LIRNEasia’s preliminary round of mobile broadband quality testing in selected locations in Western Province unveils both hopes and issues. The good news is that the quality of both key pre-paid mobile broadband services is satisfactory, in majority of locations. However, unusual quality drops in several places indicates that this performance is not always a certainty. In general, a mobile broadband user in Western Province can expect a reasonable quality unless a rare issue like the distance from a tower or a higher number of simultaneous users hinders it. LIRNEasia tested the broadband quality of the popular pre-paid High Speed Packet Access (HSPA) broadband connections of the two key providers.
There seems to be something about open operating systems, as shown by this NYT story. The question now is whether Apple will open its operating system too. More cellphone makers are turning to the free Android operating system made by Microsoft’s latest nemesis, Google. Cellphone makers that have used Windows Mobile to run their top-of-the-line smartphones — including Samsung, LG, Kyocera, Sony Ericsson — are now also making Android devices. Twelve Android handsets have been announced this year, with dozens more expected next year.
Is broadband quality a subject of interest only to urban top-of-the ladder users? Not necessarily. With the latest developments in telecom services broadband access is increasingly becoming a reality to rural populations as well, even in developing countries. The penetration levels might not be the same but should that mean quality should be compromised for rural users? Broadband quality is critical for telecenters where a link is usually shared.
Motorola recently announced an investment in VirtualLogix, a company that lets multiple operating systems run on the same piece of hardware. This means you could have a single phone in your pocket that runs Windows Mobile, the BlackBerry OS, and Google’s Android OS. VirtualLogix is a provider of real-time virtualization. Its technology enables the mobility of applications from the desktop to devices, improves quality of service and security in an open mobile world, and will enable a new generation of dynamic individual user experiences. Motorola and others believe in the technology and decided it was worth investing in.
In his first major speech since taking control of Yahoo last June, Mr. Yang announced the launch of a new upgraded mobile home page for cellphones, an updated version of its mobile portal Yahoo Go as well as new software tools to help outside developers design applications and widgets to work in conjunction with Yahoo’s mobile offerings. Yahoo also announced new partnerships with News Corp.’s MySpace, eBay Inc. and Viacom’s MTV network, which will see those companies use Yahoo’s development tools to create mobile applications users can access through Yahoo.
Miguel Helft October 11, 2007, New York Times For more than two years, a large group of engineers at Google have been working in secret on a mobile-phone project. As word of their efforts has trickled out, expectations in the tech world for what has been called the Google phone, or GPhone, have risen, the way they do for Apple loyalists before a speech by Steve Jobs. But the GPhone is not likely to be the second coming of the iPhone and Google’s goals are very different from Apple’s. Google wants to extend its dominance of online advertising to the mobile internet, a small market today but one that is expected to grow rapidly. It hopes to persuade wireless carriers and mobile-phone makers to offer phones based on its software, according to people briefed on the project.
A version of the increasingly popular Linux operating system Ubuntu will be developed for use on net-enabled phones and devices. The Ubuntu Mobile and Embedded project aims to create the open source platform for initial release in October 2007. The operating system will be developed by members of the Ubuntu community, along with staff from chip giant Intel. Its development was prompted by the growth of power hungry portable devices that place new demands on software. “It is clear that new types of device – small, handheld, graphical tablets which are Internet-enabled – are going to change the way we communicate and collaborate,” said Ubuntu CTO Matt Zimmerman.