Sunil Jain

Embed vs. Embeddable: 3G Notebooks and Mobile Broadband

The same logic (as above) was prevalent in the early days of WLAN. Why embed WiFi chipsets unless it's definitely going to be used, since it's just a costly lump of electronics. Now, WLAN is standard in almost all handsets. However, the issue of embedding 3G is unfortunately much more complex because of multiple standards. When we moved from 2G to 3G, people believed that we will have one global standard. Well, we don't (CDMA2000, WCDMA, etc.). Now, we are moving from 3G to 4G, we still don't have one standard (LTE, WiMax). Unfortunately, this has nothing to do with technology but corporate greed (who has more patent than the other guy). Nokia fought the IP battle with Qualcomm on 3G but lost (or settled). More battles will follow with LTE and WiMax on the patents. Laptop manufacturers will still have to pay royalties to QCOM or others for every 3G/4G chipset that they embed on their device. This is not the case for WLAN. makes the decision more difficult, doesn't it? I don't believe that the wireless industry is going to get its act right till 6G or 7G (btw, they excuse their "corporate greed" by calling it "fostering innovating"). Laptop manufacturers will continue to make guesses on what technology to embed (where the mass market is). This was the case for 3G, and now, it will continue to be the case for 4G going forward. sucks !!

Complete Web Browsing On Your Cell Phone? Not Yet

Even when your handset has infinite RAM, CPU and support for various technologies (including flash), it will still be difficult to get a real web browsing experience because your handsets will still be limited by screen size and input mechanisms (like use of a mouse and keyboard in most cases). Developer/Companies develop web pages for PC web. The automatic transcoding/conversion of web pages for mobile handsets, by handsets, network or both, is only best-effort. Also, just because you can do it, doesn't mean that you should, or assume that somehow user is interesting in browsing the entire site consisting of 250 pages (think of the nightmare traversing this website using the keys on your handset; it becomes totally useless)! If companies are interested in a presence on the "mobile web", they need to have a mobile strategy that should include designing their site from scratch for mobile (and hopefully include mobile-only-centric features such as mobile ads, location APIs, telephony APIs, etc.).

Airvana Touts Femto-Aware Devices

WiFi on the phone has too many issues - cost, battery drain and QoS. Femtocell actually increases battery life, is backward compatible with all the legacy phones, and QoS is part of the air interface. Operators have launched FMC with WiFi in many parts of the world. Can you name a single one that was successful? Femto is the future. It makes a ton of sense for the operators (reduced CapEx, opEx), and it makes a ton of sense for the users (legacy phone support, good coverage, reduced cost).