mobile

California cities upsetting FCC commissioner Ajit Pai

“It was Milton Friedman who recognized years ago that the market provides a better way,” said Ajit Pai, who became an FCC commissioner in May as a Republican nominee. “Our deregulatory approach to wireless has been a success.”

Speaking to MobileCon attendees this afternoon, Pai focused on roadblocks that government can create for telecommunications development, contrasting the lightly regulated wireless sector with the more intrusive approach to wireline carriers taken by the FCC and the 50 states.… More

Enterprise mobility defined by the guy who does it for the (real) USS Enterprise

The clearest explanation of what enterprise mobility means did not come from the line-up of B-list industry speakers who have graced the MobileCon stage this week, but from an Air Force general.

Major General Robert Wheeler is the deputy CIO for C4 and information infrastructure capabilities at the U.S. Department of Defense (c4 stands for command, control, communications and computers), and he was the final speaker at this morning’s keynote session.

Instead of a marketing department-written and legal staff-vetted multimedia presentation, Wheeler treated us to a clear and quick military-style briefing on how the DOD views mobile communications and how they intend to work with the industry.… More

Mobile communications and government: be careful what you ask for, because you might get it

Some gems sparkled this afternoon in what otherwise was an unfocused chat. The topic was supposed to be mobile technology adoption by government agencies but instead skidded toward canned talking points from lobbyists.

Some panelists got it right, though. Eric Engleman, senior policy advisor for energy and innovation in the San Diego mayor’s office, zeroed in on two key policy areas that will determine the path government agencies will take regarding mobile applications and devices: open data policies and the development and integration of open source, interoperable software.… More

The 21st Century: if you don't get it, it's not for you

9 October 2012 by Steve Blum
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“We’re living life in an ambient data stream,” said Bridget van Kralingen at this morning’s MobileCon keynote session. The 21st Century will be about “creating value from abundant information.”

Van Kralingen is a senior vice president with IBM Global Business Services. Her talk was conceptual and enterprise focused, and provided the perfect lead in to Scott Griffith, the CEO of ZipCar.

For the past nine years, he’s been living that life. ZipCar allows members in certain cities and 300 college campuses – 730,000 members as of last year – to jump into cars, drive for an hour or two, then park and walk away.… More

3G networks reach deep into Australia and New Zealand

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.… More

Qualcomm launches consumer M2M industry with 2net medical monitoring platform

12 January 2012 by Steve Blum
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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.… More

Mobile telecoms companies lead consumer electronics innovation

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.… More

Smokey and the Crowdsource Bandit

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.… More

Unnatural opportunity in M2M

10 January 2012 by Steve Blum
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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.… More

Qualcomm's Jacobs fills CE thought leader gap

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… More