Qualcomm could have picked no better way to pioneer the consumer M2M space than by putting human health first.

No mass market home automation players yet

2012-01-12T17:30:00.001-08:00

Incremental advancement but no break through into the mass market for the home automation sector at CES this year. It remains a niche for hobbyists and specialty contractors.

Core technology companies, such as Qualcomm, NXP and Marvell, continue to support it. And there's no shortage of companies offering, or at least developing, home automation products and services.

Part of the problem is the multitude of standards. Some device makers support more than one, but interoperability is the exception rather than the rule.

The missing piece is a home hub/gateway that's both consumer friendly and network protocol agnostic.

You can find one or the other. For example, MiOS's Vera router handles WiFi, Ethernet and Z-Wave natively, and can manage X10 and potententially other protocols via plug-ins. But its user interface is balky and basic. You need to be confortable with programming code to do anything ambitious.

Jakks Pacific's baby monitor product is easy to use, and the wrist watch-style viewing screen is a nice innovation. But it's a one trick pony. Canadian company 2D2C's SafePlug is an interesting RFID-enabled solution, but they only have one item in their product line ready for market. Spain's q1tecno is targeting the low cost end of the market with their Domotics Toys.

Home Protect, from France-based Moai, is a wonderfull piece of design work. They put their gateway and remote sensors into Tiki God cases that they claim will be plug-and-play simple to install. Unfortunately, it's not ready for market yet. All they had to display at the show were solid plastic Tiki God statues.

Companies like Greenwave and Dutch manufacturer Freelux are positioning themselves as OEM suppliers to utilities. The advantage to that approach is that the electric company can provide customer support and incentives to use it. If the incentives are good enough, they can also dictate technology and network protocol choices to their subscribers. No one had any utility partnerships to announce, though.

Mobile telecoms companies lead consumer electronics innovation

2012-01-11T23:00:00.001-08:00

Consumers expect the devices they buy to be connected to their content collections, personal data, interpersonal communications and the Internet and other external data sources. That's why innovation at CES is coming from companies that wouldn't even have been considered part of the industry a few years ago.

Since Apple launched the iPhone and followed it up with the iPad, mobile telecommunications manufacturers and core technology providers have been driving profound changes in the consumer electronics business.

It's the consequence of what Ericsson CEO Hans Vespberg called "the networked society" during his keynote address at CES today. Citing commonly accepted industry statistics, Vespberg point out that the mobile telecoms industry boasts 6 billion subscriptions (not subscribers – many people have more than one subscription). About a billion of those accounts include broadband, a figure expected to grow to 5 billion by 2015.

"Anything that benefits from being connected will be connected in the future," said Vespberg, predicting 50 billion devices will be on mobile networks by 2020, the vast majority using machine to machine (M2M) connections.

Many of those machines will be automobiles, which explains the growing presence of car makers at CES. Mobile phones may be distracting drivers today, but tomorrow M2M links between cars will dramatically improve safety.

4G networks will make automated control possible, according to Vespberg. Latency will drop from half a second on 3G networks to a tenth of a second on 4G technology, making mobile network responses comparable to the reaction time of an alert and skilled human driver.

Legacy consumer electronics manufacturers will make bigger and sharper video displays and richer, cleaner speakers and earphones. At least to the point human eyes, ears and brains can't tell the difference.

Anything truly new will begin with telecommunications capability, and for most it will be based on wireless technology.

Smokey and the Crowdsource Bandit

2012-01-11T15:08:00.000-08:00

Burt Reynolds made a couple of good movies and several bad ones featuring fast cars, CB radios and a determined, but dim-witted, police pursuit. A 21st Century remake of Smokey and the Bandit or Cannonball Run would feature Escort Inc's SmartCord-enabled radar detectors, which can pull in real time radar/lidar trap information from every similarly equipped car on the road and display it on a smartphone screen.

They call it "social networking for the road". Sheriff Buford T. Justice might call it a nationwide scofflaw conspiracy.

The SmartCord connects one of four Escort radar detector models (plus one from a second manufacturer) to an iPhone or compatible Android device by way of an automobile power adaptor. Escort's phone app takes radar and laser readings from the detector, adds GPS tags and transmits it via the Internet to Escort's central server.

The raw data from the road is then assessed, false alarms are scrubbed out and it's merged into a real time, color coded tactical map, which is then displayed on the phone's screen. The icons and color codes tell every driver in the network what kind of speed traps have been spotted, and indicates whether or not it's a fresh sighting.

Of course, it's all meant to promote ~~excessive speed~~ safe driving. The app can be configured to warn a driver when he edges over the speed limit. Why else would ~~NASCAR wannabes~~ law-abiding drivers buy such a thing?

Escort says that there are 2 to 3 million drivers with SmartCord-capable detectors on the road already. All they need to join the ~~conspiracy~~ network is a SmartCord, iPhone or Droid and $40 a year. The cowboy hat and Sally Fields are ~~what it's all about~~ optional.

First practical augmented reality marketing platform: SightSpace from LCi

2012-01-11T12:19:00.000-08:00

The first breakout augmented reality product for the consumer market could be LCi 's (Limitless Computing Inc.) SightSpace platform, which was demoed at the ShowStoppers event last night at CES.

It's easy enough to use, does what it says it will do and has a direct path to major marketing support and revenue from mainstream brands.

SightSpace lets you preview how new furniture or a kitchen remodel or just a fresh coat of paint will look in your home. To use it now, you take an iPad or compatible Android tablet, surf to Google 3D Warehouse, download a 3D drawing of, say, a chair into the SightSpace app, then point the tablet's camera at the corner where you're thinking about putting it.

The picture of the chair is overlaid on the live video image of your living room. It's 3D, so you can walk around and see how it looks from different angles. They even have a stereoscopic feature, so you can put on 3D glasses for an optional pop-out effect.

It's a ready-made marketing tool for online retailers, one that could give them a substantial advantage over brick and mortar competitors. Shoppers could download directly from the retailer's website and instantly see whether a product matches up with the space or the person intended.

There's little risk. The product and design renderings retailers need to create would be in a format used by Google's free SketchUp application, Google Earth and Google 3D Warehouse and convertible to other file formats.

It opens the door to mass market partnerships for LCi, with substantial revenue streams. And augmented reality overlays on rooms, buildings and land are just the beginning. It could also enable online shoppers to try on clothes, sample a travel package or even have some fun with online dating. The only limit – financial or otherwise – for Limitless Computing's SightSpace is imagination.

Unnatural opportunity in M2M

2012-01-10T15:46:00.001-08:00

Consumer electronics products have a natural limit to growth. With only 7 billion or so people on the planet, even if some people buy more than one of any gizmo you can't get past, say, 10 billion deployed units within the life cycle of any given product category.

Of course, that's a theoretical limit, as a practical matter even one billion is wildly out of reach for the vast majority of products. The mobile phone has hit the 6 billion range, because it's a personal item rather than a family purchase, such as, for example, a television.

There's no such natural limit in the M2M (machine to machine) telecommunications space, though. There are billions of machines that will have need to communicate with each other in the future, and each of those machines have internal components that might need to swap data too. That puts M2M's market potential in the tens of billions in the coming decade alone. According to Ericsson CEO Hans Vespberg, it'll be north of 40 billion by 2020.

That's why early stage, core M2M technology companies are interesting to track. RFaxis is one such. Founded in 2008 with friends and family financing, this fabless semiconductor start-up makes front end chips for WiFi and ZigBee (and similar) radios.

Their secret sauce is a pure CMOS, single chip integrated front solution that combines antenna switching, power amplification on the transmit side, low noise amplification on the receive side and an interface with the transmit/receive module. RFaxis has attracted customers such as Gemtek, NXP and Freescale.

ZigBee-based smart meters are one of the segments that they see as having breakout potential for consumer-side M2M products. The opportunity begins with the smart meters themselves, but will quickly balloon once connected products, such as thermostats and energy consumption monitors, gain the backing of utility companies.

RFaxis currently has 27 employees and had revenue in the $2 to $3 million range last year. In 2012, they're expecting to hit the $15 to $20 million range, which will, they think, make the venture self- supporting. Beyond that, there's no natural limit.

Qualcomm's Jacobs fills CE thought leader gap

2012-01-10T11:11:00.001-08:00

Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs presented a vision of the future for the consumer electronics industry this morning, as he opened the first official day of the show with a thought provoking keynote.

The core of that future is mobile services and technology. "All consumer electronics business are either in the mobile business or soon will be", said Jacobs.

This mobile transformation is most pronounced in the developing world, according to Jacobs. Emerging markets are increasingly mobile-centric. The developing word's share of the smart phone market is growing, and will soon hit the 50% mark. Mobile technology will be the biggest driver of growth in the years ahead.

Mobile networks are frequently the only way that people in emerging countries can access the Internet. A Grameen Foundation initiative funded in part by Qualcomm, PT Ruma, began by financing simple cell phones for women in Indonesia, who in turn built a small business by selling phone calls on a per minute basis to others in their villages. But it quickly turned into a smart-phone based, data centric business model because of the growing demand for information services, even in the world's poorest places.

"Our goal is to enable better phones for every market at the lowest price possible", said Jacobs, setting a sub-$150 target for smartphones that can address this demand and announcing a Qualcomm initiative to develop reference designs for emerging markets.

Jacobs balanced his keynote time between talking about using technology to promote growth and better lives in the developing world and promoting Qualcomm's newest products. He talked about the next generation Snapdragon S4 processor which is aimed at the television and ultra-compact laptop segments, as well as mobile phones. Jacobs also shared the stage with partners such as Nokia and Lennovo, keeping the product pitches low key and focused on consumer benefits.

It was a good example of how to use a keynote opportunity to say something meaningful about how the CE industry can make the world a better place, while at the same time positioning a company's brand and delivering a couple of pointed, tactical marketing messages.

NVIDIA CEO Huang gets the vision thing

2012-01-09T20:51:00.001-08:00

It was a little odd watching the CEO of NVIDIA, Jen-Hsun Huang, spend most of his press conference time editing photos, remoting from one device to another and playing computer games. NVIDIA is a chip maker, not a game publisher or software company or computer manufacturer. But his roundabout approach was a dramatic way of proving the power of his chips and the platforms they support.

The hour long demo session drove home the point that NVIDIA powers consumer electronics products, not computers for the workplace, although performance is comparable for many – most – personal applications.

NVIDIA makes chips that power a big slice of the non-iPad tablet market. The company is putting thousands of engineers to work supporting both Ice Cream Sandwich – an attempt to unify the disparate flavors of Android into a single market for app developers – and Windows 8.

With worldwide tablet sales approaching 100 million units, Huang called it the "fastest growing device in consumer electronics history," and said that non-iPad tablets are taking an ever larger share of that market, currently at 40%.

NVIDIA's flagship CPU is the Tegra 3, a four plus one core ARM processor. Four of the cores run user applications, the fifth manages processes and housekeeping functions that are usually left to auxiliary chips, or not handled at all. Tagged the "ninja core" by Huang, it manages power consumption and touch screen processing, among other chores.

It's powering a wide range of devices here at CES, including a 7-inch tablet from ASUS that runs Android and has a $249 target price point. Tegra, and its brothers in ARM, are increasingly integrated into vehicles too, running dashboard and entertainment interfaces. Huang calls the automotive industry "a brand new consumer electronics segment."

Huang is not the first to say it. But he makes the point better than most, communicating a coherent and seamless vision of where the consumer electronics industry is heading.

Ballmer won't let the door hit him on the way out

2012-01-09T20:48:00.001-08:00

Microsoft is pulling out of CES after this year, presumably because the show doesn't support its corporate and brand marketing goals. CEO Steve Ballmer's farewell keynote was an hour-plus company sales pitch delivered at the top of his lungs, with a parade of product demonstrations by his executive team.

It was if he was saying "here's why we don't need you guys". At least he didn't mention the horse we rode in on.

Top of the list of reasons why Ballmer is happy following Apple out of CES is Windows 8. "There's nothing more important" to Microsoft's future, he said.

He and his team demoed the new Metro user interface. Assuming it will do what they say it will do, it'll take it a step further down the Apple user interface roadmap than Apple itself has yet to go.

The concept is to have a seamless UI experience across PCs, game and video boxes and mobile devices, including phones and tablets. Apple is moving in that direction, but is doing it with two separate operating systems, iOS and OS X. Windows 8 is intended to do the job of both.

Microsoft continues to edge away from its former near-monogamous relationship with Intel. Ballmer said Windows 8 is designed to run just fine on x86 chips, from both Intel and AMD, but it's built from the ground up to support ARM processors from NVIDIA, Texas Instruments and Qualcomm too.

Ballmer acknowledged that Microsoft is under pressure, particularly in mobile products, but said "competition is a great thing and I'm glad we have Windows". Custer might have said the same about the 7th Cavalry.

New day at DISH

2012-01-09T12:44:00.001-08:00

The Direct Broadcast Satellite pioneer has a new management team, new logo and new products. The core of the company is still satellite television, but there's a more coherent and seamless integration of the company's other offerings, such as satellite radio, DVRs, Blockbuster movies and more.

Joe Clayton has firmly taken over the helm from founder Charlie Ergen. He's brought over some key players from the team that launched what is now known as DirecTv. Back in 1994, Joe led RCA when it joined with United States Satellite Broadcasting and Hughes' DirecTv unit to launch DSS – the Digital Satellite System.

Ergen launched DISH a year and a half later. It's now the world's largest independent satellite television company, but still shows its maverick roots. Less so, though, now that Clayton has banished the traditional casual shirts with DISH logos and put his team into suits and ties, old school RCA style.

Clayton only slipped once today, referring to DISH as RCA. But he was the same uber-salesman, walking into the press conference carrying a live, baby kangaroo (their new flagship products are called Hopper and Joey, represented by kangaroo mascots).

The Hopper satellite receiver is a home video hub, and the Joey is a thin client that connects to it. Several Joeys can connect to a Hopper, allowing subscribers to watch 4 different shows in four different rooms, while recording a half dozen shows simultaneously on the integrated DVR.

Hopper is based on a 750 MHz Broadcom 7420 chip and comes with a 2 TB hard drive. It supports MOCA, ZigBee, Bluetooth and RF4CE connectivity, and interfaces with DISH's Sling service, which allows viewing on a variety of devices. It also supports photo sharing, satellite radio, Pandora and personal music collections. And, of course, Blockbuster Internet video.

Clayton wrapped it up by previewing an upcoming satellite broadband service, offered in conjunction with ViaSat and using new satellite capacity due to be launched this summer. The satellite data service is specced at up to 12 Mbps will be bundled with subscription TV packages. Starting price point is $79.99.

Intel Ultrabook design is more execution than innovation

2012-01-09T11:27:00.001-08:00

With ARM-based tablet sales crowding out netbooks, Intel needed to come up with a way of staying in the ultra-portable, ultra-usable game. Maybe they have something truly innovative in the pipeline, but they weren't showing it at today's CES press conference in Las Vegas.

What they did show was a fully productized line of their Ultrabook concept from a wide range of manufacturers, with one or two interesting twists. Ultrabooks are thin, lightweight, Windows 8-based laptops, similar to Macbook Airs, that combine heavy processing power with convertible and hybrid form factors. Some of the models can convert into a thick tablet (an old trick), some are laptops with touch screens and some show glimmers of originality.

Intel debuted a couple of innovative features, which could make for an interesting competition with tablets. One is a small, touch-enabled second screen that functions as a track pad when used in standard laptop mode, and can give users quick access to information and functions when the clamshell is closed. It provides a mobile usage mode for a laptop, and might be attractive to users who need that level of computing power and don't want to carry around a tablet as well.

Hand-based gesture control is also in the Ultrabook pipeline, allowing users to point and grab in three dimensions. There was an interesting demo that showed a point-of-sale kiosk with customers interacting by waving their hands.

Mooly Eden, Intel corporate vice president and general manager of the PC Client Group said they were trying to drive price points down to "mainstream" levels, which I take to mean down where tablets and netbooks live, in the sub-$1,000 range.

Going forward, Intel-blessed Ultrabooks will incorporate the forthcoming Ivy Bridge processor.

OLPC and Marvell show $100 tablet for the rest of the world

2012-01-08T23:03:00.001-08:00

One Laptop per Child stole the show at tonight's CES Unveiled event with a $100 tablet computer. Featuring a solar charger integrated into a protective hardshell case and an optional, robust hand-cranked generator, the device gets it right. It could be the defining digital bridge into the developing world.

The original OLPC project – a $100 laptop computer – launched the netbook market but did not achieve the degree of mass distribution in the developing world as originally hoped. It was by no means a failure, but it never really connected with its killer app: digital textbooks.

Textbooks represent a major cost for developing world governments and a nice profit center for publishers. A $100 e-reader combined with open source or deeply subsidized educational content would completely disrupt that business model, making it possible to put a book on virtually any topic into the hands of any child who has one. It's self liquidating, or nearly so, in just the first year.

The tablet form factor could – should – be the key to OLPC's break out. The new tablet is a perfect distribution platform for e-books, plus it supports basic computing and communications functions. It has a capacitance touch screen, which eliminates the need for keyboard skills, and it supports a wide range of network interfaces, I/O modes and power sources. It even has an accelerometer.

The demonstration units are based on a Marvell Armada 610 ARM chip, and include Marvell WiFi silicon as well. It'll run the Linux, Sugar and Android operating systems, and is specced with 500 MB of RAM, 4 GB of storage and 8 hours of battery life.

It's not a product as such. It's a fully implementable design developed by the OLPC Foundation. It's open source and ready for deployment.

Personal automation hits and misses

2012-01-08T22:53:00.001-08:00

Among the dozens of companies showing their stuff at CES Unveiled tonight were several targeting the personal and home automation space. Some get it, some don't.

Samsung, Greenwave and Zomm get it, more or less. Each showed a product that enables someone to extend his or her personal information and control network, without being too reliant on closed platforms or particular service providers.

Samsung debuted the SmartCam, an Internet protocol camera with motion and sound sensors, and two-way audio conversation capability. Its particular selling proposition is that it takes a lot of the work out of setting up a remote monitoring camera.

The SmartCam uses a peer-to-peer scheme. You pair the camera with a computer, anywhere on the Internet, via Samsung's included peering service and then watch and record the video as you please on that computer. The motion and sound sensors can trigger alerts and high bit-rate video streams automatically, and you can use its two-way audio capability to "chat" with whoever is causing the commotion. Price point is $149.

Greenwave is selling a home automation gateway that controls home lighting via Philips' NXP technology and power outlets via the Z-Wave standard. If an electric utility buys in, you can also connect directly to a Zigbee smart meter or, if not, they have a meter reading gizmo that will get you some of that functionality on your own.

Although Greenwave has a consumer selling proposition, their primary focus seems to be on utility companies and, failing that, anyone with an ongoing customer billing relationship: telcos, solar power installers or home heating and cooling companies. Basic kit is $200 and after that you can spend as much as you want on add-ons.

Zomm debuted its Lifestyle Connect product, which makes its possible to monitor an elderly or disabled relative (or maybe your kids, but they aren't exactly saying that) using any Bluetooth-enabled mobile phone. The little gizmo hangs on a lanyard and, when triggered, dials a "personal safety concierge" that instantly knows the location from the integrated GPS chip and can talk back and forth via the built in speaker and mic.

They're working on a wide range of triggers, both in-house and through third party developers. Ideas include a detector that can tell if an elderly parent has fallen down or a blood glucose meter that can safeguard a diabetic. They didn't mention breath alcohol meters or GPS analysis that knows when your daughter's car is parked at the submarine races. The trigger is pulled, the "concierge" is called and a trusted circle (child, sibling, parent, probation officer) is notified. Cost is $199 for the gizmo and $15 a month for the service.

Alure Energy nearly got it and might yet someday. Their Eversense system consists of a thermostat and a linked iOS or Android app. The app runs in the background and tells the thermostat where you are. When you're close to home or some other tripwire is hit, the thermostat tells the furnace to heat up the house, so it's warm when you get there. On the plus side, it has all the usual programmable thermostat features and it's more or less standards-based (e.g. the thermostat uses existing home WiFi networks to connect to mobile phones). On the minus side it's still a one trick pony.

Liftmaster was the loser of the night. They took a standard garage door opener, built in a proprietary radio link that talks to a proprietary Ethernet device that plugs into a home router and tells you whether your garage door is opened or closed. And lets you open or close it via the Internet. You have to buy a whole new garage door opener – you can't just add it on to the one you have – and it doesn't do anything an X-10 or Z-Wave system can't do, but it does come with a nice logo. Cost: if you really want to know, you're dumb enough to buy it.

Computer companies changing role, not ditching CES

2012-01-08T13:16:00.001-08:00

Microsoft says 2012 will be its last year at the Consumer Electronics Show. ASUS isn't holding its usual we're-just-as-sexy-as-Apple preview event. MSI is MIA.

Computer companies have been exhibiting at CES for about 20 years, migrating to the show as Comdex died out. Microsoft Bob made his debut at CES in 1995. This "consumer friendly" information manager/productivity software package apparently got lost on the way to the airport and was never seen again. He happened in Vegas, he stayed in Vegas.

Apple was the first to pull out completely, right around the time it began its transformation from a computer company to a consumer electronics giant.

The primary purpose of CES has been to introduce new products to distributors and retailers. And some of that still happens. But as local specialty electronics stores die out and the national CE chains implode, that role is quickly diminishing.

Instead, CES increasingly serves as a public relations stage to hype new products to consumers and try to get them back into stores even while they're still nursing their post-Christmas credit card hangovers. It's also a chance for start-ups to get noticed and for core technology companies, such as chip makers, to get their components in front of the manufacturers and designers who still show up.

And it's a chance to meet the people you email and Skype all year long, but never get around to seeing. You see, Apple didn't really stop going to CES, and neither will Microsoft. They won't exhibit or hold press conferences, or hire another marching band to introduce Son of Microsoft Bob. But like Apple people, Microsoft employees will still swarm the show, even more so once they no longer have to stand booth duty.

A sugar daddy for home automation

2012-01-02T22:31:00.001-08:00

CES - the Consumer Electronics Show - opens in Las Vegas next week. Among other things, it's an opportunity to take a second (or third or fourth...) look at industry segments that held breakout potential at one point, only to fade off into a niche.

MiOS/MiCasaVerde's Vera 3 multi-mode gateway. No assembly language
required, but you'll need pretty much everything else.

Home automation is one sector that has never lived up to its hype. Several technologies, notably including the X-10 standard, have been promoted as one-size-fits-all solutions for remote control and monitoring of thermostats, lighting and appliances. Some use existing electrical wiring for connectivity, others are wireless.

Sheer geekiness has been the biggest obstacle to its widespread adoption. No one has come up with a simple and reliable user interface that manages several different kinds of devices. Consumers will embrace a push button that opens and closes a garage door, buy a programmable thermostat and sometimes use it, and even master a four-setting mood lighting switch for the living room. But they won't tie those functions together or try anything more complicated.

You have to enjoy messing around with gizmos and programming languages to get more out of home automation than you put into it. Changes are are in the works, though.

Second-tier consumer brands, such as Schlage, are starting to offer hosted management platforms that control a limited range of devices via a in-home gateway device and do the heavy geeking on a secure, consumer-friendly website for a monthly fee. Startups, such as MiOS, are developing gateways that can be likewise supported for free or a very low annual cost and are able to manage a broad range of devices and connectivity technologies.

The hosted platforms offer limited choice at a premium price. The newer, more open gateways don't work well enough to appeal to anyone other than a hobbyist. The missing piece of the puzzle is a clear, consumer-simple economic case that supports subsizing the service, putting serious development resources into cross-platform gateways and provides an incentive for the average homeowner.

That piece might soon be provided by electric utilities. They've taken the first step with smart meters which can provide detailed data about energy consumption. The next step is to use that information to control home heating and air conditioning, lights, appliances and entertainment systems. Particularly devices that are either always on but not always needed or use "wall wart" adaptors that constantly draw power.

It's a Big Brother scenario, but consumers have been willing to trade hands-on control of technology for better performance and lower cost in the past. Cars are maintained by computer chips and datalinks, cable television companies host DVRs and Apple built one of the world's most valuable brands inside a maximum security walled garden.

The opportunity is on the horizon. Next week we'll see if anyone is serious about riding out to meet it.

Seven regional broadband consortia funded by CPUC

2011-12-01T11:26:00.001-08:00

Seven regional broadband consortia grants were approved today by the California Public Utilities Commission. Commissioners voted to allocate a total of $2,310,000 to the Los Angeles County consortium for the three-year grant term. The six others each received about $450,000 each ($150,000 a year for three years).

The major uncertainty going in was the amount of funding that LA would receive. Two different resolutions were on the table: one giving LA $1,346,927, the other $2,310,000. Much of the discussion was about resolving the question of how much LA could get under state law and CPUC rules.

The grants for the other six consortia were all for the legal maximum, and were not controversial. Although the total grant amounts have been approved, only the first year's funding is guaranteed. Each consortia will have to meet certain requirements at the end of a given year in order to get the next year's money.

The approved grants are:

Central Coast Broadband Consortium: Monterey, San Benito, Santa Cruz. $450,000.
East Bay Broadband Consortium: Alameda, Contra Costa, Solano. $450,000.
Los Angeles County Regional Broadband Consortia: Los Angeles County - 5 distinct sub-regions under the LACRBC umbrella.
Northeastern California Connect Consortium: Butte, Lassen, Modoc, Plumas, Shasta, Siskiyou, Tehama. $449,991.
Redwood Coast Connect: Humboldt, Del Norte, Mendocino, Trinity. $450,000.
San Joaquin Valley Regional Broadband Consortium (California State University, Fresno): San Joaquin, Stanislaus, Merced, Madera, Fresno, Kings, Tulare, Kern. $450,000.
Upstate California Connect Consortium: Colusa, Glenn, Lake, Sonoma. $448,184.

There are seven more consortia grants in the pipeline, all are for the maximum $450,000, three year total: the Capital (Sacramento) area, Gold County, eastern Sierra, central Sierra, Inland Empire, San Diego/Imperial and an additional, smaller proposal for LA County.

More information about all the consortia, including counties served, project descriptions and contact information is available here.

Ready for the CPUC vote on regional broadband consortia this morning

2011-12-01T08:42:00.001-08:00

The meeting starts at 9:00 a.m. The two consortia resolutions come up later in the agenda, item 47. As of last night, the item was still on the table, however once the meeting starts, it's possible that a commissioner could ask that it be held over to a later meeting. There's no particular reason to think that might happen, though.

I'll post here as soon as I can after the vote. In the meantime, you can follow me on Twitter: SteveBlum. I'll tweet updates as we go. Check my California regional broadband consortia page later in the morning for a full run-down on the vote and details on the individual consortia. That's after the vote: until then, clicking on the link will just bring you back here.

There's broad, general support for the program as outlined in the two competing resolutions. The difference between the two, and the main point of contention for those filing comments and in the commission's responses to those filings, is how much money to give to Los Angeles County: $1,346,927 over three years (as the primary resolution proposes) or $2,310,000 (as the alternate would have it).

There was a flurry of activity yesterday as successive revisions to the alternate were posted on the CPUC's website. Each revision made an incrementally stronger case for giving LA the larger amount. Which means at least someone on the commission is leaning that way. The question for this morning is whether three out of the five commissioners are so inclined.

Otherwise, the funding proposal is virtually unchanged from the draft that was circulated a month ago. Besides LA, six other regional consortia should be getting three years of funding at about $150,000 per year each. Central Coast, Redwood Coast, San Joaquin Valley, Northeastern California, Upstate (generally, north-central counties) and the East Bay should secure funding today.

The remaining seven will likely have to wait a couple more months. It's very likely, though, that they'll receive similar funding once they've revised their proposals to meet CPUC spec.

CPUC decides regional consortia grants on Thursday

2011-11-30T09:47:00.001-08:00

The final resolution and an alternate approving the first round of regional broadband consortia grants have been released by the California Public Utilities Commission. No major changes were made and it is now ready for a vote at the commission meeting on Thursday, 1 December 2011.

The commissioners will look at two proposed resolutions. The lead version gives Los Angeles County $1,346,927 in total funding over three years, the alternate proposes $2,310,000. Absent any surprises, the main point of discussion for commissioners will be picking a final number.

Besides LA, $150,000 in annual funding for three years ($450,000 total) for six other consortia is included in both drafts: Central Coast , East Bay, Redwood Coast, Northeastern California, Upstate (north-central), the Sacramento area and the San Joaquin Valley. Funding for seven additional consortia will be considered over the next couple of months.

During the initial 20-day review period, four organizations submitted comments. Three of the regional consortia endorsed the higher amount for LA and asked that all fourteen applicants be approved at once. The CPUC's Division of Ratepayer Advocates favored the lower amountfor LA and asked that the decision on all fourteen be delayed for further consideration.

The comments are largely rejected by the resolutions that will be presented for consideration: the first seven consortia will come up for a vote, assuming the item isn't pulled from the agenda, and it'll be up to the commissioners to decide how much money LA gets.

January funding for California regional broadband consortia

2011-11-23T09:09:00.000-08:00

California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) staff are working through the first batch of regional broadband consortia grant applications. Those seven consortia are on track to be approved at the 1 December 2011 commission meeting and to receive start-up checks in January.

The 20-day public comment window has closed, and so far there's no indication of any determined opposition. CPUC hasn't release all of the filed comments, but the ones that are available generally support either the proposed resolution or the alternate version that provides increased funding to Los Angeles County.

CPUC's Division of Ratepayer Advocates (DRA) opposes the extra money for LA and wants to delay the entire program while the resolution's language is cleaned up. The DRA is either the CPUC's institutional conscience or in-house gadfly, depending on your point of view. Their objections are weak, by their standards. An optimist might even call it an endorsement of sorts.

Some of the consortia grant applicants have weighed in, supporting the extra funding for LA and asking that all fourteen of the pending applications be funded immediately.

A total of fifteen applications were filed. One was rejected and CPUC staff broke the remainder into two groups. The resolution funds the first seven consortia, with some conditions. The second group of seven are endorsed by the resolution but not yet approved. The commission would presumably consider those applications in January or February, after some revisions are made, with March funding likely.

Broadband consortia funding moves ahead in California

2011-11-03T12:34:00.001-07:00

California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) staff have finished their initial review of the 15 regional consortia grant applications that were filed in August. Seven consortia have been conditionally approved and the full commission will vote on a formal funding resolution on 1 December.

Legislation approved last year and implemented by the CPUC this year sets aside $10 million from the California Advanced Services Fund (CASF) to support regional groups that promote broadband deployment and adoption in rural and urban areas.

Applications from rural groups tended to be more focused on finding ways to encourage broadband build-outs in their areas, while urban applications were more focused on encouraging more people to use broadband in more ways, particularly in underserved communities.

Generally, the CPUC is only allowing one consortia for any given geographical region and limiting grants to $150,000 per year for three years. Most of the requests were for the $150,000 maximum, or thereabouts. The one exception is Los Angeles County. Because of its size and complexity, multiple consortia and sub-consortia are being considered for funding. Two applications were received from LA County. A large one with several sub-consortia is included in the first seven, with $448,843 earmarked for the first year. A second, smaller one is still under review.

The seven that will go before the commission next month are:

Central Coast Broadband Consortium: Monterey, Santa Cruz, San Benito.
East Bay Broadband Consortium: Alameda, Contra Costa, Solano.
Los Angeles County Regional Broadband Consortia: Los Angeles County - 5 distinct sub-regions under the LACRBC umbrella.
Northeastern California Connect Consortium: Butte, Lassen, Modoc, Plumas, Shasta, Siskiyou, Tehama.
Redwood Coast Connect: Humboldt, Del Norte, Mendocino, Trinity.
San Joaquin Valley Regional Broadband Consortium (California State University, Fresno): San Joaquin, Stanislaus, Merced, Madera, Fresno, Kings, Tulare, Kern.
Upstate California Connect Consortium: Colusa, Glenn, Lake, Sonoma.

The Central Coast Broadband Consortium's project was developed with the assistance of Tellus Venture Associates, and we were the principal author of the grant application.

A second group of seven is also moving ahead in the process, but have some additional work to do. Those seven are:

California's One Million NIU (New Internet Users) Coalition: Various "hubs" in Los Angeles area.
Central Sierra Connect Consortia: Amador, Calaveras, Tuolumne, Mariposa, Western Alpine.
Connected Capital Area Broadband Consortium: Sacramento, Sutter, Yolo, Yuba.
Eastern Sierra Connect: Mono, Inyo, Eastern Kern.
Gold Country Broadband Consortium: Sierra, Nevada, Placer, El Dorado, Eastern Alpine.
Inland Empire Regional Broadband Consortium: San Bernardino, Riverside.
San Diego Imperial Regional Broadband Consortium: San Diego, Imperial.

Only one application was rejected completely. It was from a small group in Eldorado County that wanted to use the money to start building a FTTH project. Since the consortia grants can't be used for network construction and because a larger, more inclusive consortium application also covers El Dorado County, Camino Fiber Network Cooperative ended up the sole loser.

CPUC staff have moved quickly to process these lengthy and, in many cases, intricate applications. The first group of seven still have work to do before any money arrives. The draft resolution gives them 15 days from the adoption of the resolution to address concerns that staff have raised. Remaining questions include defining deliverables and work plans and schedules. Assuming that happens, start-up money (10% of the first year's budget) could arrive in January.

Grants for the second group of seven will go before the commission at a later meeting. They've been given 30 days to solve a longer list of issues identified by staff. But most, if not all, are expected to be approved early in the new year.

Embedded impulses

2011-10-12T16:43:00.001-07:00

The machine-to-machine sector is getting a lot of attention this week at the CTIA Enterprise and Applications conference in San Diego. The growth of M2M figured into CEO keynote speeches and panel discussions. AT&T's Ralph de la Vega called connected devices "the next big thing for mobility."

The growth is driven in part by the decisions taken by service providers to back out of the hardware and hosting ends of the M2M business, and just provide connectivity. Users are moving faster and with far more knowledge of their own needs and objectives than carriers could ever hope to do.

Users do not have this kind of freedom of action in consumer voice and data segments. Mobile carriers like to control hardware and transactions. As do manufacturers. Apple's App Store forbids direct transactions between app developers and publishers and their customers, and takes a 30% cut off the top of any sale.

Embedding connectivity into devices doesn't necessarily put the power to choose into consumers hands. Companies can put a product on the market, tie it to a specific service and monopolize transactions by owning and controlling the connection. Amazon's Kindle device and service is a prominent example of this rapidly growing business model.

As the cost of thin stream mobile data modules drops, expect transactional connectivity to be built into more and more devices, moving from content-driven hardware like e-book readers that are of limited use without the ability to continually make purchases, to products that don't need it but can occasionally offer upgrades and updates at critical moments.

Consumers may well be reluctant to buy products that come with an ongoing service fee, or buy optional services at the time of purchase. But making an impulse purchase possible at any time puts the selling proposition in front of the customer at the moment of greatest need and propensity to buy.

LG exhibited networked appliances at the show, including a washing machine. It's easy to say no to a service contract in the store. But when the washer starts making funny noises a couple years later, pushing a button and paying $20 for a virtual repairman will seem like a bargain. And you won't have to watch him bend over. Bonus!

Public perception of broadband rights and dangers challenges regulators, industry

2011-10-11T23:52:00.000-07:00

"Broadband has become to the 21st Century what electricity was the to last century," said Amy Levine, a special counsel at the FCC and the legal advisor to the chairman, Jules Genachowski. That expectation of universal access was one of the major telecommunications policy drivers identified at the CTIA Enterprise & Applications show today in San Diego.

Levine joined with other regulators and industry representatives for a wide ranging discussion of what each expects from the other. There was general agreement, though, that consumers increasingly view broadband access as a right, "even if they live at the end of a dirt road," as Maine state legislator Stacey Allen Fitz put it.

To meet that expectation, service providers have one of their own: subsidies. Each has its own particular view of how subsidy programs in particular and state and federal regulation in general should address building backhaul capacity, which is a major bottleneck for both rural and urban wireless network upgrades.

AT&T representative Len Cali, senior vice president for global public policy, said that rural broadband build outs are limited by spectrum and capital, and said that regulators should not be putting additional requirements on incumbent carriers like AT&T.

Incumbent carriers maintaining a controlling position as technology and markets change was a problem for Charles McKee, Sprint's vice president for government affairs. His fear was that the same carriers that controlled copper networks will end up controlling fiber networks and the managed services that ride on top of them.

Another topic of discussion was the process, or lack thereof, for approving cell sites. An attempt by the FCC to speed up approval is mired in legal challenges. Local and state regulators are left to mediate complaints about the perceived danger posed by wireless facilities and devices.

"Those are real issues to the people that don't understand the technology," said Fitz, adding that the mobile phone industry helps feed the problem with lawyerly warnings on products.