As a general practice regarding phone reviews I never start sharing my opinion until I have lived with the phone in the wild for at least a week. WIth the iPhone 3G I could have started commenting at launch with their launch strategy (thank goodness I went to an ATT store instead of the Apple store because apparently my plan needed a lot of upgrading).
But I could have also have started commenting by the end of the second day after my second recharge. But, I held back, thinking to myself that I am just overusing the phone because of all the new features. After day 3 and 4 and reading review after review I realized that the battery life of this device was indeed a problem and a big problem at that.
While the tips are “commonsense” issue’s to a phone guy like me, to the average user they are pretty daunting.
Here are Apple’s iPhone 3G “optimizing” recommendations with my comments:
Turn off 3G: Using 3G cellular networks loads data faster, but may also decrease battery life, especially in areas with limited 3G coverage. To disable 3G, from the Home screen choose Settings > General > Network and set Enable 3G to Off. You will still be able to make and receive calls and access cellular data networks via EDGE or GPRS where available.
This is why I upgraded to 3G, to remember and reenact the iPhone’s lovely EDGE experience. As I understand it, one of the reason why the iPhone did not come out with 3G originally was because of problems with battery power. What changed here? Or did Apple just rush out a product to stay ahead of the iPhone-like competition. I will tell you this, turning 3G off has vastly improved my battery life. But, sometimes I yearn for that faster speed. So I go and get a little naughty and turn it on for a specific action or so. But to continuously turn it off and on again is a real pain. If they are going to tell me to turn 3G on and off they should not have made it 3 pushes and slides away. It should be more automagic. Essentially, My 3G iPhone is 3G no more.
Minimize use of location services: Applications that actively use location services such as Maps may reduce battery life. To disable location services, go to Settings > General > Location Services or use location services only when needed.
This is true. I was excited about the GPS (Location) feature of the phone and used it throughout the day, as anyone else would, to find directions from where I currently was or to Geo-tag pictures I have taken. While doing this I could literally watch my battery bar fade. Now, if I am traveling long distances or doing stuff where I know I wont be near an electrical socket in the next three hours I just avoid opening up LBS services all-together… which kinda of defeats the point of a “location” based service.
Fetch new data less frequently: Applications such as Mail can be set to fetch data wirelessly at specific intervals. The more frequently email or other data is fetched, the quicker your battery may drain. To fetch new data manually, from the Home screen choose Settings > Fetch New Data and tap Manually. To increase the fetch interval, go to Settings > Fetch New Data and tap Hourly. Note that this is a global setting and applies to all applications that do not support push services.
Yes, this was recommended for the iPhone 2G or iPhone 1.0. I personally had it fetching every 15 minutes for mail and my iPhone would last for the better part of the day. So far with 3G turned off this has not been a problem. Nevertheless, this is a disturbing recommendation for what is supposed to be the all purpose always on portable computer.
Turn off push mail: If you have a push mail account such as Yahoo!, MobileMe or Microsoft Exchange, turn off push mail when you don’t need it. Go to Settings > Fetch New Data and set Push to Off. Messages sent to your push email accounts will now be received on your phone based on the global Fetch setting rather than as they arrive.
Wait didn’t the above optimization hint tell me to fetch data less frequently? Also if I should turn off Push then why would I pay 99 bucks a month for MobileMe or use my iPhone an an Outlook enterprise device. Even without 3G i noticed that the Push was draining my battery a bit even on EDGE. By the way this also means turn off all of MobileMe’s other “push” capabilities for Calendar and contacts
Auto-check fewer email accounts: You can save power by checking fewer email accounts. This can be accomplished by turning off an email account or by deleting it. To turn off an account…
Well one thing is for sure, whatever account your left using will not be a Push email account and should only be checked every year or whenever they come out with a new iPhone. Because if you have multiple E-mail accounts thats your problem. Pick one, your others are not important.
Minimize use of third-party applications: Excessive use of applications such as games that prevent the screen from dimming or shutting off or applications that use location services can reduce battery life.
I am sure this is exactly what the people who built those applications want to hear. Way to support them Apple. If I cant use them as much why would I pay $9.99 - $19.99 for an application I want to or need to use as part of my mobile lifestyle. So much for this revolutionarily open 2.0 platform. If you make me decide extra applications on a phone versus the ability to call my wife, while tempting, I will always prefer the latter.
With All these limitations why am I paying an extra 30 bucks a month for unlimited data?
Turn off Wi-Fi: If you rarely use Wi-Fi, you can turn it off to save power. Go to Settings > Wi-Fi and set Wi-Fi to Off. Note that if you frequently use your iPhone to browse the web, battery life may be improved by using Wi-Fi instead of cellular data networks.
Ah! Thats why! But also, how more confusing and burdensome can they make that for the average user? Turn off Wi-Fi so that your phone is not constantly scanning for Wifi networks thus draining the battery. But, Oh! using Data services on WiFi saves battery life. Searching for Wifi is a battery drain, doing all your data stuff on WiFi keeps the iPhone’s juices going longer. At least the ability to turn off and on Wifi is one push less than turning of 3G
Turn off Bluetooth: If you rarely use a Bluetooth headset or car kit, you can turn off Bluetooth to save power. Go to Settings > General > Bluetooth and set Bluetooth to Off.
This also is very true. The battery last much longer when you do not use bluetooth. Problem is, myself and many other savvy iPhone users do you use Bluetooth and would find, like i did, a suggestion like this to just be annoying. Maybe its a good thing they have not yet opened up the iPhones bluetooth for other purposes.
As I was reading this list, my always insightful wife cut me off saying “Basically, pretend its not an iPhone.” And that, it seems, is Apple’s own solution to their big battery problem.
Even if these tips are commonsense and work they just do not match the reasons why someone is supposed to buy this phone: WHy didn’t they just say:
Always be near a wall-socket or car charger: If you are near an electrical outlet you can also plug in and power up. Or to be Eco-Friendly try a solar charger.
Use as a paper-weight: Because just using the iPhone in its off state to make sure the fan doesn’t blow the papers of your desk doesn’t use any power at all.
In an earlier post-iPhone 3G Friendfeed post, Rubel amusingly quips “As the iPhone begins to resemble and be used like a computer, we will have to contend with challenges like crashing and battery life.”
This is true, but only if you focus on the glitz and glitter. Its important to point out that Apple is only making 3G, WiFi and GPS (Location services) on a phone popular. But other phone makers and carriers have been doing this all over the world (and even here in the States) for some time now.
MOpocket writer Mordy Gilden’s HTC Titan running Windows Mobile off the Sprint network has all the abilities the iPhone 3G does in terms of infrastructure, it runs tons of applications and, as Mordy pointed out to me this past Sunday (as I learned my old iPhone car charger was not compatible with the iPhone 3G) it will run all these services and last at least a full day if not longer.
There are many other phones out there with 3G, WiFi, Push, frequent data-syncs and whatever, that do not have these problems. Mordy complains about having to charge it every night, I worry about getting mine through the day.
Some reports are coming out saying that the iPhone 3G beats the competition in terms of battery life over 3G. These tests indicate talk time and not other phone usages.
But that is not really the point. its very much not like Apple to join the fray of building inferior (if they are inferior) products. And then have to make battery usage explanations like this? The iPhone 3G has been anything but Apple’s usual clean cut stylish goodness. Usually, they let everyone else try to surpass them while the technology and market is not ready. Then, when they see the magic formula they pounce. Its not like Apple to release a product till it works well. Apple fanboys know that and respect that.
Also, even if other 3G/GPS/WiFi devices are only marginally better in battery life, as some places are reporting, at least the other phones have replaceable batteries!
So I am sorry to say this, but the fault lies entirely with Apple. I am sure they will come out with a solution like, for example, a new better battery that they will replace for 39.99. In the meantime I think my iPhone playtime is over and its time to go back to Nokia.
Apple may have introduced the rest of America’s common (non-Sprint/Verizon) users to 3G. But with great power comes great responsibility. So far they are giving 3G a bad taste.
For those of you who, like me, went out and bought a Nokia E70 (or many of the other Nokia wifi phones) you may have come across some of its Internet calling capabilities. Buying an unlocked one here in the States there is little one can do with it… however the Mobile Internet calling is slowly becoming the phenomena that I think will radically change and shake up the industry.
Skype on my wifi enabled windows mobile phone is even more of an indication.
The New York Times today has a very interesting article on the triumphs and difficulties with converged cellular/Wi-Fi service, as currently being tried by T-Mobile in Seattle. Apparently, it works well when going from cell to Wi-Fi; not so well in reverse.
I still believe that this is a technology that will radically alter the personal communications industry.
A while ago at 3GSM I was first introduced to the concept of UMA (also read this). Even for me the UMA (Unlicensed Mobile Access) concept was a bit confusing for me as well…. is it real VoIP over a WLAN… does UMA mean the phone is WIFI? Well, I have tried to explain it in past articles but Oliver Starr over at Mobile Crunch really breaks it down in this post: A Quick and Dirty UMA Primer.
Enjoy. Its the future.
From the post:
There appears to be a ton of interest in UMA Technology as well as some confusion about the difference between a WLAN enabled handset (one with a WiFi radio as well as GSM/GPRS) and a UMA/Dual Mode handset which also sports the WiFi-GSM/GPRS Radio configuration but also includes the UMA software that enables the seamless switching from one mode to another even during (and without dropping) a call in progress. These are NOT the same thing as the information below, which I’ve culled from the progenitor of UMA technology, Kineto Wireless’ website.
The reason… “technical obstacles.” What those are Skype CEO Niklas Zennstrom wont say. I guess the example Rafe found was an Alpha Alpha Symbian version. For now if you really want Skype wherever you go you will have to get a Windows Mobile device.
But Symbian and Windows are less than 10 percent of the phones sold out there (and even less in the US market). Skype really needs to get themselves on all the other phones out there…
So the question really is, is this a problem of Skypes or is the moment just not ready yet. Like mobile video star-ups that tried to enter the arena 2 years ago the time is just not right yet. If the hardware is not ready yet because the people are not ready yet then perhaps Skype should just concentrate on higher end phones like Symbian and Windows and Palm (whatever their new OS may be) and wait for the inevitable trickling down of those mobile OS’s. I would imagine at least, in the case of Symbian, this wont take long.
That is f course that when all is said and done the carriers don’t just block Skype traffic from running on their networks and on WiFi phones that are sold with them branded onto it. Which their non-net-neutricality infrastructure is set up to do nicely and which is in their right as Skype would take traffic away from their calling plans. But perhaps this is an inevitability that the carriers will have to deal with as well.
The blogosphere is buzzing with news about how Alltel Wireless the owner/operator of the nation’s largest wireless network has just announced the signing of a deal with satellite radio broadcaster XM Radio to create “XM Radio Mobile”.
The thinking is the newly created entity, XM Radio Mobile will initially bring 20 channels of satellite content to a variety of compatible handsets for $7.99 per month. XM will push out data to include the song title, artist and album. Genres in the initial release are likely to include music from the 70’s, 80’s, 90’s, Top 20 Hits, Alternative Rock, Hip-Hop/R&B, Indie Rock, Blues, Country, Latin and more.
But to tell you the truth it exactly the future capabilities of cell phones and network infrastructures such as 3G EV-DO and HSDPA not to mention 4G innovations such Wimax and city-wide and municipal Wifi that I think may make an infrastructure like pay for satellite radio irrelevant in the near future.
Don’t get me wrong. I get the convenience of having all the technology on one device. But as more and more handsets are dual mode wifi and network friendly and as such things as Wimax and or municipal wifi become a reality I am betting that the often overlooked services like commercial free home grown or professional internet radio (which is big in social networking worlds like Second Life) will be more widely used and available. I can also see certain networks make deals with Internet radio stations (or a company that owns a bunch) to have them on the deck or as a premium service.
In other-words wifi and wimax will become the new way to stream commercial free or just plain old free radio. This will also cause a boom in the home-grown radio market where anyone can have their own radio station. Hey I am just looking to the future here.
It will also become an easier way to distribute podcasts.
I see that satellite radio sees this to and that is probably why this deal was made. And there is no question that Alltel XM users will use it, for now. The question is whether they will in the future if IP radio streaming to mobile handsets ever makes it off the ground, which I predict it will.
This is about to be everywhere. Its official… Sprint is going Wimax. The first to go 3G only a couple of years ago, the always ballsy Sprint Nextel Corp. today announced its plans to develop and deploy the first fourth generation (4G) nationwide broadband mobile network. The 4G wireless broadband network will use the mobile WiMAX (Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access) IEEE 802.16e-2005 technology standard.
Working together with Intel, Motorola (via their “Harmony” project to mix iDEN with WiMAX), and Samsung, Sprint Nextel will develop a nationwide network infrastructure as well as mobile WiMAX-enabled chipsets that will support advanced wireless broadband services for computing, portable multimedia, interactive and other consumer electronic devices. These efforts are intended to allow Sprint Nextel customers to experience a nationwide mobile data network that is designed to offer faster speeds, lower cost, and greater convenience and enhanced multimedia quality.
Sprint said to be thinking of having the network built out by 2008, at a cost somewhere between $1 billion and $4 billion.
The service is expected to be rolled out by 2007 with wider coverage by 2008.
There’s some unspoken subtext here, too though: The idea of adopting a second technology, in addition to CDMA, that’s controlled by Qualcomm probably wasn’t particularly attractive. The big Q’s royalty system hasn’t won it a lot of friends (apart from happy investors), and it’s currently experiencing some discord with operators in emerging markets who feel its royalty demands, particularly on mobile handsets, and chip pricing inhibit their ability to compete with their GSM rivals. WiMax addresses all those factors — the technology isn’t controlled by a single entity, and nobody holds a commanding about of the IP behind it. This means there’s going to be a lot more competition, and Sprint’s fortunes won’t be as tied to one outside company.
Some other interesting points: Shen talked about how the WiMax network will be complementary, both to Sprint’s existing cellular networks, but also to fixed broadband networks, particularly those of the cable TV companies it’s partnered with. He said that the carrier wants WiMax chips in its devices to also support Wi-Fi, while it’s focusing on creating a network whose real value is in mobility, not necessarily in fixed wireless usage. Also, he mentioned billing access to the network on a per-household basis, rather than per device — this will be necessity if Sprint and it’s vendors’ vision of millions of connected electronic devices is to come true. It’s also an interesting pricing model that could shake up mobile operators a bit.
Plazes, the popular German built Web 2.0 Social Networking technology that brings the concept of physical presence to the web and thus coined the phrase “to plaze” just released a Beta version of its mobile platform. The mobile Plazer works a lot like its big brother. The main difference between the desktop and the mobile version is that the mobile version uses GSM/3G cell tower IDs to identify your location instead of a router´s MAC ID. Once it figures out where you are, it will immediately present you with a list of Plazes that are nearby of which you can either identify being currentky at or create a New Plaze if your option is not present. If the cell tower is unknown to Plazes you have to input an address for your current location and you will receive a list of Plazes for the immediate vicinity of the Plaze (i.e. the restaurant you are) is at that location, choose that one from the list and you´re done. If not you can create a new Plaze and you will be put there instantly.
Not only will this allow Plazers to keep track of there buddies on the go… but for the first time it will also allow people to Plaze places that do not traditionally have Wifi hotspots, like your favorite 5 start restaurant, theater or Grandma’s apartment.
To make it work, the Plazer app needs a working internet connection. This should be plain internet, but WAP also seems to work. I have been connecting using my Cingular GPRS connection and while that is not a 3G cell tower, yet., it is working just fine. The application uses as little network traffic as possible with Plaze setting estimating taking up to no more than 20kb of network traffic for creating or selecting a Plaze. Plazer also sends periodic pings to the server to keep you online, that also causes network traffic. It’s 7.5kb per hour maximum. But be warned and switch it off, if your not sure about your data plan or are data roaming.
For now, only those Mobile-Suave American’s carrying Series 60 Symbian phones will be able to get a taste of what Plazes Beta-Mobile has to offer. But even then it will only be a taste since most of us American S60 carrying mobilists are not yet connecting to a 3G GSM tower (unless of course you are lucky enough to live in one of those cities where Cingular is testing out there HSPDA network. S0 for now, American’s capable of using the service while out and about in the United States will have to rely on the manual input. Which is fine… the UI makes it really easy. Its just the dial-pad that makes it annoying (still waiting for that Nokia E70).
But its a great sign of what is about to come, and I know for a fact that the people over at Plazes are already contemplating what the inevitable integration of GPS into mobile phones means for their application. When it comes to location tagging no one seems to have grasped it better then Plazes.
Of course there are a few bugs and bound to be more. But first of all, its Beta and that is what Beta is for and secondly, the overall truth is that Plazes mobile brings mobile location tagging closer to an everyday reality than most applications trying to do the same thing before it.
I cant believe it was only two days ago that I was standing in one of the Nokia HQ building in Espoo, Finland (just outside of Helsinki). The tour was arranged as a second day of special stuff for the press during the Mobile Monday Global Summit.
It was incredible! The building was beautiful, simple and not Nokia logo’d out like you would expect a corporate headquarters to be. Anyways, they had a great hall prepared for us which had a really interesting display of what I want to call Nokia phones throughout history.
They then sat us down and talked extensively about their new E-Series phones coming out, which I did not mind sitting through again because I am really excited about the release of the E70. Actually all the E Series phone look pretty kick ass even though they are designed especially for Business use. Its the open WLAN (and for the E70 the Qwerty keyboard) that make this series shine!
Of course, there was no comment to my question regarding when these phones will available in the United States. “When the operators are ready” was the general gist of the answer. No answer to the follow up question as to whether or not recent FCC approval of the E70 was any indication.
Then they let us walk around and see first hand what their phone’s can do. I spent a lot of time with the new photo application’s for the N Series phones and watched, for the first time, as some one printed a nice quality photo from a phone.
Then I played some amazing and actually enjoyable 3D mobile games being especially made for N Series phones. But best of all I got to play them on a N93. These games rock! and included a fun little fishing game (where I swear I could feel the tug on the line) a great golf game and a cowboy shooter that I did not want to stop playing. They essentially brought the N-Gage experience to regular phones and for that I thank I thank Nokia.
But best of all was the amazing customer service I received. Some of you may remember me talking about how I was having problems with my Nokia 6682. The phone lagged when moving between operations sometimes taking up to 5-7 seconds to switch to the front page to the contacts or menu page. The phone also took an insane amount of time to load up (sometimes way over a minute and a half) only to fade slowly to white and start up again (the second time doing it successfully).
Well, lucky for me my phone was having those problems when I was there so I did not have the problem of everything working fine when showing the gadget to the expert. The two Nokia people who watched me, smiling, demonstrate my phones bug were actually shocked and swore that they have never seen anything like that before. Patric Ojala, the technology manager of games BP, brought me to the other side of the building to a back-tech room where I guess you could say the Nokia Genius Bar (Nokia help desk for you non Mac users who would not get the joke) was. The Nokia Genius looked at the problem and then told me I had an ancient Symbian S60 operating system on it. It was a 3.something and the current OS was something like 6.something. That was a real shocker for me considering the phone was only a month old since I bought it… are they just shipping inferior S60 phones to the United States?
Anyways, he took my phone into the back, Patric took me to another place to play with more phones (and the E70) which was in the middle of their cafeteria and then 30 minutes later my phone was done and ran beautifully! With the most recent S60 OS on it
So thank you Nokia for a wonderful time and for fixing my phone!
Pictures of my Nokia experience in Finland during the Mobile Monday World Summit can be viewed here .
While under the radar of bigger buzz words such as FMC, Mobile TV, and HSDPA, one could definitely pick up some pretty substantial chatter concerning Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP) and its upcoming inevitable relationship to the mobile industry during this years 3GSM World Gathering. Ever since my first post on what I call the mobile VoIP revolution, I decided watch for signs of it at 3GSM. For me it began at Nokia’s press conference in which they announced the new Nokia 6136 with Unlicensed Mobile Access (UMA) interoperability while flashing the the words VoIP in big letters on the screen. But it soon became clear that UMA is not what I would consider the ultimate Mobile VoIP solution.
All UMA does, in fact, is provides access to GSM and GPRS mobile services over unlicensed spectrum technologies, including Bluetooth and 802.11(WLAN and WiFi). In other words, it picks up that you can use a WiFi connection and then tunnels your phones connection directly to your carriers WiFi services (which may or may not be a mirroring of your plan… for an extra WiFi access fee, of course). Now, don’t get me wrong… UMA is an amazing technological leap in that it enables service providers to allow roam and provide seamless hand-overs between between cellular networks and unlicensed private and public wireless networks (via the same carrier) thus increasing coverage areas (especially indoors where a lot of carriers still have issues) to anyplace there is WiFi. So if your house is a cell phone dead zone the minute you walk through the door, a WiFi connection and a UMA phone is the ultimate phone for you. You talk on the phone using your WiFi connection, walk out the door while still talking and switch to your actual cell phone network without having to interrupt the call. While on their WiFi, subscribers will also have the advantages of WiFi data speed transfers. Thus also increasing the range of places that an operators 3G (EV-DO or HSDPA) network can be accessed. All hand-over’s are invisible to the subscriber.
As both Carlo from Mobhappy as well as myself pointed out when covering this “breaking” story, MA and WiFi enabled handsets also allow phone manufacturers like Nokia to reach beyond the customer base usually reached only through the mobile carriers. Companies that are already embedded in the internet such as mobile VoIP operators, cable companies and land-line companies can now get a shot at mobile content, without ever having to travel the roads controlled by the carriers. Or as Carlos put it:
There’s little doubt that UMA will be a disruptive force in the mobile telecom industry. It promises to meld the benefits of fixed or PC-based VoIP with those of mobile telephony. But why it’s so compelling for Nokia is that it gives them an opportunity to expand their pool of customers beyond just mobile operators. Sure, they go on about how mobile operators can leverage all their assets and plenty of other buzzphrases, saying UMA lets them boost network coverage and reduce costs as well as introduce new services. But it also gives plenty of companies that want to get into the mobile space a foothold — companies like cable operators, fixed-line companies, even strong Internet brands.
For someone like a cable operator, an MVNO using its own networks for UMA backhaul is a pretty compelling proposition. A fixed operator can offer a similar network, and for a diversified telecoms company, like France Telecom — say with its Wanadoo ISP and Orange mobile network in the UK — it makes even more sense. The telecoms infrastructure market is slowly melding fixed and mobile; for consumers this mix will happen even more quickly. By seizing on UMA, Nokia can expand outside its traditional networks sales area, and grow its carrier customer base.
Shortly after Nokia announced their 6131 Motorola launched its version of a WiFi /UMA handset with the A910. But as a UMA device all this phone promises as well, is the above benefits of tunneling to the carriers through a WLAN WiFi connection. Without a hack, UMA devices do not get any of the benefits that true WiFi has at all.
And Then There Was Skype.
But some of the phones these manufactures make do come with a genuine WLAN connection, and with the phones that can do that (such as the upcoming Nokia N80 as well as several of their E series models) talk of applying authentic 3rd party VoIP services onto the mobile medium began to arise. There was also talk, of course, about using VoIP services over a carriers own data connection. In both these areas the word on the tip of everyones tongue was Skype… and then Skype just said it for them. At their valentines day press conference at 3GSM, Skype announced that they will be working with Hutchison Whampoa’s carrier 3 to test services that will allow Skype to run on all 3 networked phones. Both companies plan to offer the service later this year, even though this is already happening in Sweden where 3 Sweden offers Skype bundled with a 3G data card and flat-rate data plan. No matter,Skypes move toward mobile is clear. As they said during their press conference “Trials will be carried out using enabled mobile phones from leading phone manufacturers.â€
So that’s an example of a VoIP service running over a networks data network. As far as using Skype on a mobile phone over a genuine WiFi connection all that is needed is an operating system that Skype can run on installed into a WiFi phone. This technology already exists for Windows Mobile and thus for any smart phone running the Windows Mobile OS. Today i got to play with a Q-Tek 9100 running Windows Mobile 5.0 that will be shipped with Skype pre-installed. This is old news. The good news was picked up by my buddy Rafe over at AllAboutSymbian.com when he discovered Skype running on a Nokia 6680 phone with the Symbian S60 OS. While not every Nokia S60 phone comes with an open WLAN capability, those that do will be able to run Skype over a WiFi network.
ALSO AT 3GSM
I also got to stop by some booths and companies claiming some interesting mobile VoIP revolution stuff.
CONVERGIN
I got the chance to talk with an Israeli company called Convergin that managed to enable the first cellular/WiFi handoff without service level changes. This Voice Call Continuity (VCC) solution is located in the service layer at the core of the network and thus provides seamless service interaction and continuity between WiFi, Cellular and Wireline handoffs without requiring an operator to make changes in the service level. Other approaches require operators to either modify service logic or apply customized logic in service platforms each time a new SIP/IMS application server is deployed. This is a great alternative to UMA. Until now IMS based solutions suffered from being intrusive for the service layer. Convergin’s core convergence solution allows the operators to benefit from IMS with the service transparency of access solutions such as UMA. “Standardization bodies have now selected a Cellular/WiFi handoff approach, which influences the whole Fixed Mobile Convergence ecosystem,†said Dr. Ayal Itzkovitz, CEO of Convergin. “Convergin has identified and addressed one of the critical points in taking these solutions commercial. By taking a core network approach, we are rapidly moving FMC (Fixed Mobile Convergence) from the trial phases into viable commercial deployments.â€
BRIDGEPORT
Another company claiming a stronghold in the mobile VoIP revolution (and who’s booth makes up the picture above) is the Chicago based BridgePort Networks. Simply put, BridgePort Networks solutions for MobileVoIP provide subscribers the ability to communicate seamlessly between the mobile and broadband networks, using a single number. There services are interesting in that they try to take advantage of the on coming mobile VoIP revolution to cater to both broadband as well as mobile operators and MVNO’s. The Bridgeport Network solution leverages the cost advantages, bandwidth and rich features enabled by migrating voice traffic delivery fully to IP , utilizing the SIP open standard across a single phone number identity.
The long and the short of it is that this will allow subscribers to make and receive calls regardless of whether they are connected to the mobile network or the IP (VoIP network). Your telephone number becomes your “single identity” for all calls. The technology behind the Bridgeport Networks all both mobile as well as IP providers to leverage their previous investments in their own technology while still providing a path to IMS.
OVERALL
Well, I learned a lot of things about the mobile voIP convergence while at 3GSM and will definitely be keeping an eye on the companies, people and concepts I picked up there as I report more on the mobile VoIP revolution.
As a general practice regarding phone reviews I never start sharing my opinion until I have lived with the phone in the wild for at least a week. WIth the iPhone 3G I could have started commenting at launch with their launch strategy (thank goodness I went to an ATT store instead of the Apple store because apparently my plan needed a lot of upgrading).
