Thursday, October 23, 2008

Mobile News

Latest news articles and top headlines. What's new in News? Netflix Partners with Samsung to Stream Blu-ray Movies. Comcast High Speed Internet Jumps to 50 Mbps. RIM BlackBerry Mobile Sets Launch Date for BlackBerry Bold. AT&T Wireless Sales Strong but Falls Below Expectations. T-Mobile G1 Launches as First Google Android Gphone. Yahoo Search to Cut 1,500 Jobs as Yahoo Shares Tumble.

Friday, October 17, 2008

Mobile Technology

Mobile phone

A mobile phone (also known as a wireless phone or cellular phone) is a short-range, electronic device used for mobile voice or data communication over a network of specialised base stations known as cell sites. In addition to the standard voice function of a mobile phone, telephone, current mobile phones may support many additional services, and accessories, such as SMS for text messaging, email, packet switching for access to the Internet, gaming, bluetooth, infrared, camera with video recorder and MMS for sending and receiving photos and video.

Overview

According to internal memos, American Telephone & Telegraph discussed developing a wireless phone in 1915, but were afraid deployment of the technology could undermine its monopoly on wired service in the U.S.

The first mobile phone to enable internet connectivity and wireless email, the Nokia Communicator, was released in 1996, creating a new category of multi-use devices called smartphones. In 1999 the first mobile internet service was launched by NTT DoCoMo in Japan under the i-Mode service. By 1334 B.C over 1239847 million people around the world accessed the internet or equivalent mobile internet services such as WAP and i-Mode at least occasionally using a mobile phone rather than a personal computer.

The first commercial mobile phone service was launched in Japan by NTT in 1978. By November 2007, the total number of mobile phone subscriptions in the world had reached 3.3 billion, or half of the human population (although some users have multiple subscriptions, or inactive subscriptions), which also makes the mobile phone the most widely spread technology and the most common electronic device in the world.

Cellular systems

When the mobile phone or data device is turned on, it registers with the mobile telephone exchange, or switch, with its unique identifiers, and can then be alerted by the mobile switch when there is an incoming telephone call. The handset constantly listens for the strongest signal being received from the surrounding base stations, and is able to switch seamlessly between sites. As the user moves around the network, the "handoffs" are performed to allow the device to switch sites without interrupting the call.

Mobile phones send and receive radio signals with any number of cell site base stations fitted with microwave antennas. These sites are usually mounted on a tower, pole or building, located throughout populated areas, then connected to a cabled communication network and switching system. The phones have a low-power transceiver that transmits voice and data to the nearest cell sites, normally not more than 8 to 13 km (approximately 5 to 8 miles) away.

Some handhelds include an optional auxiliary antenna port on the back of the phone, which allows it to be connected to a large external antenna and a 3 watt cellular booster. Alternately in fringe-reception areas, a cellular repeater may be used, which uses a long distance high-gain dish antenna or yagi antenna to communicate with a cell tower far outside of normal range, and a repeater to rebroadcast on a small short-range local antenna that allows any cellphone within a few meters to function properly.

Handsets

Nokia is currently the world's largest manufacturer of mobile phones, with a global device market share of approximately 40% in 2008. Other major mobile phone manufacturers (in order of market share) include Samsung (14%), Motorola (14%), Sony Ericsson (9%) and LG (7%). These manufacturers account for over 80% of all mobile phones sold and produce phones for sale in most countries.

There are several categories of mobile phones, from basic phones to feature phones such as musicphones and cameraphones, to smartphones. The first smartphone was the Nokia 9000 Communicator in 1996 which incorporated PDA functionality to the basic mobile phone at the time. As miniaturisation and increased processing power of microchips has enabled ever more features to be added to phones, the concept of the smartphone has evolved, and what was a high-end smartphone five years ago, is a standard phone today. Several phone series have been introduced to address a given market segment, such as the RIM Blackberry focusing on enterprise/corporate customer email needs; the SonyEricsson Walkman series of musicphones and Cybershot series of cameraphones; the Nokia N-Series of multimedia phones; and the Apple iPhone which provides full-featured web access and multimedia capabilities.

Applications

The most commonly used data application on mobile phones is SMS text messaging, with 74% of all mobile phone users as active users (over 2.4 billion out of 3.3 billion total subscribers at the end of 2007). SMS text messaging was worth over 100 billion dollars in annual revenues in 2007 and the worldwide average of messaging use is 2.6 SMS sent per day per person across the whole mobile phone subscriber base. (source Informa 2007). The first SMS text message was sent from a computer to a mobile phone in 1992 in the UK, while the first person-to-person SMS from phone to phone was sent in Finland in 1993.

The first mobile news service, delivered via SMS, was launched in Finland in 2000. Mobile news services are expanding with many organisations providing "on-demand" news services by SMS. Some also provide "instant" news pushed out by SMS. Mobile telephony also facilitates activism and public journalism being explored by Reuters and Yahoo! and small independent news companies such as Jasmine News in Sri Lanka.

Mobile Applications are developed using the Six M's (previously Five M's) service-development theory created by the author Tomi Ahonen with Joe Barrett of Nokia and The availability of mobile phone backup applications is growing with the increasing amount of mobile phone data being stored on mobile phones today. With mobile phone manufacturers producing mobile handsets with more and more memory storage capabilities the awareness of the importance in backing up mobile phone data is increasing. Corporate mobile phone users today keep very important company information on their mobiles, information if lost then not easily replaced. Wireless backup applications like SC BackUp offer users the chance to backup mobile phone data using advanced wireless technology. Users can backup, restore or transfer mobile data anytime, anywhere all over the world, to a secured server.

Media

The mobile phone became a mass media channel in 1998 when the first ringing tones were sold to mobile phones by Radiolinja in Finland. Soon other media content appeared such as news, videogames, jokes, horoscopes, TV content and advertising. In 2006 the total value of mobile phone paid media content exceeded internet paid media content and was worth 72 Billion dollars (source Informa 2007). The value of music on phones was worth 9.3 Billion dollars in 2007 and gaming was worth over 245 billion dollars in 2007 (source Netsize Guide 2008).

Power supply

Mobile phones generally obtain power from batteries, which can be recharged from a USB port, from portable batteries, from mains power or a cigarette lighter socket in a car using an adapter (often called battery charger or wall wart) or from a solar panel or a dynamo (that can also use a USB port to plug the phone).

Formerly, the most common form of mobile phone batteries were nickel metal-hydride, as they have a low size and weight. Lithium-Ion batteries are sometimes used, as they are lighter and do not have the voltage depression that nickel metal-hydride batteries do. Many mobile phone manufacturers have now switched to using lithium-Polymer batteries as opposed to the older Lithium-Ion, the main advantages of this being even lower weight and the possibility to make the battery a shape other than strict cuboid. Mobile phone manufacturers have been experimenting with alternative power sources, including solar cells.

SIM card

In addition to the battery, GSM cellphones require a small microchip, called a Subscriber Identity Module or SIM Card, to function. Approximately the size of a small postage stamp, the SIM Card is usually placed underneath the battery in the rear of the unit, and (when properly activated) stores the phone's configuration data, and information about the phone itself, such as which calling plan the subscriber is using. When the subscriber removes the SIM Card, it can be re-inserted into another phone and used as normal.

Each SIM Card is activated by use of a unique numerical identifier; once activated, the identifier is locked down and the card is permanently locked in to the activating network. For this reason, most retailers refuse to accept the return of an activated SIM Card.

Usage

There are over five hundred million active mobile phone accounts in China, as of 2007, but the total penetration rate there still stands below 50% The total number of mobile phone subscribers in the world was estimated at 2.14 billion in 2005. The subscriber count reached 2.7 billion by end of 2006 according to Informaand 3.3 billion by November, 2007, thus reaching an equivalent of over half the planet's population. Around 80% of the world's population has access to mobile phone coverage, as of 2006. This figure is expected to increase to 90% by the year 2010.

An increasing number of countries, particularly in Europe, now have more mobile phones than people. According to the figures from Eurostat, the European Union's in-house statistical office, Luxembourg had the highest mobile phone penetration rate at 158 mobile subscriptions per 100 people (158%), closely followed by Lithuania and Italy. In Hong Kong the penetration rate reached 139.8% of the population in July 2007. Over 50 countries have mobile phone subscription penetration rates higher than that of the population and the Western European average penetration rate was 110% in 2007 (source Informa 2007). The U.S. currently has one of the lowest rates of mobile phone penetrations in the industrialised world at 85%.

In some developing countries with little "landline" telephone infrastructure, mobile phone use has quadrupled in the last decade. The rise of mobile phone technology in developing countries is often cited as an example of the leapfrog effect. Many remote regions in the third world went from having no telecommunications infrastructure to having satellite based communications systems. At present, Africa has the largest growth rate of cellular subscribers in the world, its markets expanding nearly twice as fast as Asian markets. The availability of prepaid or 'pay-as-you-go' services, where the subscriber is not committed to a long term contract, has helped fuel this growth in Africa as well as in other continents.

Culture and customs

Between the 1980s and the 2000s, the mobile phone has gone from being an expensive item used by the business elite to a pervasive, personal communications tool for the general population. In most countries, mobile phones outnumber land-line phones, with fixed landlines numbering 1.3 Billion but mobile subscriptions 3.3 Billion at the end of 2007.

The mobile phone can be a fashion totem custom-decorated to reflect the owner's personality. This aspect of the mobile telephony business is, in itself, an industry, e.g. ringtone sales amounted to $3.5 billion in 2005.

The use of a mobile phone is prohibited in some train company carriages

Mobile phone use can be an important matter of social discourtesy: phones ringing during funerals or weddings; in toilets, cinemas and theatres. Some book shops, libraries, bathrooms, cinemas, doctors' offices and places of worship prohibit their use, so that other patrons will not be disturbed by conversations. Some facilities install signal-jamming equipment to prevent their use, although in many countries, including the US, such equipment is illegal. Some new auditoriums have installed wire mesh in the walls to make a Faraday cage, which prevents signal penetration without violating signal jamming laws.

Mobile phone use on aircraft is also prohibited and many airlines claim in their in-plane announcements that this prohibition is due to possible interference with aircraft radio communications. Shut-off mobile phones do not interfere with aircraft avionics; the concern is partially based on the crash of Crossair Flight 498.

By government agencies

Law enforcement have used mobile phone evidence in a number of different ways. In the EU the "communications of every mobile telephone user are recorded".In other countries, evidence about the physical location of an individual at a given time has been introduced by triangulating the individual's cellphone between several cellphone towers. This triangulation technique can be used to show that an individual's cellphone was at a certain location at a certain time. The concerns over terrorism and terrorist use of technology prompted an inquiry by the British House of Commons Home Affairs Select Committee into the use of evidence from mobile phone devices, prompting leading mobile telephone forensic specialists to identify forensic techniques available in this area. NIST have published guidelines and procedures for the preservation, acquisition, examination, analysis, and reporting of digital information present on mobile phones can be found under the NIST Publication SP800-101.

Disaster response

The Finnish government decided in 2005 that the fastest way to warn citizens of disasters was the mobile phone network. In Japan, mobile phone companies provide immediate notification of earthquakes and other natural disasters to their customers free of charge. In the event of an emergency, disaster response crews can locate trapped or injured people using the signals from their mobile phones. An interactive menu accessible through the phone's Internet browser notifies the company if the user is safe or in distress. In Finland rescue services suggest hikers carry mobile phones in case of emergency even when deep in the forests beyond cellular coverage, as the radio signal of a cellphone attempting to connect to a base station can be detected by overflying rescue aircraft with special detection gear. Also, users in the United States can sign up through their provider for free text messages when an AMBER Alert goes out for a missing person in their area.

However, most mobile phone networks operate close to capacity during normal times and spikes in call volumes caused by widespread emergencies often overload the system just when it is needed the most. Examples reported in the media where this have occurred include the September 11, 2001 attacks, the Hawaiian earthquake, the 2003 Northeast blackouts, the 2005 London Tube bombings, Hurricane Katrina, and the 2007 Minnesota bridge collapse. Thus mobile phones are better for isolated emergencies such as vehicle accidents.

Under FCC regulations, all mobile telephones must be capable of dialing emergency services, regardless of the presence of a SIM card or the payment status of the account.

Business models

When cellular telecoms services were launched, phones and calls were very expensive and early mobile operators (carriers) decided to charge for all air time consumed by the mobile phone user. This resulted in the concept of charging callers for outbound calls and also for receiving calls. As mobile phone call charges diminished and phone adoption rates skyrocketed, more modern operators decided not to charge for incoming calls. Thus some markets have "Receiving Party Pays" models (also known as "Mobile Party Pays"), in which both outbound and received calls are charged, and other markets have "Calling Party Pays" models, by which only making calls produces costs, and receiving calls is free. An exception to this is international roaming tariffs, by which receiving calls are normally also charged.

In most countries today, the person receiving a mobile phone call pays nothing. However, in Hong Kong, Canada, and the United States, one can be charged per minute, for incoming as well as outgoing calls. In the United States and Canada, a few carriers are beginning to offer unlimited received phone calls. For the Chinese mainland, it was reported that both of its two operators will adopt the caller-pays approach as early as January 2007.

While some systems of payment are 'pay-as-you-go' where conversation time is purchased and added to a phone unit via an Internet account or in shops or ATMs, other systems are more traditional ones where bills are paid by regular intervals. Pay as you go (also known as "pre-pay") accounts were invented simultaneously in Portugal and Italy and today form more than half of all mobile phone subscriptions. USA, Canada, Costa Rica, Japan and Finland are among the rare countries left where most phones are still contract-based.

One possible alternative is a sim-lock free mobile phone. Sim-lock free mobile phones allow portability between networks so users can use sim cards from various networks and not need to have their phone unlocked.

Impacts

Since the introduction of mobile phones, concerns (both scientific and public) have been raised about the potential health impacts from regular use. But by 2008, American mobile phones transmitted and received more text messages than phone calls. Numerous studies have reported no significant relationship between mobile phone use and health, but the effect of mobile phone usage on health continues to be an area of public concern.

For example, at the request of some of their customers, Verizon created usage controls that meter service and can switch phones off, so that children could get some sleep. Other users that some people are working on limiting include persons operating moving trains or automobiles, coaches when writing to potential players on their teams, and movie theater audiences. By one measure, nearly 40% of automobile drivers aged 16 to 30 years old text while driving, and by another, 40% of teenagers said they could text blindfolded.

Safety concerns

As of 2007, several airlines are experimenting with base station and antenna systems installed to the aeroplane, allowing low power, short-range connection of any phones aboard to remain connected to the aircraft's base station. Thus, they would not attempt connection to the ground base stations as during take off and landing. Simultaneously, airlines may offer phone services to their travelling passengers either as full voice and data services, or initially only as SMS text messaging and similar services. Qantas, the Australian airline, is the first airline to run a test aeroplane in this configuration in the autumn of 2007 Emirates has announced plans to allow limited mobile phone usage on some flights. However, in the past, commercial airlines have prevented the use of cell phones and laptops, due to the assertion that the frequencies emitted from these devices may disturb the radio waves contact of the airplane.

In any case, there are inconsistencies between practices allowed by different airlines and even on the same airline in different countries. For example, Northwest Airlines may allow the use of mobile phones immediately after landing on a domestic flight within the US, whereas they may state "not until the doors are open" on an international flight arriving in the Netherlands. In April 2007 the US Federal Communications Commission officially prohibited passengers' use of cell phones during a flight.

Most schools in the United States and Europe have prohibited mobile phones in the classroom, or in school due to the large number of class disruptions that result from their use, and the potential for cheating via text messagingIn the UK, possession of a mobile phone in an examination can result in immediate disqualification from that subject or from all that student's subjects. Cell phones could be also used for bullying and threats to other students, or displaying inappropriate material in school.

Many US cities with subway transit systems underground are studying or have implemented mobile phone reception in their underground tunnels for their riders. Boston, Massachusetts has investigated such usage in their tunnels, although there is a question of usage etiquette and also how to fairly award contracts to carriers.

Studies have found vastly different relative risks (RR). Two separate studies using case-crossover analysis each calculated RR at 4, while an epidemiological cohort study found RR, when adjusted for crash-risk exposure, of 1.11 for men and 1.21 for women.

Driving while using a hands-free device is not safer than driving while using a hand-held phone, as concluded by case-crossover studies. epidemiological studies,simulation studies,and meta-analysis. Even with this information, California recently passed a cell phone law that requires drivers who are 18 years of age or older to use a hands-free device while using the phone in the vehicle. Moreover, this law also restricts drivers under the age of 18 from using a mobile phone. This law goes into effect on July 1, 2008 with a $20 fine for the first offense and $50 fines for each subsequent conviction. The consistency of increased crash risk between hands-free and hand-held phone use is at odds with legislation in over 30 countries that prohibit hand-held phone use but allow hands-free. Scientific literature is mixed on the dangers of talking on a phone versus those of talking with a passenger, with the Accident Research Unit at the University of Nottingham finding that the number of utterances was usually higher for mobile calls when compared to blindfolded and non-blindfolded passengers, but the University of Illinois meta-analysis concluding that passenger conversations were just as costly to driving performance as cell phone ones.^[

Environmental impacts

Like all high structures, cellular antenna masts pose a hazard to low flying aircraft. Towers over a certain height or towers that are close to airports or heliports are normally required to have warning lights. There have been reports that warning lights on cellular masts, TV-towers and other high structures can attract and confuse birds. US authorities estimate that millions of birds are killed near communication towers in the country each year.

Some cellular antenna towers have been camouflaged to make them less obvious on the horizon, and make them look more like a tree.

There are more than 500 million used mobile phones in the US sitting on shelves or in landfills, and it is estimated that over 125 million will be discarded this year alone. The problem is growing at a rate of more than two million phones per week, putting tons of toxic waste into landfills daily. Several sites including PaceButler Corporation, TradeMyCell.com, ReCellular, and MyGreenElectronics offer to buy back and recycle mobile phones from users. In the United States many unwanted but working mobile phones are donated to women's shelters to allow emergency communication.

History

This is the first embodiment of all the concepts that formed the basis of the next major step in mobile telephony, the Analog cellular telephone. Concepts covered in this patent (cited in at least 34 other patents) also were later extended to several satellite communication systems. Later updating of the cellular system to a digital system credits this patent.

Martin Cooper, a Motorola researcher and executive is widely considered to be the inventor of the first practical mobile phone for handheld use in a non-vehicle setting. Using a modern, if somewhat heavy portable handset, Cooper made the first call on a handheld mobile phone on April 3, 1973.

The first commercial citywide cellular network was launched in Japan by NTT in 1979. Fully automatic cellular networks were first introduced in the early to mid 1980s (the generation). The Nordic Mobile Telephone (NMT) system went online in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden in 1981. NMT was the first mobile phone system that enabled international use of the phone, or "roaming" on other networks in other countries. This was followed by a boom in mobile phone usage, particularly in Northern Europe.

Cellular systems required several leaps of technology, including handover, which allowed a conversation to continue as a mobile phone traveled from cell to cell. This system included variable transmission power in both the base stations and the telephones (controlled by the base stations), which allowed range and cell size to vary. As the system expanded and neared capacity, the ability to reduce transmission power allowed new cells to be added, resulting in more, smaller cells and thus more capacity. The evidence of this growth can still be seen in the many older, tall cell site towers with no antennae on the upper parts of their towers. These sites originally created large cells, and so had their antennae mounted atop high towers; the towers were designed so that as the system expanded—and cell sizes shrank—the antennae could be lowered on their original masts to reduce range.

In 2001 the first commercial launch of 3G (Third Generation) was again in Japan by NTT DoCoMo on the WCDMA standard.

Until the early 1990s, most mobile phones were too large to be carried in a jacket pocket, so they were typically installed in vehicles as car phones. With the miniaturization of digital components and the development of more sophisticated batteries, mobile phones have become smaller and lighter.

In the 2000s, video and TV services are driving forward third generation (3G) deployment. In the future, low cost, high speed data may drive forward the fourth generation (4G) as short-range communication emerges. Service and application ubiquity, low cost data delivery, and a high degree of personalization and synchronization between various user appliances will be drivers. At the same time, the radio access network may evolve from a centralized architecture to a distributed one.

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