BEIJING, Feb 24, 2010 (SinoCast Daily Business Beat via COMTEX) -- Before the 2010 Spring Festival, there were media reports saying that the State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television (SARFT) had issued the first group of licenses for 3G mobile phone video broadcasting.
Eight radio and TV operators were the owners of the licenses, including CCTV, Shanghai Media Group (SMG), People's Daily, Xinhua News Agency, and China Radio International (CRI).
However, none of the involved parties had confirmed the news. Even so, analysts believe that traditional media have participated in the production of 3G programs and radio and TV operators have begun cooperation with telecommunications carriers.
No one could hold up the convergence of radio and TV network, the Internet and telecoms network. However, those who set up the admittance threshold first will have more say.
Clearly, the SARFT is tightening its control over the broadcasting of videos through issuing licenses. Telecoms carriers need to cooperate with licensed radio and TV operators to provide 3G mobile phone video services.
Lately, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) has selected some cities for the experimental operation of network convergence. Qualified telecoms carriers will be permitted to produce and transmit certain radio and TV programs.
However, license for the production and transmission of programs does not represent the right for free broadcasting, pointed out a top executive of Guangzhou Digital Media Group.
Those who want to obtain the right for program broadcasting must get licenses from the SARFT first, including the licenses for IPTV, online programs, and 2G and 3G mobile phone videos.
By far, the radio and TV operators that have won the 2G mobile phone video licenses include CCTV, China National Radio (CNR), CRI, SMG, and people.com.cn, the online platform of People's Daily.
Video sharing Web sites like youku.com and tudou.com are likely to receive the second group of licenses for 3G mobile phone video broadcasting. After all, they are major providers of videos for Internet users.
Currently, private video sites that have no licenses could cooperate with licensed radio and TV operators. Cooperators could share profits with telecoms carriers.
Meanwhile, mobile phone makers will team up with qualified 3G program producers and serve customers, revealed a top executive of Yulong Computer Telecommunication Scientific (Shenzhen) Co., Ltd. (Yulong Telecommunication).
Traditional media operators like newspapers and presses have caught up with the pace of network convergence and set foot in the 3G mobile phone video fields. Their top priority is to provide programs satisfying the taste of customers.
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Feb 24, 2010
Taiwan $30/Month Fiber is Slow
Chunghwa has about a million subscribers as they rapidly run fiber to almost every basement on the island. Instead of dragging fiber to each apartment, they are saving money by using the existing wiring and 100 megabit VDSL up to the apartment (Zyxel, Broadcom.) It's $72 for 5 meg upstream, 100 meg down, $38 for 2 up, 10 down, and a new offering, $30/month for 768K up, 3 meg down. The last is about the same price and speed as Chunghwa's ADSL offerings, but has far more possibilities for upgrades and IPTV. Chunghwa has almost 600,000 video customers. Chunghwa offers a $10 low end service (64K up, 256K down) with half a million subscribers. Under government prodding, most of these prices have just come down.
Once the fiber is in the basement, VDSL costs are about the same as ADSL costs, so the natural deployment of all new lines is FTTB + VDSL. The small additional equipment cost will be more than covered by the by customers who can instantly upgrade to higher speeds.
Chunghwa's total of 4.32M broadband subscribers is only up 2% in the last year, and is unlikely to climb much more. Written by Dave Burstein
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Once the fiber is in the basement, VDSL costs are about the same as ADSL costs, so the natural deployment of all new lines is FTTB + VDSL. The small additional equipment cost will be more than covered by the by customers who can instantly upgrade to higher speeds.
Chunghwa's total of 4.32M broadband subscribers is only up 2% in the last year, and is unlikely to climb much more. Written by Dave Burstein
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Feb 19, 2010
100% Fiber Home in Canada
fiber_optics_blueBell Aliant is running fiber to all 70,000 homes and businesses in Fredericton and Saint John, with the help of a modest subsidy (about 15%) from the government. In return, they have promised “universal service,” with fiber available to everyone. As Simon Avery reports,
“Fredericton and Saint John will have the fastest Internet connections in the country by the middle of next year, following news of a $60-million plan from Bell Aliant Regional Communications Income Fund to run fibre-optic cable into homes and businesses. The investment will mark the first time that a Canadian phone company has deployed fibre-to-the-home for an entire city. ... Bell Aliant has paid close attention to the $20-billion (U.S.) deployment of fibre to the home in the U.S. by Verizon Communications Inc.” Avery included my comment Verizon is “one of the best networks in the world.”
Some people will never forgive me for being so complimentary about a telco, but it's true.
Active Ethernet is better than GPON, but GPON's 200 meg in each direction is good enough for me. Avery's writeup is http://bit.ly/11vlYq. Glen Campbell believes Bell Canada itself may "do FTTP overbuilds on a selective basis, targeting suburban communities with aerial plant. For Bell Canada, roughly one-third of its serving area (concentrated heavily in Quebec) has aerial plant. Management confirmed to us that FTTP is under serious consideration for these markets.
Verizon's commitment last year to New York City for 100% service by 2012 was historic, making my town probably the first large city promised 100% fiber. They recently extended the same to Pittsburgh and other cities. There were a slew of Verizon concessions in the New York franchise agreement but no subsidy.
Universal service is expensive, so SBC/AT&T in particular has been attacking it. In 2002, then-President Bill Daley suggested they would abandon it. He got angry when I wrote he had implied SBC was facing insolvency, claiming he had never said anything of the sort. I replied that states like Illinois would not allow SBC to retreat from universal service unless bankruptcy or similar was imminent; SBC couldn't risk their franchises by backing away from universal service unless finances were desperate. His boss, Ed Whitacre, was around the same time making speeches that unbundling (UNE's) would kill the company and therefore had to be squashed.
Policy people took Ed's claims seriously although they were obvious falsehoods. The chair of the FCC repeated some. Ed was also going to wall street and talking about how well the company was doing and that it would do even better in the future. They raised their dividend every year. You didn't have to be a sophisticated financial analyst to see they were reporting $billions in profits every quarter the same time their CEO was saying the situation was desperate to D.C..
It is standard procedure at most companies to lie to policymakers as well as reporters. I remember listening to Paul Reynolds of BT saying something I was pretty sure was misleading at best. Paul one of the best in the business; if he says something that disagrees with what I believe, I go back and look to see if I'm mistaken. One of his colleagues told me to ignore what Paul had said, “He was speaking for the regulator.”
It's much less common to lie to wall street, which is why Bill Kennard as FCC chair made a point of attending wall street events and listening. It was an important reality check on what the same company was saying in Washington. If a reporter thinks you are lying, so what? But if a top wall street analyst thinks you are lying, they may downgrade the company. I've seen a downgrade pull literally millions off a CEO's options in a single day.Written by FNN contributor Tuesday, 07 July 2009
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“Fredericton and Saint John will have the fastest Internet connections in the country by the middle of next year, following news of a $60-million plan from Bell Aliant Regional Communications Income Fund to run fibre-optic cable into homes and businesses. The investment will mark the first time that a Canadian phone company has deployed fibre-to-the-home for an entire city. ... Bell Aliant has paid close attention to the $20-billion (U.S.) deployment of fibre to the home in the U.S. by Verizon Communications Inc.” Avery included my comment Verizon is “one of the best networks in the world.”
Some people will never forgive me for being so complimentary about a telco, but it's true.
Active Ethernet is better than GPON, but GPON's 200 meg in each direction is good enough for me. Avery's writeup is http://bit.ly/11vlYq. Glen Campbell believes Bell Canada itself may "do FTTP overbuilds on a selective basis, targeting suburban communities with aerial plant. For Bell Canada, roughly one-third of its serving area (concentrated heavily in Quebec) has aerial plant. Management confirmed to us that FTTP is under serious consideration for these markets.
Verizon's commitment last year to New York City for 100% service by 2012 was historic, making my town probably the first large city promised 100% fiber. They recently extended the same to Pittsburgh and other cities. There were a slew of Verizon concessions in the New York franchise agreement but no subsidy.
Universal service is expensive, so SBC/AT&T in particular has been attacking it. In 2002, then-President Bill Daley suggested they would abandon it. He got angry when I wrote he had implied SBC was facing insolvency, claiming he had never said anything of the sort. I replied that states like Illinois would not allow SBC to retreat from universal service unless bankruptcy or similar was imminent; SBC couldn't risk their franchises by backing away from universal service unless finances were desperate. His boss, Ed Whitacre, was around the same time making speeches that unbundling (UNE's) would kill the company and therefore had to be squashed.
Policy people took Ed's claims seriously although they were obvious falsehoods. The chair of the FCC repeated some. Ed was also going to wall street and talking about how well the company was doing and that it would do even better in the future. They raised their dividend every year. You didn't have to be a sophisticated financial analyst to see they were reporting $billions in profits every quarter the same time their CEO was saying the situation was desperate to D.C..
It is standard procedure at most companies to lie to policymakers as well as reporters. I remember listening to Paul Reynolds of BT saying something I was pretty sure was misleading at best. Paul one of the best in the business; if he says something that disagrees with what I believe, I go back and look to see if I'm mistaken. One of his colleagues told me to ignore what Paul had said, “He was speaking for the regulator.”
It's much less common to lie to wall street, which is why Bill Kennard as FCC chair made a point of attending wall street events and listening. It was an important reality check on what the same company was saying in Washington. If a reporter thinks you are lying, so what? But if a top wall street analyst thinks you are lying, they may downgrade the company. I've seen a downgrade pull literally millions off a CEO's options in a single day.Written by FNN contributor Tuesday, 07 July 2009
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Fiber Cheaper Than DSL?!
Glen Campbell of Merrill Lynch believes “FTTP now appears to be cost-competitive with FTTN in an aerial overbuild.” Bell Aliant's cost in the towns of Fredericton and Saint JohCorning_Fiber_bluen will be C$850/US$725 per home passed. This is very similar to Verizon's current costs of about $670/home.
That compares to costs of “less than $300” for FTTN/DSL from remote terminals, which AT&T misleadingly calls “fiber to the node.” However, fiber maintenance costs are considerably lower, narrowing the cost difference over time. Chris Rice, then CTO of SBC/AT&T, famously said “I'm never going to put active electronics in the field again” because of the high cost of repairs. Verizon and British Telecom's estimates of the maintenance savings were originally 70-90%, but much of is due to replacing 20 and 50 year old equipment with new. Probably the better figure is about a 30% saving – when fiber is done right.
The fiber itself is cheaper than copper, and the fiber gear is getting cheaper very rapidly. A large carrier should be paying <$100/home for the central unit and another $100-200 for the home unit with battery and weather protection. Small carriers typically pay $100-200 more per home, especially in the U.S. The huge GPON orders from China Telecom and Unicom probably went for a price of $90-150/home total. Manufacturers were ready to do almost anything to get the orders, which will probably total 15-25M lines the next few years. They had to come close to the price of GEPON to persuade China Telecom to switch. CT is continuing GEPON as well, which will keep the suppliers competing hard.
The main difference in cost today is the labor climbing the poles and stringing fiber. Copper is already in place to most homes, and FTTN boxes are positioned to take maximum advantage. Verizon figures their cost per mile of fiber at $8,000 to $10,000, $400/home for 25 homes per mile. Small carriers usually assume a fiber cost of about $20,000/mile. So the cost per home to run fiber for most small carriers will be $1,000-$3,000.
Fortunately, most rural homes in the U.S. are alongside the same road, so in most areas the fiber/home required is at the lower end of that estimate.
Understanding fiber costs is crucial for RUS and NTIA to prevent over-subsidizing. The length of fiber required is the main difference between the $670/home Verizon pays and the cost of rural deployments. It's therefore absolutely essential to know how much new fiber is required in order to know whether the costs of a subsidized build are reasonable. I assume that will be collected by BIP and BTOP and made public as part of the President's promise of transparency. And of course it's a much more attractive offering in the long run. Written by Dave Burstein Tuesday, 14 July 2009 23:50
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That compares to costs of “less than $300” for FTTN/DSL from remote terminals, which AT&T misleadingly calls “fiber to the node.” However, fiber maintenance costs are considerably lower, narrowing the cost difference over time. Chris Rice, then CTO of SBC/AT&T, famously said “I'm never going to put active electronics in the field again” because of the high cost of repairs. Verizon and British Telecom's estimates of the maintenance savings were originally 70-90%, but much of is due to replacing 20 and 50 year old equipment with new. Probably the better figure is about a 30% saving – when fiber is done right.
The fiber itself is cheaper than copper, and the fiber gear is getting cheaper very rapidly. A large carrier should be paying <$100/home for the central unit and another $100-200 for the home unit with battery and weather protection. Small carriers typically pay $100-200 more per home, especially in the U.S. The huge GPON orders from China Telecom and Unicom probably went for a price of $90-150/home total. Manufacturers were ready to do almost anything to get the orders, which will probably total 15-25M lines the next few years. They had to come close to the price of GEPON to persuade China Telecom to switch. CT is continuing GEPON as well, which will keep the suppliers competing hard.
The main difference in cost today is the labor climbing the poles and stringing fiber. Copper is already in place to most homes, and FTTN boxes are positioned to take maximum advantage. Verizon figures their cost per mile of fiber at $8,000 to $10,000, $400/home for 25 homes per mile. Small carriers usually assume a fiber cost of about $20,000/mile. So the cost per home to run fiber for most small carriers will be $1,000-$3,000.
Fortunately, most rural homes in the U.S. are alongside the same road, so in most areas the fiber/home required is at the lower end of that estimate.
Understanding fiber costs is crucial for RUS and NTIA to prevent over-subsidizing. The length of fiber required is the main difference between the $670/home Verizon pays and the cost of rural deployments. It's therefore absolutely essential to know how much new fiber is required in order to know whether the costs of a subsidized build are reasonable. I assume that will be collected by BIP and BTOP and made public as part of the President's promise of transparency. And of course it's a much more attractive offering in the long run. Written by Dave Burstein Tuesday, 14 July 2009 23:50
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Vodafone cuts femtos to £50 - or free - in advance of iPhone
vodafone_femto Customers tell us it is life changing,” claims Guy Laurence, Vodafone UK CEO, who has just dropped the price of the “Sure Signal” box 70%. That's wildly exaggerated, of course, even if you live in a basement; your life isn't ruined if you have to use a landline at home, or VOIP over your broadband connection. Femtos and/or WiFi phones are a crucial strategy at nearly every mobile telco, because they move traffic from wireless networks to landlines. The £50 is the cash price for current customers, but Vodafone will also include a femto essentially for free as part of bundles for new customers.
In 2008, nearly all mobile operators realized there's a huge potential saving and includied either a femto or WiFi phones in their (private) plans. If AT&T invests $500M to deploy a cloud of 10M femtos across the U.S., that saves them two or three times as much just in spectrum costs. One Vodafone femto can handle up to four simultaneous calls, and 32 is possible. No carrier has announced plans to use home femtos for neighbors and passerbys, but that's a logical next step. It will need careful limits, especially on low speed upstreams.
A particularly interesting newcomer to femtos is Free.fr, where they are ready to offer a femto as an option with the Freebox even though they don't expect to begin their wireless service until 2012. A standalone femto in small carrier quantities goes for about $100 today, while AT&T received bids around $50 for their planned (but unconfirmed) rollout of 10M. By incorporating that into a box with a power supply, intelligence, antenna, etc., the cost is probably halved. With single chip femtos hitting the market, adding one to an existing broadband box will get cheaper every year. I'd guess Xavier will be able to add a femto in 2013 for $15-30, cheap enough for a payback in months just marketing and spectrum/bandwidth savings.
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In 2008, nearly all mobile operators realized there's a huge potential saving and includied either a femto or WiFi phones in their (private) plans. If AT&T invests $500M to deploy a cloud of 10M femtos across the U.S., that saves them two or three times as much just in spectrum costs. One Vodafone femto can handle up to four simultaneous calls, and 32 is possible. No carrier has announced plans to use home femtos for neighbors and passerbys, but that's a logical next step. It will need careful limits, especially on low speed upstreams.
A particularly interesting newcomer to femtos is Free.fr, where they are ready to offer a femto as an option with the Freebox even though they don't expect to begin their wireless service until 2012. A standalone femto in small carrier quantities goes for about $100 today, while AT&T received bids around $50 for their planned (but unconfirmed) rollout of 10M. By incorporating that into a box with a power supply, intelligence, antenna, etc., the cost is probably halved. With single chip femtos hitting the market, adding one to an existing broadband box will get cheaper every year. I'd guess Xavier will be able to add a femto in 2013 for $15-30, cheap enough for a payback in months just marketing and spectrum/bandwidth savings.
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Microsoft: IPTV Doesn't Need QOS, Works on Xbox
Step_into_Liquid_looked_great_streaming_live"TV/video services powered by Mediaroom 2.0 can be delivered to any broadband consumer, not just to customers on a managed-QoS IPTV network," Microsoft's Scott Rowe writes. The new IIS Smooth Streaming was shown at SUPERCOMM to reporters who liked the HD. It will be a natural tool for British Telecom, Bell Canada, and others who don't offer IPTV but can easily support video-on-demand. Profitabilty of full telco TV packages is rare; I believe both Verizon and AT&T are showing losses on TV after five years.
It shouldn't be news that "Microsoft enables operators to offer a premium, HD-quality video-on-demand service, with minimal buffering and fast startup times, even over IP-based networks of varying bandwidths," but a slew of lawyers, economists and registered lobbyists have been claiming otherwise in D.C. Some people who should know better believe them.
Netflix streaming movies look OK at 720p on our 50" plasma over Verizon 3 megabit DSL andI don't remember a single interruption because of line problems, even if I'm actively using the computer at the same time. When they bring us FiOS I expect streaming to be near perfect at 1080 as well. Bandwidth costs continue to come down rapidly, so streaming at full HD rates (AT&T and many cablecos uses 6.5 megabits or less) will soon be economical. Working with Microsoft and CacheLogic, I did a demo of live 6 megabit HD TV back in 2007. It works fine with a few seconds or less of buffer. Many of today's networks can handle those speeds. Jason Livingood of Comcast has pointed out their network very, very rarely drops below 8.4 megabits for standard service. When it is "traffic-managed" - far less than 1% of customers - the actual results is packets delayed minimally, something the buffer can usually handle invisibly to the consumers. As far as I'm concerned, a network that can live-stream 6 megabit HD video is effectively neutral.
I just tested 720p Desperate Housewives from ABC.com started in 7 seconds with their player from Move Networks. The 1.4 megabit stream was reasonably sharp with some artifacts. 2.5 meg 720p generally looks fine, although you really want more for some action shows. The 6 megabit demo we did was Step Into Liquid (pre-encoded) then streamed on a large screen at Web Video Summit. It was a wow.
Three years ago, Microsoft and AT&T announced you'd be able to use your Xbox instead of a set-top by the end of the year. Finally, at CES 2010, they are showing a product that can be used as a "node" for a second TV but not a full set-top. It uses the U-Verse set-top as DVR to avoid "heat and hardware reliability problems." Despite the many problems, Microsoft IPTV on U-Verse has found two million customers and is doing better than almost anyone in technology expected.
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It shouldn't be news that "Microsoft enables operators to offer a premium, HD-quality video-on-demand service, with minimal buffering and fast startup times, even over IP-based networks of varying bandwidths," but a slew of lawyers, economists and registered lobbyists have been claiming otherwise in D.C. Some people who should know better believe them.
Netflix streaming movies look OK at 720p on our 50" plasma over Verizon 3 megabit DSL andI don't remember a single interruption because of line problems, even if I'm actively using the computer at the same time. When they bring us FiOS I expect streaming to be near perfect at 1080 as well. Bandwidth costs continue to come down rapidly, so streaming at full HD rates (AT&T and many cablecos uses 6.5 megabits or less) will soon be economical. Working with Microsoft and CacheLogic, I did a demo of live 6 megabit HD TV back in 2007. It works fine with a few seconds or less of buffer. Many of today's networks can handle those speeds. Jason Livingood of Comcast has pointed out their network very, very rarely drops below 8.4 megabits for standard service. When it is "traffic-managed" - far less than 1% of customers - the actual results is packets delayed minimally, something the buffer can usually handle invisibly to the consumers. As far as I'm concerned, a network that can live-stream 6 megabit HD video is effectively neutral.
I just tested 720p Desperate Housewives from ABC.com started in 7 seconds with their player from Move Networks. The 1.4 megabit stream was reasonably sharp with some artifacts. 2.5 meg 720p generally looks fine, although you really want more for some action shows. The 6 megabit demo we did was Step Into Liquid (pre-encoded) then streamed on a large screen at Web Video Summit. It was a wow.
Three years ago, Microsoft and AT&T announced you'd be able to use your Xbox instead of a set-top by the end of the year. Finally, at CES 2010, they are showing a product that can be used as a "node" for a second TV but not a full set-top. It uses the U-Verse set-top as DVR to avoid "heat and hardware reliability problems." Despite the many problems, Microsoft IPTV on U-Verse has found two million customers and is doing better than almost anyone in technology expected.
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AT&T, Verizon, Qwest: 82% of DSL “Unserved”
Bell_killer_slideThere's a bombshell buried on FCC broadband slide 47: three companies are responsible for the bulk of the problem. People gasped in D.C. when I said the Bells had been treating much of rural America “like the Romans treated the Sabine Women” but even I didn't realize the percentage was that high. Bell rural coverage is often 50-60%, far lower than other U.S. rural carriers or the rural coverage of any Western European telco.
Any U.S. broadband program will therefore fail – badly – unless there's a strategy to reach the homes unserved in Bell territory. Working with the companies is ideal, but if they won't co-operate Larry, Jonathan, and Blair need to find an alternative.
The Bell boycott of the $7.2B the government wants to give away kills the results of the program. From a senior source on the telco side last year, I learned the carriers are asking for $30-60B in subsidies.
That's a remarkable sum, given that the FCC study concludes the country can reach every home at good speed for subsidies of $5-25B (article to follow. Total in FCC slides for 100% up to 3 meg $20B, 10 meg $35B, 30 meg $50B. Required subsidy is 25-50%, I believe, hence $5-25B, probably below $15B. Reducing monopoly rural backhaul rates through “special access” also required.)
I believe there are three strategies: “Bum a billion”, “Teddy Roosevelt's Big Stick,”and “Timms' 99.6% solution”
“Bum a billion” Pay off the bells as requested, because the political price of doing anything else is too high. They pressed hard for this, asking for $20B in December just from the stimulus.
“Teddy Roosevelt's Big Stick.” The Bells are requesting government actions worth about $60B to them over the next 5 years. The changes they expect in USF/ICC and in spectrum policy are worth ten's of billions. If Jules has the courage – and political backup – they couldn't say no to any reasonable proposal. “Use It or Lose It” spectrum renewals on the $100B of spectrum the bells have – much given for nothing – is probably enough to persuade the carriers to reach over 98% at speed without any subsidy at all. Just run the numbers.
“Timms' 99.6% solution” British Telecom years back achieved 99.6% coverage, including Welsh Highlands and Scottish Islands. When they first said they couldn't do anything like that, Minister Timms funded some independents in the areas BT couldn't reach and said he would do more if necessary. Suddenly, they discovered broadband economics had changed and they reach almost everyone. The U.S. is ideal for this, because ~3/4s of the Bell unserved can get cable TV. 30+% of the “unserved” can be reached with 50 megabit DOCSIS 3.0 for less than $500/home, or $2B of the $7.2B stimulus. In one week, two RUS employees on the phone can locate enough cablecos needing upgrades to make an enormous difference. RUS is ready to sign checks for any carrier with a decent proposal to reach the unserved. Note added later: Stagg Newman tells me some old analog systems might cost $1,000 to upgrade. Yet one more reason we need better data.
About 1/3rd of those not reached by DSL can already get cable modems, and hence aren't "unserved." Another third can get cable TV and can inexpensively be upgraded with data. That leaves 2-4M homes that require expensive upgrades. That corresponds to the FCC slide 41 that identifies 1-2% of homes as requiring $2,000 and up to serve.
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Any U.S. broadband program will therefore fail – badly – unless there's a strategy to reach the homes unserved in Bell territory. Working with the companies is ideal, but if they won't co-operate Larry, Jonathan, and Blair need to find an alternative.
The Bell boycott of the $7.2B the government wants to give away kills the results of the program. From a senior source on the telco side last year, I learned the carriers are asking for $30-60B in subsidies.
That's a remarkable sum, given that the FCC study concludes the country can reach every home at good speed for subsidies of $5-25B (article to follow. Total in FCC slides for 100% up to 3 meg $20B, 10 meg $35B, 30 meg $50B. Required subsidy is 25-50%, I believe, hence $5-25B, probably below $15B. Reducing monopoly rural backhaul rates through “special access” also required.)
I believe there are three strategies: “Bum a billion”, “Teddy Roosevelt's Big Stick,”and “Timms' 99.6% solution”
“Bum a billion” Pay off the bells as requested, because the political price of doing anything else is too high. They pressed hard for this, asking for $20B in December just from the stimulus.
“Teddy Roosevelt's Big Stick.” The Bells are requesting government actions worth about $60B to them over the next 5 years. The changes they expect in USF/ICC and in spectrum policy are worth ten's of billions. If Jules has the courage – and political backup – they couldn't say no to any reasonable proposal. “Use It or Lose It” spectrum renewals on the $100B of spectrum the bells have – much given for nothing – is probably enough to persuade the carriers to reach over 98% at speed without any subsidy at all. Just run the numbers.
“Timms' 99.6% solution” British Telecom years back achieved 99.6% coverage, including Welsh Highlands and Scottish Islands. When they first said they couldn't do anything like that, Minister Timms funded some independents in the areas BT couldn't reach and said he would do more if necessary. Suddenly, they discovered broadband economics had changed and they reach almost everyone. The U.S. is ideal for this, because ~3/4s of the Bell unserved can get cable TV. 30+% of the “unserved” can be reached with 50 megabit DOCSIS 3.0 for less than $500/home, or $2B of the $7.2B stimulus. In one week, two RUS employees on the phone can locate enough cablecos needing upgrades to make an enormous difference. RUS is ready to sign checks for any carrier with a decent proposal to reach the unserved. Note added later: Stagg Newman tells me some old analog systems might cost $1,000 to upgrade. Yet one more reason we need better data.
About 1/3rd of those not reached by DSL can already get cable modems, and hence aren't "unserved." Another third can get cable TV and can inexpensively be upgraded with data. That leaves 2-4M homes that require expensive upgrades. That corresponds to the FCC slide 41 that identifies 1-2% of homes as requiring $2,000 and up to serve.
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Feb 18, 2010
Tom Starr: Vision and Leadership in VDSL Technology
For almost two decades, Tom Starr has led the DSL standards effort in the U.S., as Ameritech became part of SBC which became AT&T. That's now been honored with the AT&T Science and Technology Medal "For vision and leadership in developing and standardizing VDSL technology." (Tom's the second from the left.)
Tom, along with Gavin Young, John Cioffi, and several others still active in the industry defined DSL standards in the early 1990's that remain effective today. Before the equipment was available, they created models of interference and power spectral densities. They had to work only by theory in the early days. I remember predictions by senior engineers that by now we'd have unsolvable interference problems, Today, hundreds of millions of connections prove that the work of T1E1.4 was on target.
tom_starr_2008scitechaward-big
Other winners involved with AT&T's U-verse effort included:
Alicia Abella - For technical innovation and leadership in dialog engineering and analysis. One of her projects is IPTV Service Applications: Build a community system around entertainment by connecting television, movies, music and radio shows to instant messaging and audio/video chat. Enables friends and family to virtually congregate while watching television or listening to music.
Dr. Ahmad Ansari - For technical contributions during the specification and testing of the U-verse STB
Frank Jiang - For technical leadership and innovation in establishing
data collection framework for access/home network.Written by Dave Burstein
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Tom, along with Gavin Young, John Cioffi, and several others still active in the industry defined DSL standards in the early 1990's that remain effective today. Before the equipment was available, they created models of interference and power spectral densities. They had to work only by theory in the early days. I remember predictions by senior engineers that by now we'd have unsolvable interference problems, Today, hundreds of millions of connections prove that the work of T1E1.4 was on target.
tom_starr_2008scitechaward-big
Other winners involved with AT&T's U-verse effort included:
Alicia Abella - For technical innovation and leadership in dialog engineering and analysis. One of her projects is IPTV Service Applications: Build a community system around entertainment by connecting television, movies, music and radio shows to instant messaging and audio/video chat. Enables friends and family to virtually congregate while watching television or listening to music.
Dr. Ahmad Ansari - For technical contributions during the specification and testing of the U-verse STB
Frank Jiang - For technical leadership and innovation in establishing
data collection framework for access/home network.Written by Dave Burstein
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Bandwidth: Cogent Pricing @ $6, Juniper Confirms Normal Bandwidth Demand Growth
"There is still no sign of an exaflood that would swamp the network. If anything, the tendency seems to be towards a slowdown,Juniper's CEO made a mistake cutting the cartoons, while taking a pay cut to support R&D not an acceleration," says Professor Andrew Odlyzko, the world's leading expert. The world's #2 router maker has confirmed that's wat their accounts are seeing. "Juniper customers report 50% to 60% annual growth in network demand, consistent with outside estimations the Internet is doubling every two years." (CD) There's similar data from Cisco, including projections the rate of growth won't change much through 2012. Other sources have lower figures. Cogent, now a primary backbone connection, saw growth of 30% in traffic from 2007 to 2008, including adding new customers.
$6 is Cogent's average new contract price, CEO Dave Schaeffer reported on the quarterly call. The scatter plot on the left below show's Olydzko's MINTS data from 2002-2008; the one on the right is 2008 alone. Note that most data points are above 1 and below two, with about as many below as above. On average, he's around 50% total growth, some from added users. In the 2008, note that several of the points on the far right are close to unity. These are the largest exchange points and networks. Mints Traffic Growth Data from 2002-2008
Mints Traffic Growth Data 00850-60% sounds like an enormous increase, but in fact has been the norm for 6 years and simply not a problem. I prefer to use the 25-45% bandwidth growth per user, which is the cost a carrier needs to cover. Moore's Law brings bandwidth costs - at least to large carriers -down about as fast. The total cost per customer has been essentially flat for years. Large carriers have fiber to every exchange they serve, and connect to the Internet via inexpensive peering. Delivering more bits requires upgrading routers, WDM boxes, etc. All tend to drop with cheaper electronics.
Small carriers, especially rural ones, typically pay much more and are being squeezed, as are remaining ISPs. Cable has a problem with a shared local upstream, but both Cox and Comcast say that has been minimized even without an upgrade to DOCSIS 3.0 upstream. Wireless is a more complicated issue, with limits on spectrum and often prohibitive costs to get from the tower back, but the lobbyists are exaggerating the severity.
FYI "Patrick Neighly was in San Francisco as a guest of Juniper" was the unusual but appropriate byline on the Comms Daily article. For the record, I, like Patrick and many other reporters for smaller publications, occasionally accept travel money to cover an event. That is against the ethics code of some major publications, and I wish it were practical for me not to make such compromises. Readers have to judge whether my reporting is accurate despite my conflicts.Written by Dave Burstein
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$6 is Cogent's average new contract price, CEO Dave Schaeffer reported on the quarterly call. The scatter plot on the left below show's Olydzko's MINTS data from 2002-2008; the one on the right is 2008 alone. Note that most data points are above 1 and below two, with about as many below as above. On average, he's around 50% total growth, some from added users. In the 2008, note that several of the points on the far right are close to unity. These are the largest exchange points and networks. Mints Traffic Growth Data from 2002-2008
Mints Traffic Growth Data 00850-60% sounds like an enormous increase, but in fact has been the norm for 6 years and simply not a problem. I prefer to use the 25-45% bandwidth growth per user, which is the cost a carrier needs to cover. Moore's Law brings bandwidth costs - at least to large carriers -down about as fast. The total cost per customer has been essentially flat for years. Large carriers have fiber to every exchange they serve, and connect to the Internet via inexpensive peering. Delivering more bits requires upgrading routers, WDM boxes, etc. All tend to drop with cheaper electronics.
Small carriers, especially rural ones, typically pay much more and are being squeezed, as are remaining ISPs. Cable has a problem with a shared local upstream, but both Cox and Comcast say that has been minimized even without an upgrade to DOCSIS 3.0 upstream. Wireless is a more complicated issue, with limits on spectrum and often prohibitive costs to get from the tower back, but the lobbyists are exaggerating the severity.
FYI "Patrick Neighly was in San Francisco as a guest of Juniper" was the unusual but appropriate byline on the Comms Daily article. For the record, I, like Patrick and many other reporters for smaller publications, occasionally accept travel money to cover an event. That is against the ethics code of some major publications, and I wish it were practical for me not to make such compromises. Readers have to judge whether my reporting is accurate despite my conflicts.Written by Dave Burstein
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Indian Politician Promises 2 Megabit DSL For $4/month
BJP promises much“Affordable broadband for all Americans by 2007,” George Bush promised in 2004. That would have required confronting the powerful Bell lobby. Bush didn’t even try. Now, L.K. Advani of India’s BJP party has gone further, promising 2 megabits and unlimited uploads and downloads. Broadband would reach “every town” and village, mostly mobile. All rules on VOIP will be immediately eliminated. Mobile phones will be free to the poor, and soon all will be able to reach the Internet.
Amazingly, almost all of this is practical for India within a decade and not impossible within five years if political will is strong. Although broadband today costs at least three times that much in almost every country, BSNL has a low end, teaser DSL service at that price already. I’ve estimated the cost to offer DSL today in India is bullock_cart_webperhaps $5, and that will probably fall in half with Moore’s Law over five years.
Low-end DSL modems will probably drop from today’s $20-30 to perhaps $10 in huge quantities. In 2015, low-end DSL chips will probably cost no more than the chips inside today’s $10 digital clock or calculator. I can buy a nice Motorola mobile for $10, which is subsidized by TracFone/AT&T down from probably $20-30 they pay the manufacturer. Infineon and Texas Instruments are racing to develop chips that can bring phones below $10, possibly within 5 years. That means "free" not out of reach for units subsidized by the carriers and government.
Rahul Tongia several years ago explained why Indian communication costs can be so low. “Most of the cost of fiber to each village is labor, and labor in rural India is very cheap. Once the fiber is in the village, a WiFi or cheap GSM box on the highest building doesn’t cost that much.” Four years ago, Andhra next_billion_mobile_bagPradesh began a program to bring a connection to every village in the state; it’s time to do similar everywhere else.
Femtocells are miniature basestations. They are plummeting in price and will probably cost a few tens of dollars in five years. Similar technology with greater capacity can be low cost and low power. VNL brought a solar-powered base station to MWC this year that draws 50-120 watts and can be transported on two bullock carts.
Politicians worldwide make many promises. It would require strong political courage to achieve goals like this so quickly.
BJP’s plan to promote IT in Indian languages also has a good chance of success. There are more native speakers of Hindi than of English, 171M Bengali, 88M Punjabi, 70M Telugu, and 68M Marathi. As the Internet spreads across India, the different cultures are likely to generate demand for services in their language. India has gone from 100M to 400M mobile phones in the last few years, and is continuing at 9-12M/month. Advani’s goal of 1B mobiles in five years is just an extension of today’s trend.
I’m more skeptical of expectations that IT will deliver12M rural jobs, higher farm productivity, and water conservation. That’s not as extreme as the flat Earthers at the U.S. who claim that “broadband demand stimulus” would add $134B to the U.S. economy and 3-5 times as many jobs as likely from broadband buildouts. “India will equal China in every IT parameter in five years,” as China’s growth also is rapid.
The BJP platform also promises to standardize the government on free and open source software (bravo.) They also will require Indian manufacture of more hardware. In case anyone cares, I am in profound disagreement with many BNJ policies and action.Written by Dave Burstein
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Amazingly, almost all of this is practical for India within a decade and not impossible within five years if political will is strong. Although broadband today costs at least three times that much in almost every country, BSNL has a low end, teaser DSL service at that price already. I’ve estimated the cost to offer DSL today in India is bullock_cart_webperhaps $5, and that will probably fall in half with Moore’s Law over five years.
Low-end DSL modems will probably drop from today’s $20-30 to perhaps $10 in huge quantities. In 2015, low-end DSL chips will probably cost no more than the chips inside today’s $10 digital clock or calculator. I can buy a nice Motorola mobile for $10, which is subsidized by TracFone/AT&T down from probably $20-30 they pay the manufacturer. Infineon and Texas Instruments are racing to develop chips that can bring phones below $10, possibly within 5 years. That means "free" not out of reach for units subsidized by the carriers and government.
Rahul Tongia several years ago explained why Indian communication costs can be so low. “Most of the cost of fiber to each village is labor, and labor in rural India is very cheap. Once the fiber is in the village, a WiFi or cheap GSM box on the highest building doesn’t cost that much.” Four years ago, Andhra next_billion_mobile_bagPradesh began a program to bring a connection to every village in the state; it’s time to do similar everywhere else.
Femtocells are miniature basestations. They are plummeting in price and will probably cost a few tens of dollars in five years. Similar technology with greater capacity can be low cost and low power. VNL brought a solar-powered base station to MWC this year that draws 50-120 watts and can be transported on two bullock carts.
Politicians worldwide make many promises. It would require strong political courage to achieve goals like this so quickly.
BJP’s plan to promote IT in Indian languages also has a good chance of success. There are more native speakers of Hindi than of English, 171M Bengali, 88M Punjabi, 70M Telugu, and 68M Marathi. As the Internet spreads across India, the different cultures are likely to generate demand for services in their language. India has gone from 100M to 400M mobile phones in the last few years, and is continuing at 9-12M/month. Advani’s goal of 1B mobiles in five years is just an extension of today’s trend.
I’m more skeptical of expectations that IT will deliver12M rural jobs, higher farm productivity, and water conservation. That’s not as extreme as the flat Earthers at the U.S. who claim that “broadband demand stimulus” would add $134B to the U.S. economy and 3-5 times as many jobs as likely from broadband buildouts. “India will equal China in every IT parameter in five years,” as China’s growth also is rapid.
The BJP platform also promises to standardize the government on free and open source software (bravo.) They also will require Indian manufacture of more hardware. In case anyone cares, I am in profound disagreement with many BNJ policies and action.Written by Dave Burstein
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DSL By The Numbers, Q4
DSL grew by 3.2% to 266.2M. Broadband now reaches 50-80% of homes in developed countries, a good thing. That results in lower rates of net additions, and the 13.8 million in (mostly wireline) broadband net adds were the lowest in many years. Looking back, the 19.6 in Q1 2007 will probably be unsurpassed. Around the world, 26% of homes - 1 in 4 - are connected.
China 64,251,000 3.41%
USA 32,217,443 2.05%
Germany 21,170,800 2.58%
France 16,445,000 3.21%
UK 13,663,000 2.21%
Italy 11,798,000 3.36%
Japan 11,685,000 -2.91%
Spain 7,189,980 2.26%
Canada 6,709,300 4.94%
Turkey 5,752,500 4.54%
Australia 5,716,000 6.01%
Mexico 5,072,163 14.82%
India 4,387,738 9.72%
Brazil 4,300,756 1.17%
The shift to fiber resulted in a DSL drop of 3.79% in South Korea to 3,718,134 and 4% in Taiwan to 3,241,000 in Taiwan. Vietnam quarterly growth was an impressive 13% to 2,047,000.
All these figures are from the ever-invaluable Point-Topic , http://point-topic.com/, which also supplies the figures for the DSL Forum. There are some oddities in the Chinese figures, probably a result of the re-organized companies using different definitions. China Telecom remained steady at 700K net adds, so the changes measured by other companies are likely an artifact. China Telecom continues to lose as many as 2M landline customers/month in the switch to mobile.Written by Dave Burstein
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China 64,251,000 3.41%
USA 32,217,443 2.05%
Germany 21,170,800 2.58%
France 16,445,000 3.21%
UK 13,663,000 2.21%
Italy 11,798,000 3.36%
Japan 11,685,000 -2.91%
Spain 7,189,980 2.26%
Canada 6,709,300 4.94%
Turkey 5,752,500 4.54%
Australia 5,716,000 6.01%
Mexico 5,072,163 14.82%
India 4,387,738 9.72%
Brazil 4,300,756 1.17%
The shift to fiber resulted in a DSL drop of 3.79% in South Korea to 3,718,134 and 4% in Taiwan to 3,241,000 in Taiwan. Vietnam quarterly growth was an impressive 13% to 2,047,000.
All these figures are from the ever-invaluable Point-Topic , http://point-topic.com/, which also supplies the figures for the DSL Forum. There are some oddities in the Chinese figures, probably a result of the re-organized companies using different definitions. China Telecom remained steady at 700K net adds, so the changes measured by other companies are likely an artifact. China Telecom continues to lose as many as 2M landline customers/month in the switch to mobile.Written by Dave Burstein
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Q1 U.S. Telcos Raise Prices, Projected to Beat Cable
Telcos in the U.S. captured 55% of high speed net adds in Q1, Tom Seitz of Barclays/Lehman estimates. UBS believes Verizon adds should remain flattish sequentially at 217K as 295K FiOS adds offset the 78K loss expected in DSL. UBS expects Verizon to reach 2.2M video subscribers, or 22.2% penetration of homes open for sale. UBS sees Comcast at 236K, Time Warner at 141K, Qwest at 65K, and the smaller U.S. carriers about about the same as earlier quarters.
Telco share is up from 46% in 1Q08, a remarkable turnaround. In one recent quarter, Comcast added more data customers than all telcos put together. My guess is that the recession drove more customers to DSL at $15-30 rather than cable at $30-50. Cable's response to the recession has been to quietly promote their less expensive offerings, but mostly they are looking for $40-55.
Perhaps trying to get in before the new FCC chair takes over, AT&T raised DSL prices 10.5% in the quarter, Seitz calculates. AT&T's low end DSL price went up by 33% from $15-$20. Verizon raised FIOS prices 3% to 7%, but the effect of promotions brought DSL down 8.6%.
Seitz also sees telco TV adds at 565K while cable drops 384K. I believe this the predictable result of telcos as new entrants in the TV market, where 10-20% of customers will likely shift because they hate their current provider. That's similar to the pattern we saw when cablecos came into the voice business, quickly grabbing 10-20% of customers. Cable voice growth is continuing at 2M/year while telcos are losing 5-10M as the historic change to wireless continues.
Written by Dave Burstein
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Telco share is up from 46% in 1Q08, a remarkable turnaround. In one recent quarter, Comcast added more data customers than all telcos put together. My guess is that the recession drove more customers to DSL at $15-30 rather than cable at $30-50. Cable's response to the recession has been to quietly promote their less expensive offerings, but mostly they are looking for $40-55.
Perhaps trying to get in before the new FCC chair takes over, AT&T raised DSL prices 10.5% in the quarter, Seitz calculates. AT&T's low end DSL price went up by 33% from $15-$20. Verizon raised FIOS prices 3% to 7%, but the effect of promotions brought DSL down 8.6%.
Seitz also sees telco TV adds at 565K while cable drops 384K. I believe this the predictable result of telcos as new entrants in the TV market, where 10-20% of customers will likely shift because they hate their current provider. That's similar to the pattern we saw when cablecos came into the voice business, quickly grabbing 10-20% of customers. Cable voice growth is continuing at 2M/year while telcos are losing 5-10M as the historic change to wireless continues.
Written by Dave Burstein
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AT&T's Ten Year's Future of DSL
ATT_Stanky_Next_ten_yearsVDSL performance will nearly double in 2010 with two line bonding, President John Stankey presented to Bank of America. There will be another gain, perhaps 30-60%, in the next four or five years. Stankey's chart projects two step functions. After that, his line is flat. Without a breakthrough, there speed improvements are likely very limited. We will be very close to the Shannon Law limits. One step, coming soon, is the doubling from bonding. The second, a few years off, will be due to vectoring and extended band plan/spectrum. Vectoring, also called DSM Level 3, produced dramatic improvements in demos at BBWF, but will take several years to become widespread. It will typically require replacing the DSM or line card, not trivial for millions of lines.
Stankey also projected average and peak demand at moderate rates of growth from now until 2018. Predictions about the future are uncertain, but currently the rate of growth of bandwidth is slightly lower than the trend from 2002 to date. The doom and gloom projections of Internet traffic growing so fast the net will slow down by 2007 or 2009 are now officially garbage.
Another important note in Stankey's presentation is the continuing improvement in the cost of the U-Verse deployment and Opex. They've recently seen an 18% reduction in hours to install from both better training and new equipment and techniques. In-home repair visits are down 31% and required 15% fewer hours. Costs continue to drop rapidly. /p>The real limits of copper, without innovations highly unlikely in the next decade, is 3-4 x what we have now. For long loops, that still isn't very much. Bonding, as I reported, easily doubles things for $50-100. Tricks with reduced noise (DSM) are worth 25-100% more, generally on the lower end of that.
We're flirting with the Shannon limit. If Cioffi hadn't come up with his noise tricks, and campaigned for others to develop them, we wouldn't even have this much. Written by Dave Burstein
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Stankey also projected average and peak demand at moderate rates of growth from now until 2018. Predictions about the future are uncertain, but currently the rate of growth of bandwidth is slightly lower than the trend from 2002 to date. The doom and gloom projections of Internet traffic growing so fast the net will slow down by 2007 or 2009 are now officially garbage.
Another important note in Stankey's presentation is the continuing improvement in the cost of the U-Verse deployment and Opex. They've recently seen an 18% reduction in hours to install from both better training and new equipment and techniques. In-home repair visits are down 31% and required 15% fewer hours. Costs continue to drop rapidly. /p>The real limits of copper, without innovations highly unlikely in the next decade, is 3-4 x what we have now. For long loops, that still isn't very much. Bonding, as I reported, easily doubles things for $50-100. Tricks with reduced noise (DSM) are worth 25-100% more, generally on the lower end of that.
We're flirting with the Shannon limit. If Cioffi hadn't come up with his noise tricks, and campaigned for others to develop them, we wouldn't even have this much. Written by Dave Burstein
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Hong Kong: US$13 100 up, 100 down
HKBN_William_Yeung_sportscarNiQ Lai of City Telecom charges $13 for 100 megabits up and down and has great ads featuring a Lamborghini. They offer an 80% speed guarantee for non-international traffic, or 2x your money back. They have no cap or major hidden charges. Similar costs $99 in the U.S., $45 in Britain, and something like $20 in France as part of a bundle, and rarely includes upstream.
With five wired carriers in most HK buildings, they have to be aggressive to gain market share. It's a real standalone offer, although you can add voice ($9) and IPTV ($17) for a triple play under $40. They are profitable with little debt, and have set a "Big Hairy Audacious Goal to become the largest IP service provider in Hong Kong by 2016."
"We make Lamborghini 'SuperCar' class broadband available at mass market prices," Lai writes. The one significant limit is they provision only 20 meg per home of International bandwidth. New customers pay installation of US$39 but no equipment charge. The picture is CEO William Leung with a symbol of the speed of his network.
The substantial majority of their traffic profile is local, with most resources from streaming TV to p2p available locally. Like Iliad and other successful new competitors, they run a simple IP network. GEPON fiber to the building (which is less than $100/connection.) Then a simple Ethernet switch with Cat 5e to each apartment. The switch looks very similar to the 24 port 10/100 Linksys or Netgear that costs less than $150 at local computer stores. This is yet one more confirmation of the major savings of IP networks like those I see at Iliad/Fr. The lower costs provide a major competitive advantage.Some editor's thoughts: William dressed in leather to promote his 100 megabit upstream and downstream service, for $13/month. Repeat: U.S.$13/month, 100 meg up, 100 meg down, no cap and generous terms including an 80% speed guarantee. 1.5M homes in Hong Kong are servable, and another 500K under construction. That's a third the price and much faster than anything available in London, New York, Chicago, or Berlin. Triple play is U.S. $40.
Magic? Crazy stunt of a company trying to avoid bankruptcy? Huge government subsidy? No, just strong competition. An aggressive entrant, already profitable, wants to win customers. Speeds like that are practical across 50-90% of the homes in the developed world. Comcast and Verizon in the U.S. Free.fr and Numericable France, and many others are proving out the technology. France's triple play – including “100 meg down” cable modems and fiber in several cities - is under $50. Of course rural areas are harder, but the gap is far too wide.
Every competent regulator needs to look at the leaders and ask, “How can I come close in my country?” Your move, Julius, Ed, Mathias, and other powerful men.
Written by Dave Burstein
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With five wired carriers in most HK buildings, they have to be aggressive to gain market share. It's a real standalone offer, although you can add voice ($9) and IPTV ($17) for a triple play under $40. They are profitable with little debt, and have set a "Big Hairy Audacious Goal to become the largest IP service provider in Hong Kong by 2016."
"We make Lamborghini 'SuperCar' class broadband available at mass market prices," Lai writes. The one significant limit is they provision only 20 meg per home of International bandwidth. New customers pay installation of US$39 but no equipment charge. The picture is CEO William Leung with a symbol of the speed of his network.
The substantial majority of their traffic profile is local, with most resources from streaming TV to p2p available locally. Like Iliad and other successful new competitors, they run a simple IP network. GEPON fiber to the building (which is less than $100/connection.) Then a simple Ethernet switch with Cat 5e to each apartment. The switch looks very similar to the 24 port 10/100 Linksys or Netgear that costs less than $150 at local computer stores. This is yet one more confirmation of the major savings of IP networks like those I see at Iliad/Fr. The lower costs provide a major competitive advantage.Some editor's thoughts: William dressed in leather to promote his 100 megabit upstream and downstream service, for $13/month. Repeat: U.S.$13/month, 100 meg up, 100 meg down, no cap and generous terms including an 80% speed guarantee. 1.5M homes in Hong Kong are servable, and another 500K under construction. That's a third the price and much faster than anything available in London, New York, Chicago, or Berlin. Triple play is U.S. $40.
Magic? Crazy stunt of a company trying to avoid bankruptcy? Huge government subsidy? No, just strong competition. An aggressive entrant, already profitable, wants to win customers. Speeds like that are practical across 50-90% of the homes in the developed world. Comcast and Verizon in the U.S. Free.fr and Numericable France, and many others are proving out the technology. France's triple play – including “100 meg down” cable modems and fiber in several cities - is under $50. Of course rural areas are harder, but the gap is far too wide.
Every competent regulator needs to look at the leaders and ask, “How can I come close in my country?” Your move, Julius, Ed, Mathias, and other powerful men.
Written by Dave Burstein
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DSL 2013: Double and Triple Speeds Possible, Limited Deployment
Claude_Shannon_sets_limitsJohn Cioffi amazed the FCC hearing with talk of 200 megabit bonded VDSL with DSM3, which one carrier believes will make fiber unnecessary. Infineon and ECI in Paris both demonstrated working DSM3, although field units are a few years away. Infineon and ECI in Paris. VDSL bonding is working according to carrier engineers testing it in the field. Over modest distances like 1,000 feet two pair can deliver 200 megabits without breaking Shannon's Law.
But rather few homes are likely to be offered more than today's 10-20 meg in the U.S. Few in Europe will be offered double speed bonding. DSM3 will come from the labs to practicality over the next few years and likely be standard on new DSLAMs. Few carriers will replace existing DSLAMs any time soon and it will probably be a decade before most homes are upgraded. Working technology doesn't mean anything if the carriers don't deploy it.
10-15% with marginal IPTV speeds are likely to be offered bonded service. AT&T almost certainly will use bonding offer TV to homes that can't get 25 megabits without it. That's typical of homes 3,000-5,000 feet from a U-Verse DSLAM. There may be as many as 10M homes that need bonding to receive U-Verse, three or four times as many as the first U-Verse planners expected. DT and others offering HD TV will probably do similar although for fewer homes.
Virtually no carriers today have plans to offer bonding except to bring distant homes to 20-30 meg for HD TV. The current RFPs, which are for the equipment for the next 2-5 years, almost never are planned for widespread bonding. With massive firings of network staff continuing, they are reluctant to make changes in their system. One regulator thinks it's a good idea to offer a second line to the lowest speed homes, but doesn't expect that to be required.
For the TV homes using bonding, about half of the bandwidth will be dedicated to TV. So even for those home, the effective download speed will be 10-15 megabits and upload will be 1-3 megabits. Except for fiber to the basement huge in Japan and now beginning in New York and other American cities - the hybrid DSL/FTTN offering will be closer to 1 up, 10 down the 100 megabits routine with fiber home.
DSM3 noise cancellation, the other major improvement likely, is 1-3 years from the field. Because it requires replacing the line card or the entire DSLAM, it will mostly go to new builds. The 40-50 million homes passed by U-Verse and similar cannot be inexpensively upgraded. There's no reason to think many will be replaced in less than 5, or perhaps 10 years. So DSM is crucial for new equipment and particular situations, but it will be a decade before it has much of an impact in existing deployments.
I probably underestimated the cost of bonding when I said it was $200 right now but likely to go down towards $50 fairly quickly based on the increased cost of the modem and extra DSLAM port. Stagg Newman reminds me that it requires a technician to the home in most cases. If they are installing IPTV, they need that truck roll anyway. But for an upgrade, especially from a U-Verse field terminal, that also requires a technician.
Takeaway: DSL, except from the basement, should be considered as 5-15 meg of data down, 1-3 meg up. Networks take a decade to rebuild, so there's no magic coming from the technology.
Written by Dave Burstein
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But rather few homes are likely to be offered more than today's 10-20 meg in the U.S. Few in Europe will be offered double speed bonding. DSM3 will come from the labs to practicality over the next few years and likely be standard on new DSLAMs. Few carriers will replace existing DSLAMs any time soon and it will probably be a decade before most homes are upgraded. Working technology doesn't mean anything if the carriers don't deploy it.
10-15% with marginal IPTV speeds are likely to be offered bonded service. AT&T almost certainly will use bonding offer TV to homes that can't get 25 megabits without it. That's typical of homes 3,000-5,000 feet from a U-Verse DSLAM. There may be as many as 10M homes that need bonding to receive U-Verse, three or four times as many as the first U-Verse planners expected. DT and others offering HD TV will probably do similar although for fewer homes.
Virtually no carriers today have plans to offer bonding except to bring distant homes to 20-30 meg for HD TV. The current RFPs, which are for the equipment for the next 2-5 years, almost never are planned for widespread bonding. With massive firings of network staff continuing, they are reluctant to make changes in their system. One regulator thinks it's a good idea to offer a second line to the lowest speed homes, but doesn't expect that to be required.
For the TV homes using bonding, about half of the bandwidth will be dedicated to TV. So even for those home, the effective download speed will be 10-15 megabits and upload will be 1-3 megabits. Except for fiber to the basement huge in Japan and now beginning in New York and other American cities - the hybrid DSL/FTTN offering will be closer to 1 up, 10 down the 100 megabits routine with fiber home.
DSM3 noise cancellation, the other major improvement likely, is 1-3 years from the field. Because it requires replacing the line card or the entire DSLAM, it will mostly go to new builds. The 40-50 million homes passed by U-Verse and similar cannot be inexpensively upgraded. There's no reason to think many will be replaced in less than 5, or perhaps 10 years. So DSM is crucial for new equipment and particular situations, but it will be a decade before it has much of an impact in existing deployments.
I probably underestimated the cost of bonding when I said it was $200 right now but likely to go down towards $50 fairly quickly based on the increased cost of the modem and extra DSLAM port. Stagg Newman reminds me that it requires a technician to the home in most cases. If they are installing IPTV, they need that truck roll anyway. But for an upgrade, especially from a U-Verse field terminal, that also requires a technician.
Takeaway: DSL, except from the basement, should be considered as 5-15 meg of data down, 1-3 meg up. Networks take a decade to rebuild, so there's no magic coming from the technology.
Written by Dave Burstein
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Google Is Deploying Fiber To The Home
Between 50,000 and 500,000 to see 1 Gbps connections....
tags: business · alternatives · bandwidth
As if ISPs didn't hate Google enough already for recent disruptions in the wireless space, the search giant today announced via their corporate blog that the company is deploying an experimental fiber to the home network in a handful of trial locations across the United States. According to Google, the project will deliver fiber to the home speeds at up to 1 gigabit per second to a rather murky number of total subscribers:
Google is planning to build, and test ultra-high speed broadband networks in a small number of trial locations across the country. We'll deliver Internet speeds more than 100 times faster than what most Americans have access to today with 1 gigabit per second, fiber-to-the-home connections.
In a YouTube video entitled "think big with a gig," Google Product Manager James Kelly says that a lucky group of users will be offered the blisteringly-fast speeds at "competitive prices." Why? According to the fiber to the home project page, Google says they want to test next-generation applications and explore new ways to help deliver fiber to the home service.
But the carrier also says they want to explore the idea of "openness," and likely wants to use the network and collected data as argumentative fodder in their debate with carriers over network neutrality and competitiveness. As such, Google will be giving subscribers to this fiber network "the choice of multiple service providers," and insists they'll be managing the network in "an open, non-discriminatory, and transparent way."
While the announcement will surely be greeted with a litany of people proclaiming that this is the arrival of "Google the ISP," such a broader move remains unlikely. For years Google has tinkered with the idea of offering limited range wireless broadband service, and while this too fostered talk about Google as a carrier, most of these projects were little more than test beds for ad delivery. Google projects like their Wi-Fi network in their hometown of Mountain View, California, never extended beyond their initial target area.
Still it's an interesting development, and even if Google doesn't take the idea past trial stage, it will be a kick in the digital posterior of upgrade-complacent ISPs, while demonstrating the viability of an open access delivery model. The collected data will also be useful in debating ISPs on topics ranging from congestion and neutrality, to transit prices and consumer trends. This kind of data has long been held tightly to the chest of major service providers.
Google says they've issued a Request for Information (RFI) to help identify interested communities that's due by March 26. Community members and government officials can officially begin begging Google via this link.
by Karl Bode
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Original Article Here
tags: business · alternatives · bandwidth
As if ISPs didn't hate Google enough already for recent disruptions in the wireless space, the search giant today announced via their corporate blog that the company is deploying an experimental fiber to the home network in a handful of trial locations across the United States. According to Google, the project will deliver fiber to the home speeds at up to 1 gigabit per second to a rather murky number of total subscribers:
Google is planning to build, and test ultra-high speed broadband networks in a small number of trial locations across the country. We'll deliver Internet speeds more than 100 times faster than what most Americans have access to today with 1 gigabit per second, fiber-to-the-home connections.
In a YouTube video entitled "think big with a gig," Google Product Manager James Kelly says that a lucky group of users will be offered the blisteringly-fast speeds at "competitive prices." Why? According to the fiber to the home project page, Google says they want to test next-generation applications and explore new ways to help deliver fiber to the home service.
But the carrier also says they want to explore the idea of "openness," and likely wants to use the network and collected data as argumentative fodder in their debate with carriers over network neutrality and competitiveness. As such, Google will be giving subscribers to this fiber network "the choice of multiple service providers," and insists they'll be managing the network in "an open, non-discriminatory, and transparent way."
While the announcement will surely be greeted with a litany of people proclaiming that this is the arrival of "Google the ISP," such a broader move remains unlikely. For years Google has tinkered with the idea of offering limited range wireless broadband service, and while this too fostered talk about Google as a carrier, most of these projects were little more than test beds for ad delivery. Google projects like their Wi-Fi network in their hometown of Mountain View, California, never extended beyond their initial target area.
Still it's an interesting development, and even if Google doesn't take the idea past trial stage, it will be a kick in the digital posterior of upgrade-complacent ISPs, while demonstrating the viability of an open access delivery model. The collected data will also be useful in debating ISPs on topics ranging from congestion and neutrality, to transit prices and consumer trends. This kind of data has long been held tightly to the chest of major service providers.
Google says they've issued a Request for Information (RFI) to help identify interested communities that's due by March 26. Community members and government officials can officially begin begging Google via this link.
by Karl Bode
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Original Article Here
GlobalFoundries, ARM tip 28-nm process for mobile
LONDON — GlobalFoundries Inc. (Sunnyvale, Calif.) and ARM Holdings plc (Cambridge, England) have announced some details of two 28-nm manufacturing process technologies for wireless products. They also claim to have a mobile SoC "platform" based on the Cortex-A9 processor core.
ARM and GlobalFoundries will be showing the first 28-nm wafer with HKMG technology at Mobile World Congress, which opens in Barcelona.
The collaboration covers a 28-nm "super" low power process for mobile and consumer applications and a 28-nm high performance process.
Globalfoundries said it expects to start manufacturing the high performance process technology at Fab 1 in Dresden, Germany, in the second half of 2010 and the super low power process, aimed at mobile applications about a quarter later at the start of 2011.
The two companies announced their collaboration in October 2009.
Globalfoundries claimed its 28-nm priocesses would allow a 40 percent increase in computing performance and a 30 percent improvement in power efficiency for mobile computing devices which in turn could translate to a 100 percent improvement in battery life.
Globalfoundries made the comparison with the 40/45-nm process generation but did not make any reference to particular manufacturers.
"We are working closely with ARM to optimize the physical IP and implementation of the Cortex-A9 processor with our proven manufacturing experience in high-volume, advanced technology products, to deliver a fully integrated platform for leading-edge wireless products and applications," said Globalfoundries chief operating officer Chia Song Hwee, in a statement.
The SoC platform is based on the Cortex-A9 processor core, optimized physical IP and Globalfoundries' 28-nm gate-first high-k metal gate (HKMG) process.
Edition
Peter Clarke
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Original Article Here
ARM and GlobalFoundries will be showing the first 28-nm wafer with HKMG technology at Mobile World Congress, which opens in Barcelona.
The collaboration covers a 28-nm "super" low power process for mobile and consumer applications and a 28-nm high performance process.
Globalfoundries said it expects to start manufacturing the high performance process technology at Fab 1 in Dresden, Germany, in the second half of 2010 and the super low power process, aimed at mobile applications about a quarter later at the start of 2011.
The two companies announced their collaboration in October 2009.
Globalfoundries claimed its 28-nm priocesses would allow a 40 percent increase in computing performance and a 30 percent improvement in power efficiency for mobile computing devices which in turn could translate to a 100 percent improvement in battery life.
Globalfoundries made the comparison with the 40/45-nm process generation but did not make any reference to particular manufacturers.
"We are working closely with ARM to optimize the physical IP and implementation of the Cortex-A9 processor with our proven manufacturing experience in high-volume, advanced technology products, to deliver a fully integrated platform for leading-edge wireless products and applications," said Globalfoundries chief operating officer Chia Song Hwee, in a statement.
The SoC platform is based on the Cortex-A9 processor core, optimized physical IP and Globalfoundries' 28-nm gate-first high-k metal gate (HKMG) process.
Edition
Peter Clarke
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Feb 16, 2010
ISSCC: Expert picks winner for post-CMOS era
SAN FRANCISCO -- Chip scaling is expected to continue for at least the next 15 years, according to one expert, who also predicted perhaps the next technology after the post-CMOS era.
The winner in the post-CMOS era has not been declared yet, but graphene holds great promise, said James Meindl, director of the Joseph M. Pettit Microelectronics Research Center and Pettit Chair Professor of Microelectronics at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, Georgia.
''We will continue to scale vigorously for the next 15 years,'' he said during a keynote at the International Solid State Circuit Conference (ISSCC) here. "Beyond silicon microchip technology, revolutionary developments in nanoelectronics, perhaps centering on graphene, may evolve.''
For processors, silicon could scale to the 7.9-nm node, which is slated for 2024. Before or after that, graphene could enable future terascale computing, he said.
So why graphene over the other post-CMOS technology candidates, such as spintronics, molecular electronics, and others? Some claim graphene chips are 100-to-1,000 times faster than silicon. Graphene is the crystalline form of carbon that self-assembles into two-dimension hexagonal arrays perfect for fabricating electronic devices.
Unfortunately, when conventional deposition techniques are used with carbon to grow sheets much larger than one inch, they tend to degenerate into irregular graphite structures. Graphene has higher carrier mobility than silicon, but has been hampered by the lack of a band gap, which has kept the on-off ratio of graphene transistors dismally low--usually less than 10 compared to hundreds for silicon.
Recently, several companies have made headlines in the area. A 100-GHz transistor has recently been demonstrated by IBM Research. Fabricated on new 2-inch graphene wafers and operating at room temperature, the RF graphene transistors are said to beat the speeds of all but the fastest GaAs transistors, paving the way to commercialization of high-speed, carbon-based electronics.
The next-generation of semiconductors could be based on carbon instead of silicon, according to Penn State researchers, who recently claimed to have perfected a method of fabricating pure sheets of carbon semiconductor--called graphene--on 100 millimeter (4-inch) wafers.
Edition
Mark LaPedus
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Original Article Here
The winner in the post-CMOS era has not been declared yet, but graphene holds great promise, said James Meindl, director of the Joseph M. Pettit Microelectronics Research Center and Pettit Chair Professor of Microelectronics at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, Georgia.
''We will continue to scale vigorously for the next 15 years,'' he said during a keynote at the International Solid State Circuit Conference (ISSCC) here. "Beyond silicon microchip technology, revolutionary developments in nanoelectronics, perhaps centering on graphene, may evolve.''
For processors, silicon could scale to the 7.9-nm node, which is slated for 2024. Before or after that, graphene could enable future terascale computing, he said.
So why graphene over the other post-CMOS technology candidates, such as spintronics, molecular electronics, and others? Some claim graphene chips are 100-to-1,000 times faster than silicon. Graphene is the crystalline form of carbon that self-assembles into two-dimension hexagonal arrays perfect for fabricating electronic devices.
Unfortunately, when conventional deposition techniques are used with carbon to grow sheets much larger than one inch, they tend to degenerate into irregular graphite structures. Graphene has higher carrier mobility than silicon, but has been hampered by the lack of a band gap, which has kept the on-off ratio of graphene transistors dismally low--usually less than 10 compared to hundreds for silicon.
Recently, several companies have made headlines in the area. A 100-GHz transistor has recently been demonstrated by IBM Research. Fabricated on new 2-inch graphene wafers and operating at room temperature, the RF graphene transistors are said to beat the speeds of all but the fastest GaAs transistors, paving the way to commercialization of high-speed, carbon-based electronics.
The next-generation of semiconductors could be based on carbon instead of silicon, according to Penn State researchers, who recently claimed to have perfected a method of fabricating pure sheets of carbon semiconductor--called graphene--on 100 millimeter (4-inch) wafers.
Edition
Mark LaPedus
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iPhone Coming to All Carriers?
Amid the flurry of speculation surrounding Apple’s expected release of a tablet device on Wednesday at an event in San Francisco, rumors are starting to spread that Steve Jobs will also use the stage to announce the end of AT&T's two-and-a-half year exclusive run on the iPhone.
Cupertino, California, Apple is expected to release the iPhone to all U.S. wireless carriers in the next 18 months, doubling or tripling the number of devices sold, said Tim Horan, a telecommunications analyst at Oppenheimer & Co. in a note to clients.
T-Mobile will get the phone this summer, followed by Verizon Wireless and Sprint Nextel in the fall, Mr. Horan wrote on Monday.
AT&T, which has been the exclusive carrier of the iPhone since its June 2007 launch, has been much criticized for its poor data infrastructure and the number of calls dropped.
“We believe AT&T’s iPhone exclusivity arrangement with Apple will be expiring by mid-2010,” Mr. Horan wrote. “For wireless carriers, customers are demanding the device and they need to remain competitive.”
But the news that everyone is waiting for is Apple’s widely expected release of a new tablet-like device, dubbed the iSlate by industry watchers.
"The new products we are planning to release this year are very strong, starting this week with a major new product that we're really excited about," Apple CEO Steve Jobs said in a statement.
The Mac maker is scheduled to hold an event on Wednesday where it may launch the tablet device, which is said to be a handheld device with a touch screen for users to view Internet content, play games, and watch television.
Apple on Monday also reported strong first-quarter 2010 sales and profit that beat Wall Street expectations on demand for iPhones and Macs.
by Lalee Sadighi
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Original Article Here
Cupertino, California, Apple is expected to release the iPhone to all U.S. wireless carriers in the next 18 months, doubling or tripling the number of devices sold, said Tim Horan, a telecommunications analyst at Oppenheimer & Co. in a note to clients.
T-Mobile will get the phone this summer, followed by Verizon Wireless and Sprint Nextel in the fall, Mr. Horan wrote on Monday.
AT&T, which has been the exclusive carrier of the iPhone since its June 2007 launch, has been much criticized for its poor data infrastructure and the number of calls dropped.
“We believe AT&T’s iPhone exclusivity arrangement with Apple will be expiring by mid-2010,” Mr. Horan wrote. “For wireless carriers, customers are demanding the device and they need to remain competitive.”
But the news that everyone is waiting for is Apple’s widely expected release of a new tablet-like device, dubbed the iSlate by industry watchers.
"The new products we are planning to release this year are very strong, starting this week with a major new product that we're really excited about," Apple CEO Steve Jobs said in a statement.
The Mac maker is scheduled to hold an event on Wednesday where it may launch the tablet device, which is said to be a handheld device with a touch screen for users to view Internet content, play games, and watch television.
Apple on Monday also reported strong first-quarter 2010 sales and profit that beat Wall Street expectations on demand for iPhones and Macs.
by Lalee Sadighi
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Original Article Here
Feb 7, 2010
Touchscreens 101: Understanding touchscreen technology and design
Touchscreens (sometimes spelled as touch screen) are everywhere: they are embedded in phones, office equipment, speakers, digital photo frames, TV control buttons, remote controls, GPS systems, automotive keyless entry, and medical monitoring equipment. As a component, they have reached into every industry, every product type, every size, and every application at every price point. In fact, if a product has an LCD or buttons, a designer somewhere is probably evaluating how that product, too, can implement touchscreen technology. As with any technology, there are many different ways to implementation approaches, many promises of performance, and many different technical considerations when designing a touchscreen.
Anatomy of a touchscreen
Knowing what you need is an important first step in designing a touchscreen product. Vendors in the touchscreen supply chain frequently offer different pieces of the puzzle, often times combining several to create a value chain for the end customer. Figure 1 shows a blowup of the touchscreen ecosystem. This ecosystem is the same whether it is in the latest Notebook PC or the latest touch-enabled mobile phone.
There are six key elements:
1. Front panel or bezel: The front panel or bezel is the outermost skin of the end product. In some products, this bezel will encompass a protective clear overlay to keep weather and moisture out of the system, and to resist scratching and vandalism to the underlying sensor technology (see item 3 below). Other times, the outmost bezel simply covers the edges of the underlying touch sensor; in this case, it is purely decorative.
2. Touch controller: The touch-controller is generally a small microcontroller-based IC that sits between the touch sensor and the embedded system controller. This IC can either be located on a controller board inside the system or it can be located on a flexible printed circuit (FPC) affixed to the glass touch sensor. This touch controller takes information from the touch sensor and translates it into information that the PC or embedded system controller can understand.
3. Touch sensor: A touchscreen "sensor" is a clear glass panel with a touch-responsive surface. This sensor is placed over an LCD so that the touch area of the panel covers the viewable area of the video screen. There are many different touch-sensor technologies on the market today, each using a different method to detect touch input. Fundamentally, these technologies all use an electrical current running through the panel that, when touched, causes a voltage or signal change. This voltage change is sensed by the touch controller to determine the location of the touch on the screen.
4. Liquid crystal display: Most touchscreen systems work over traditional LCDs. LCDs for a touch-enabled product should be chosen for the same reasons they would in a traditional system: resolution, clarity, refresh speed, and cost. One major consideration for a touchscreen, however, is the level of electrical emission. Because the technology in the touch sensor is based on small electrical changes when the panel is touched, an LCD that emits a lot of electrical noise can be difficult to design around. Touch sensor vendors should be consulted before choosing an LCD for a touchscreen system.
5. System software : Touchscreen driver software can be either shipped from the factory (within the embedded OS of a cell phone) or offered as add-on software (like adding a touchscreen to a traditional PC). This software allows the touchscreen and system controller to work together and tells the product's operating system how to interpret the touch-event information that is sent from the controller. In a PC-style application, most touchscreen drivers work like a PC mouse. This makes touching the screen similar to clicking the mouse at the same location on the screen. In embedded systems, the embedded controller driver must compare the information presented on the screen to the location of the received touch.
The "big three" of touchscreen technology
* Resistive touchscreens are the most common touchscreen technology. They are used in high-traffic applications and are immune to water or other debris on the screen. Resistive touchscreens are usually the lowest-cost touchscreen implementation. Because they react to pressure, they can be activated by a finger, gloved hand, stylus, or other object, such as a credit card.
* Surface-capacitive touchscreens provide a much clearer display than the plastic cover typically used in a resistive touchscreen. In a surface-capacitive display, sensors in the four corners of the display detect capacitance changes due to touch. These touchscreens can only be activated by a finger or other conductive object.
* Projected-capacitive touchscreens are the latest entry to the market. This technology also offers superior optical clarity, but it has significant advantages over surface-capacitive screens. Projected capacitive sensors require no positional calibration and provide much higher positional accuracy. Projected-capacitive touchscreens are also very exciting because they can detect multiple touches simultaneously.
How touchscreens work
Let's look inside the two most common touchscreen technologies.
The most widely used touchscreen technology is resistive. Most people have used one of these resistive touchscreens already, in the ATM at the bank, in the credit card checkout in most stores, or even for entering an order in a restaurant. Projective-capacitance touchscreens, on the other hand, are not as broadly available yet, but are gaining market momentum. Many cellphones and portable music players are beginning to come to market with projective-capacitance interfaces. Both resistive and capacitive technologies have a strong electrical component, both use ITO (Indium-Tin-Oxide, a clear conductor), and both will be around for a long time to come.
A resistive touchscreen (Figure 2, left side) consists of a flexible top layer, then a layer of ITO (Indium-Tin-Oxide), an air gap and then another layer of ITO. The panel has 4 wires attached to the ITO layers: one on the left and right sides of the 'X' layer, and one on the top and bottom sides of the 'Y' layer.
A touch is detected when the flexible top layer is pressed down to contact the lower layer. The location of a touch is measured in two steps: First, the 'X right' is driven to a known voltage, and the 'X left' is driven to ground and the voltage is read from a Y sensor. This provides the X coordinate. This process is repeated for the other axis to determine the exact finger position.
Resistive touchscreens also come in 5-wire, and 8-wire versions. The 5-wire version replaces the top ITO layer with a low-resistance "conductive layer" that provides better durability. The 8-wire panel was developed to enable higher resolution by enabling better calibration of the panel's characteristics.
There are several drawbacks to resistive technology. The flexible top layer has only 75%-80% clarity and the resistive touchscreen measurement process has several error sources. If the ITO layers are not uniform, the resistance will not vary linearly across the sensor. Measuring voltage to 10- or 12-bit precision is required, which is difficult in many environments. Many of the existing resistive touchscreens also require periodic calibration to realign the touch points with the underlying LCD image.
Conversely, projected-capacitive touchscreens have no moving parts. The only thing between the LCD and the user is ITO and glass, which have near 100% optical clarity. The projected-capacitance sensing hardware consists of a glass top layer (Figure 2, right side), followed by an array of X sensors, an insulating layer, then an array of Y sensors on a glass substrate. The panel will have a wire for each X and Y sensor, so a 5 x 6 panel will have 11 connections (Figure 3), while a 10 x 14 panel will have 24 sensor connections.
As a finger or other conductive object approaches the screen, it creates a capacitor between the sensors and the finger. This capacitor is small relative to the others in the system (about 0.5 pF out of 20 pF), but it is readily measured. One common measuring technique known as Capacitive Sensing using a Sigma-Delta Modulator (CSD) involves rapidly charging the capacitor and measuring the discharge time through a bleed resistor.
A projected capacitive sensor array is designed so that a finger will interact with more than one X sensor and more than one Y sensor at a time (See Figure 3). This enables software to accurately determine finger position to a very fine degree through interpolation. For example, if sensors 1, 2 and 3 see signals of 3, 10, and 7, the center of the finger is at:
[(1 × 3) + (2 × 10) + (7 × 3)]/(3 + 10 + 7) = 2.2
Since projected-capacitive panels have multiple sensors, they can detect multiple fingers simultaneously, which is impossible with other technologies. In fact, projective capacitance has been shown to detect up to ten fingers at the same time. This enables exciting new applications based on multiple finger presses, including multiplayer gaming on handheld electronics or playing an touchscreen piano.
Without question, touchscreens are great looking. They have begun to define a new user interface and industrial design standard that is being adopted the world over. In everything from heart-rate monitors to the latest all-in-one printers, touchscreens are quickly becoming the standard of technology design.
Beyond just looks, however, touchscreens provide an unparalleled level of security from tampering, resistance from weather, durability from wear, and even enable entirely new markets with unique features such as multi-touch touchscreens. With touchscreens making their way into so many types of products, it's imperative that design engineers understand the technology ecosystem and technology availability.
By Steve Kolokowsky
and Trevor Davis,
Cypress Semiconductor Corp.
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Original Article Here
Anatomy of a touchscreen
Knowing what you need is an important first step in designing a touchscreen product. Vendors in the touchscreen supply chain frequently offer different pieces of the puzzle, often times combining several to create a value chain for the end customer. Figure 1 shows a blowup of the touchscreen ecosystem. This ecosystem is the same whether it is in the latest Notebook PC or the latest touch-enabled mobile phone.
There are six key elements:
1. Front panel or bezel: The front panel or bezel is the outermost skin of the end product. In some products, this bezel will encompass a protective clear overlay to keep weather and moisture out of the system, and to resist scratching and vandalism to the underlying sensor technology (see item 3 below). Other times, the outmost bezel simply covers the edges of the underlying touch sensor; in this case, it is purely decorative.
2. Touch controller: The touch-controller is generally a small microcontroller-based IC that sits between the touch sensor and the embedded system controller. This IC can either be located on a controller board inside the system or it can be located on a flexible printed circuit (FPC) affixed to the glass touch sensor. This touch controller takes information from the touch sensor and translates it into information that the PC or embedded system controller can understand.
3. Touch sensor: A touchscreen "sensor" is a clear glass panel with a touch-responsive surface. This sensor is placed over an LCD so that the touch area of the panel covers the viewable area of the video screen. There are many different touch-sensor technologies on the market today, each using a different method to detect touch input. Fundamentally, these technologies all use an electrical current running through the panel that, when touched, causes a voltage or signal change. This voltage change is sensed by the touch controller to determine the location of the touch on the screen.
4. Liquid crystal display: Most touchscreen systems work over traditional LCDs. LCDs for a touch-enabled product should be chosen for the same reasons they would in a traditional system: resolution, clarity, refresh speed, and cost. One major consideration for a touchscreen, however, is the level of electrical emission. Because the technology in the touch sensor is based on small electrical changes when the panel is touched, an LCD that emits a lot of electrical noise can be difficult to design around. Touch sensor vendors should be consulted before choosing an LCD for a touchscreen system.
5. System software : Touchscreen driver software can be either shipped from the factory (within the embedded OS of a cell phone) or offered as add-on software (like adding a touchscreen to a traditional PC). This software allows the touchscreen and system controller to work together and tells the product's operating system how to interpret the touch-event information that is sent from the controller. In a PC-style application, most touchscreen drivers work like a PC mouse. This makes touching the screen similar to clicking the mouse at the same location on the screen. In embedded systems, the embedded controller driver must compare the information presented on the screen to the location of the received touch.
The "big three" of touchscreen technology
* Resistive touchscreens are the most common touchscreen technology. They are used in high-traffic applications and are immune to water or other debris on the screen. Resistive touchscreens are usually the lowest-cost touchscreen implementation. Because they react to pressure, they can be activated by a finger, gloved hand, stylus, or other object, such as a credit card.
* Surface-capacitive touchscreens provide a much clearer display than the plastic cover typically used in a resistive touchscreen. In a surface-capacitive display, sensors in the four corners of the display detect capacitance changes due to touch. These touchscreens can only be activated by a finger or other conductive object.
* Projected-capacitive touchscreens are the latest entry to the market. This technology also offers superior optical clarity, but it has significant advantages over surface-capacitive screens. Projected capacitive sensors require no positional calibration and provide much higher positional accuracy. Projected-capacitive touchscreens are also very exciting because they can detect multiple touches simultaneously.
How touchscreens work
Let's look inside the two most common touchscreen technologies.
The most widely used touchscreen technology is resistive. Most people have used one of these resistive touchscreens already, in the ATM at the bank, in the credit card checkout in most stores, or even for entering an order in a restaurant. Projective-capacitance touchscreens, on the other hand, are not as broadly available yet, but are gaining market momentum. Many cellphones and portable music players are beginning to come to market with projective-capacitance interfaces. Both resistive and capacitive technologies have a strong electrical component, both use ITO (Indium-Tin-Oxide, a clear conductor), and both will be around for a long time to come.
A resistive touchscreen (Figure 2, left side) consists of a flexible top layer, then a layer of ITO (Indium-Tin-Oxide), an air gap and then another layer of ITO. The panel has 4 wires attached to the ITO layers: one on the left and right sides of the 'X' layer, and one on the top and bottom sides of the 'Y' layer.
A touch is detected when the flexible top layer is pressed down to contact the lower layer. The location of a touch is measured in two steps: First, the 'X right' is driven to a known voltage, and the 'X left' is driven to ground and the voltage is read from a Y sensor. This provides the X coordinate. This process is repeated for the other axis to determine the exact finger position.
Resistive touchscreens also come in 5-wire, and 8-wire versions. The 5-wire version replaces the top ITO layer with a low-resistance "conductive layer" that provides better durability. The 8-wire panel was developed to enable higher resolution by enabling better calibration of the panel's characteristics.
There are several drawbacks to resistive technology. The flexible top layer has only 75%-80% clarity and the resistive touchscreen measurement process has several error sources. If the ITO layers are not uniform, the resistance will not vary linearly across the sensor. Measuring voltage to 10- or 12-bit precision is required, which is difficult in many environments. Many of the existing resistive touchscreens also require periodic calibration to realign the touch points with the underlying LCD image.
Conversely, projected-capacitive touchscreens have no moving parts. The only thing between the LCD and the user is ITO and glass, which have near 100% optical clarity. The projected-capacitance sensing hardware consists of a glass top layer (Figure 2, right side), followed by an array of X sensors, an insulating layer, then an array of Y sensors on a glass substrate. The panel will have a wire for each X and Y sensor, so a 5 x 6 panel will have 11 connections (Figure 3), while a 10 x 14 panel will have 24 sensor connections.
As a finger or other conductive object approaches the screen, it creates a capacitor between the sensors and the finger. This capacitor is small relative to the others in the system (about 0.5 pF out of 20 pF), but it is readily measured. One common measuring technique known as Capacitive Sensing using a Sigma-Delta Modulator (CSD) involves rapidly charging the capacitor and measuring the discharge time through a bleed resistor.
A projected capacitive sensor array is designed so that a finger will interact with more than one X sensor and more than one Y sensor at a time (See Figure 3). This enables software to accurately determine finger position to a very fine degree through interpolation. For example, if sensors 1, 2 and 3 see signals of 3, 10, and 7, the center of the finger is at:
[(1 × 3) + (2 × 10) + (7 × 3)]/(3 + 10 + 7) = 2.2
Since projected-capacitive panels have multiple sensors, they can detect multiple fingers simultaneously, which is impossible with other technologies. In fact, projective capacitance has been shown to detect up to ten fingers at the same time. This enables exciting new applications based on multiple finger presses, including multiplayer gaming on handheld electronics or playing an touchscreen piano.
Without question, touchscreens are great looking. They have begun to define a new user interface and industrial design standard that is being adopted the world over. In everything from heart-rate monitors to the latest all-in-one printers, touchscreens are quickly becoming the standard of technology design.
Beyond just looks, however, touchscreens provide an unparalleled level of security from tampering, resistance from weather, durability from wear, and even enable entirely new markets with unique features such as multi-touch touchscreens. With touchscreens making their way into so many types of products, it's imperative that design engineers understand the technology ecosystem and technology availability.
By Steve Kolokowsky
and Trevor Davis,
Cypress Semiconductor Corp.
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Tutorial on T1/E1 Alarming, Dropping, and Inserting
While interest in IP networks continues to grow, designers must continue to push forward on using T1 and E1 links to deliver voice and data services. This tutorial highlights the alarm, drop, and insert mechanisms necessary to allow T1/E1 links to deliver both services.
E1 and T1 lines are used to carry data and voice between carrier links. Historically, the T1 circuit has been used in North America and the E1 circuit in Europe. T1 and E1 lines can support both voice and data on a single link. This gives substantial cost savings to the carriers by using existing data networks and routing the voice to other destinations.
When a link of T1 or E1 call setup/teardown data arrives at the data center, the data channel is extracted and voice is sent to a media backend for the voice call to be processed. This function is called drop and insert. Each T1 and E1 line has a protocol to notify the other end of any errors that occur. The method of notification is called alarms.
Alarms are used in T1 or E1 to notify a node of a problem on a link. Alarms classify the nature of the problem. If a problem arises in drop and insert mode on a link, both links must also be notified.
In this tutorial, we'll describe the E1 and T1 protocols, alarms, and framing formats. We'll also show how alarms are used in conjunction with drop and insert capabilities to promote the delivery of voice and data services over T1 links. Let's start the discussion by looking at E1.
E1 Protocol Basics
The E1 frame is composed of 32 timeslots (Figure 1). Timeslots are also called DS0s. Each timeslot is 8 bits. Therefore, the E1 frame will be (32 timeslots * 8 bits) = 256 bits. Each timeslot has a data rate of 64,000 bits/second. There will be 64,000 bits/second/8 bits = 8000 frames a second. The E1 frame will arrive every 1 second/8000 frames/sec = 125 microseconds. The line rate will be (32 channels * 8 bits/channel)/ frame * 8000 frames/second = 2048000 bits/second.
Timeslot 0 is used for frame synchronization and alarms. Timeslot 16 is used for signaling, alarms, or data. Timeslot 1 to 15 and 17 to 31 are used for carrying data.
An alarm is a response to an error on the E1 line or framing. Three of the conditions that cause alarms are loss of frame alignment (LFA), loss of multi-frame alignment (LFMA), and loss of signal (LOS).
The LFA condition, also called an out-of-frame (OOF) condition, and LFMA condition occur when there are errors in the incoming framing pattern. The number of bit errors that provokes the condition depends on the framing format. The LOS condition occurs when no pulses have been detected on the line for between 100 to 250 bit times. This is the highest state alarm where nothing is detected on the line. The LOS may occur when a cable is not plugged in or the far end equipment, which is the source of the signal, is out of service.
The alarm indication signal (AIS) and remote alarm indication (RAI) alarms are responses to the LOS, LFA, and LFMA conditions. The RAI alarm is transmitted on LFA, LFMA, or LOS. RAI will be transmitted back to the far end that is transmitting frames in error. The AIS condition is a response to error conditions also. The AIS response is an unframed all 1's pattern on the line to the remote host. It is used to tell the far end it is still alive.
AIS is the blue alarm, RAI is the yellow alarm. A red alarm that can occur after a LFA has existed for 2.5 seconds. It is cleared after the LFA has been clear for at least one second.
E1 Double Frame
There are two E1 frame formats, the double frame and the multi-frame. The synchronization methods are different in the two frame formats. Synchronization can be achieved after receipt of three E1 frames in double frame format. The synchronization information is carried in timeslot 0. This is called the frame alignment signal (FAS).
The FAS is a pattern "0011011" that specifies the alignment of a frame. The FAS is in timeslot 0 in alternate frames (figure 2). Bits 2 through 8 are the FAS. The other frame's (N+1) bit 2 is set to 1. Frame alignment is reached if there is:
1. A correct FAS word in frame N.
2. Bit 2 = 1 in frame N+1
3. A correct FAS word in frame N+2.
What happens if synchronization is not achieved or has been achieved and lost? This condition is called LFA. If three in four alignment words are in error, an LFA is declared. This is if bit 2 in Frame N+1 is set to 0. The near end must respond to the far end that there is an alignment problem. This is done with the RAI alarm. The A bit (bit 3) in all N+1 frames is used for sending the RAI alarm to the far-end equipment.
E1 Multi-frame
In multi-frame format, the synchronization for multi-frame requires 16 consecutive good frames. The multi-frame structure also has two extra features. It provides channel associated signaling (CAS) and a cyclic redundancy check (CRC).
CAS is sent in timeslot 16 of each frame. It is CAS information that can denote on-hook and off-hook conditions of telephone calls. Figure 4 shows how CAS information is sent.
Figure 4: diagram illustrating how CAS information is sent.
In frame 1, the information for channels 1 and 16 is sent. In frame 2, the information for frames 2 and 17 is sent. Only 4 bits are used to denote on-hook and off-hook conditions. Of the four bits, not all are always used. Refer to figure 9 for the definitions of the ABCD bits for on hook/off hook conditions. Notice that timeslot 16 of frame 0 does not send this information.
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E1 and T1 lines are used to carry data and voice between carrier links. Historically, the T1 circuit has been used in North America and the E1 circuit in Europe. T1 and E1 lines can support both voice and data on a single link. This gives substantial cost savings to the carriers by using existing data networks and routing the voice to other destinations.
When a link of T1 or E1 call setup/teardown data arrives at the data center, the data channel is extracted and voice is sent to a media backend for the voice call to be processed. This function is called drop and insert. Each T1 and E1 line has a protocol to notify the other end of any errors that occur. The method of notification is called alarms.
Alarms are used in T1 or E1 to notify a node of a problem on a link. Alarms classify the nature of the problem. If a problem arises in drop and insert mode on a link, both links must also be notified.
In this tutorial, we'll describe the E1 and T1 protocols, alarms, and framing formats. We'll also show how alarms are used in conjunction with drop and insert capabilities to promote the delivery of voice and data services over T1 links. Let's start the discussion by looking at E1.
E1 Protocol Basics
The E1 frame is composed of 32 timeslots (Figure 1). Timeslots are also called DS0s. Each timeslot is 8 bits. Therefore, the E1 frame will be (32 timeslots * 8 bits) = 256 bits. Each timeslot has a data rate of 64,000 bits/second. There will be 64,000 bits/second/8 bits = 8000 frames a second. The E1 frame will arrive every 1 second/8000 frames/sec = 125 microseconds. The line rate will be (32 channels * 8 bits/channel)/ frame * 8000 frames/second = 2048000 bits/second.
Timeslot 0 is used for frame synchronization and alarms. Timeslot 16 is used for signaling, alarms, or data. Timeslot 1 to 15 and 17 to 31 are used for carrying data.
An alarm is a response to an error on the E1 line or framing. Three of the conditions that cause alarms are loss of frame alignment (LFA), loss of multi-frame alignment (LFMA), and loss of signal (LOS).
The LFA condition, also called an out-of-frame (OOF) condition, and LFMA condition occur when there are errors in the incoming framing pattern. The number of bit errors that provokes the condition depends on the framing format. The LOS condition occurs when no pulses have been detected on the line for between 100 to 250 bit times. This is the highest state alarm where nothing is detected on the line. The LOS may occur when a cable is not plugged in or the far end equipment, which is the source of the signal, is out of service.
The alarm indication signal (AIS) and remote alarm indication (RAI) alarms are responses to the LOS, LFA, and LFMA conditions. The RAI alarm is transmitted on LFA, LFMA, or LOS. RAI will be transmitted back to the far end that is transmitting frames in error. The AIS condition is a response to error conditions also. The AIS response is an unframed all 1's pattern on the line to the remote host. It is used to tell the far end it is still alive.
AIS is the blue alarm, RAI is the yellow alarm. A red alarm that can occur after a LFA has existed for 2.5 seconds. It is cleared after the LFA has been clear for at least one second.
E1 Double Frame
There are two E1 frame formats, the double frame and the multi-frame. The synchronization methods are different in the two frame formats. Synchronization can be achieved after receipt of three E1 frames in double frame format. The synchronization information is carried in timeslot 0. This is called the frame alignment signal (FAS).
The FAS is a pattern "0011011" that specifies the alignment of a frame. The FAS is in timeslot 0 in alternate frames (figure 2). Bits 2 through 8 are the FAS. The other frame's (N+1) bit 2 is set to 1. Frame alignment is reached if there is:
1. A correct FAS word in frame N.
2. Bit 2 = 1 in frame N+1
3. A correct FAS word in frame N+2.
What happens if synchronization is not achieved or has been achieved and lost? This condition is called LFA. If three in four alignment words are in error, an LFA is declared. This is if bit 2 in Frame N+1 is set to 0. The near end must respond to the far end that there is an alignment problem. This is done with the RAI alarm. The A bit (bit 3) in all N+1 frames is used for sending the RAI alarm to the far-end equipment.
E1 Multi-frame
In multi-frame format, the synchronization for multi-frame requires 16 consecutive good frames. The multi-frame structure also has two extra features. It provides channel associated signaling (CAS) and a cyclic redundancy check (CRC).
CAS is sent in timeslot 16 of each frame. It is CAS information that can denote on-hook and off-hook conditions of telephone calls. Figure 4 shows how CAS information is sent.
Figure 4: diagram illustrating how CAS information is sent.
In frame 1, the information for channels 1 and 16 is sent. In frame 2, the information for frames 2 and 17 is sent. Only 4 bits are used to denote on-hook and off-hook conditions. Of the four bits, not all are always used. Refer to figure 9 for the definitions of the ABCD bits for on hook/off hook conditions. Notice that timeslot 16 of frame 0 does not send this information.
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GlobalFoundries wants 30% of foundry market
LONDON — GlobalFoundries Inc. (Sunnyvale, Calif.) the foundry chip maker backed by Abu Dhabi, has said it wants to take 30 percent of the foundry market within three years, according to a Bloomberg report that cited the CEO of its lead investor as its source.
"Am I setting very aggressive targets? Yes. We need to be a $5 billion company in the next two to three years," a Bloomberg report quoted Ibrahim Ajami, chief executive officer of Advanced Technology Investment Co. (ATIC), as saying. ATIC is the government-owned investment company that has a majority stake in GlobalFoundries.
Unfortunately, $5 billion in annual sales won't quite get GlobalFoundries to 30 percent and it will be up against a dominant market leader in Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. (TSMC). In 2009 TSMC was ranked the top foundry with about 45 percent of a market worth about $20 billion. It was three times larger than its nearest rival, United Microelectronics Corp. That market is expected to grow strongly in 2010 and 2011.
GlobalFoundies, which acquired Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing late in 2009, appeared in fifth spot. The combined sales of Chartered and GlobalFoundries would have been just over $2.6 billion in 2009, enough to put the combined company's sales only just behind second-ranked UMC.
GlobalFoundries has announced that it is working with Qualcomm, STMicroelectronics and ARM Holdings plc as well as Advanced Micro Devices Inc., which remains a shareholder having provided original manufacturing process technology.
Edition Peter Clarke EE Times
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"Am I setting very aggressive targets? Yes. We need to be a $5 billion company in the next two to three years," a Bloomberg report quoted Ibrahim Ajami, chief executive officer of Advanced Technology Investment Co. (ATIC), as saying. ATIC is the government-owned investment company that has a majority stake in GlobalFoundries.
Unfortunately, $5 billion in annual sales won't quite get GlobalFoundries to 30 percent and it will be up against a dominant market leader in Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. (TSMC). In 2009 TSMC was ranked the top foundry with about 45 percent of a market worth about $20 billion. It was three times larger than its nearest rival, United Microelectronics Corp. That market is expected to grow strongly in 2010 and 2011.
GlobalFoundies, which acquired Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing late in 2009, appeared in fifth spot. The combined sales of Chartered and GlobalFoundries would have been just over $2.6 billion in 2009, enough to put the combined company's sales only just behind second-ranked UMC.
GlobalFoundries has announced that it is working with Qualcomm, STMicroelectronics and ARM Holdings plc as well as Advanced Micro Devices Inc., which remains a shareholder having provided original manufacturing process technology.
Edition Peter Clarke EE Times
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Smart phones shipments up 15% in 2009
LONDON — Despite 2009 being a year of economic crisis smart phone shipments were up strongly in the fourth quarter and full year, according to analysis firm IDC (Framingham, Mass.).
Vendors shipped a total of 54.5 million smart phones in the fourth quarter of 2009, up 39.0 percent from the same quarter a year ago. For the full year, vendors shipped a total of 174.2 million such units in 2009, up 15.1 percent from the 151.4 million units in 2008. Smart phones accounted for 15.4 percent of all mobile phones shipped in 2009, up slightly from 12.7 percent in 2008, IDC said.
"Increasingly, mobile phone users are seeking greater utility from their devices beyond telephony and messaging, and converged mobile devices fulfill that need," said Ramon Llamas, senior research analyst with IDC's Mobile Devices Technology and Trends team. "To help address demand, carriers took advantage of lower prices on many older devices, ordering additional units and, in turn, offering reduced prices to end users. It was the perfect set of conditions to push shipments to a record level."
IDC is predicting continued demand in 2010 with additional impetus from shifting landscape in mobile operating systems. "2009 was the coming-out party for Google's Android and Palm's webOS as both operating systems revealed new ways to surround the users with increased functionality," said IDC analyst Kevin Restivo, "More advances are in store for 2010 as Symbian and Windows are expected to unveil new versions of their respective operating systems. These and other operating systems will compete with attention-grabbing intuitiveness and seamlessness, a thriving mobile application library, and a compelling user experience that tightly holds on to the user."
The top five smart phone suppliers in 4Q09, with their market shares, were:
Nokia...38.2 percent
Research in Motion...19.6 percent
Apple...16.0 percent
Motorola...4.6 percent
HTC...4.4 percent
Others...17.2 percent
The top five smart phone suppliers in 2009, with their market shares, were:
Nokia...38.9 percent
Research in Motion...19.8 percent
Apple...14.4 percent
Motorola...4.6 percent
Samsung...3.3 percent
Others...19.0 percent
It can be seen that Apple and HTC gained market share at the expense of market leaders Nokia and BlackBerry and Samsung. Demand for the Apple iPhone continued unabated during the holiday quarter, and agreements with multiple carriers within the same market enabled further distribution. The fourth quarter also saw the launch of the iPhone at China Unicom.
Edition Peter Clarke EE Times
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Vendors shipped a total of 54.5 million smart phones in the fourth quarter of 2009, up 39.0 percent from the same quarter a year ago. For the full year, vendors shipped a total of 174.2 million such units in 2009, up 15.1 percent from the 151.4 million units in 2008. Smart phones accounted for 15.4 percent of all mobile phones shipped in 2009, up slightly from 12.7 percent in 2008, IDC said.
"Increasingly, mobile phone users are seeking greater utility from their devices beyond telephony and messaging, and converged mobile devices fulfill that need," said Ramon Llamas, senior research analyst with IDC's Mobile Devices Technology and Trends team. "To help address demand, carriers took advantage of lower prices on many older devices, ordering additional units and, in turn, offering reduced prices to end users. It was the perfect set of conditions to push shipments to a record level."
IDC is predicting continued demand in 2010 with additional impetus from shifting landscape in mobile operating systems. "2009 was the coming-out party for Google's Android and Palm's webOS as both operating systems revealed new ways to surround the users with increased functionality," said IDC analyst Kevin Restivo, "More advances are in store for 2010 as Symbian and Windows are expected to unveil new versions of their respective operating systems. These and other operating systems will compete with attention-grabbing intuitiveness and seamlessness, a thriving mobile application library, and a compelling user experience that tightly holds on to the user."
The top five smart phone suppliers in 4Q09, with their market shares, were:
Nokia...38.2 percent
Research in Motion...19.6 percent
Apple...16.0 percent
Motorola...4.6 percent
HTC...4.4 percent
Others...17.2 percent
The top five smart phone suppliers in 2009, with their market shares, were:
Nokia...38.9 percent
Research in Motion...19.8 percent
Apple...14.4 percent
Motorola...4.6 percent
Samsung...3.3 percent
Others...19.0 percent
It can be seen that Apple and HTC gained market share at the expense of market leaders Nokia and BlackBerry and Samsung. Demand for the Apple iPhone continued unabated during the holiday quarter, and agreements with multiple carriers within the same market enabled further distribution. The fourth quarter also saw the launch of the iPhone at China Unicom.
Edition Peter Clarke EE Times
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Factual: $1 Million From Angels
Factual, a developer of a database of facts, on Wednesday attracted $1 million in angel funding from a who's who of technology investors including Internet browser pioneer Marc Andreessen.
Los Angeles-based Factual is assembling an open database of information to be used by developers in building software applications.
"What we see is the new wave is that there is really a way for factual data to be accessible," founder Gil Elbaz said. "We built a platform that helps the community have good, fresh data, and we have all the tools that make that data available."
Mr. Elbaz, who previously co-founded Applied Semantics (now AdSense), acquired by Google in 2003, courted no shortage of marquee angel investors.
Besides funding from the Andreessen Horowitz fund, investors included Index Ventures partner Danny Rimer, Esther Dyson, Idealab Chairman Bill Gross, former MySQL CEO Mårten Mickos, About.com founder Scott Kurnit, Miramar Venture Partners, Demand Media CEO Richard Rosenblatt, Gerson Lehrman Group founder Thomas Lehrman, Rustic Canyon Ventures founder Tom Unterman, the Founder Collective, Gunderson Dettmer, as well as Lee and June Stein.
What Factual hopes to do is become the de facto database for all forms of data that can be built into applications for the Internet, computers, and such mobile devices as iPhones and iPads. The startup's main audience is those developers that need certain forms of information to feed into their applications.
Formed in October 2009, Factual is planning to use the funding to build up its nascent idea. By year's end, the company may be prepared to seek institutional investors as the idea further develops, according to Mr. Elbaz. At this point, the company is still exploring different revenue models and hasn't decided which direction to go.
If Factual's idea seems new, it's not entirely. San Francisco-based Metaweb has operated an open database of information, dubbed Freebase, since March 2007. Metaweb has landed $57 million in two rounds of funding since 2006. Factual's founder views Metaweb's funding as an endorsement of the niche and said that the two companies appear to be headed in different directions, but he noted there are opportunities to benefit from each other's data gathering.
"It's very much a world of coopetition," Mr. Elbaz said.
by Red Herring Staff
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Los Angeles-based Factual is assembling an open database of information to be used by developers in building software applications.
"What we see is the new wave is that there is really a way for factual data to be accessible," founder Gil Elbaz said. "We built a platform that helps the community have good, fresh data, and we have all the tools that make that data available."
Mr. Elbaz, who previously co-founded Applied Semantics (now AdSense), acquired by Google in 2003, courted no shortage of marquee angel investors.
Besides funding from the Andreessen Horowitz fund, investors included Index Ventures partner Danny Rimer, Esther Dyson, Idealab Chairman Bill Gross, former MySQL CEO Mårten Mickos, About.com founder Scott Kurnit, Miramar Venture Partners, Demand Media CEO Richard Rosenblatt, Gerson Lehrman Group founder Thomas Lehrman, Rustic Canyon Ventures founder Tom Unterman, the Founder Collective, Gunderson Dettmer, as well as Lee and June Stein.
What Factual hopes to do is become the de facto database for all forms of data that can be built into applications for the Internet, computers, and such mobile devices as iPhones and iPads. The startup's main audience is those developers that need certain forms of information to feed into their applications.
Formed in October 2009, Factual is planning to use the funding to build up its nascent idea. By year's end, the company may be prepared to seek institutional investors as the idea further develops, according to Mr. Elbaz. At this point, the company is still exploring different revenue models and hasn't decided which direction to go.
If Factual's idea seems new, it's not entirely. San Francisco-based Metaweb has operated an open database of information, dubbed Freebase, since March 2007. Metaweb has landed $57 million in two rounds of funding since 2006. Factual's founder views Metaweb's funding as an endorsement of the niche and said that the two companies appear to be headed in different directions, but he noted there are opportunities to benefit from each other's data gathering.
"It's very much a world of coopetition," Mr. Elbaz said.
by Red Herring Staff
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47 Tech Companies That Could Change the World
The World Economic Forum announced Thursday a list of startup technology companies that the international organization said have demonstrated visionary leadership and proven technology that could change business and society.
From towing ships with wind-powered kites to 3-D facial recognition software, the 47 companies chosen as this year’s Technology Pioneers come from 10 countries and do work in the fields of IT, Energy, or Biotech. The companies were selected from a group of 225 nominees by a panel of leading technology experts.
Below is a snapshot of 10 of the winners.
Energy
Washington, D.C.-based GridPoint builds “smart grid” platforms that give utilities more control over energy demand, storage, and production. The company said its technology will help utilities plan and place online renewable energy plants, reducing carbon emissions, and conserving fuel. GridPoint is backed by Goldman Sachs Group, Susquehanna Private Equity Investments, and others.
San Carlos, California-based LS9 said it makes biofuels designed to resemble petroleum-derived fuels while being renewable, clean, and cost-competitive. The company is backed by Flagship Ventures and Khosla Ventures.
Hamburg-based SkySails builds ship towing kite systems that use wind energy for propulsion. The company says its products produce up to 5,000 kW and can lower fuel costs by between 10 percent and 35 percent. SkySails is backed by a combination of private and public investments.
Redwood City, California-based Nanostellar develops nano-engineered catalyst materials for the automotive and power industries. The company said its materials can reduce exhaust emissions and increase the effectiveness of catalysts, enabling industries to meet emission standards. Nanostellar is backed by 3i Technology Partners, Monitor Ventures and others.
Eindhoven, Netherlands-based fluXXion develops high-tech membrane assemblies for liquid filtration markets. The company applies technology from the semiconductor and micro-system industries.
IT
British startup Garlik enables consumers to find and understand what personal information is in the public domain about them and manage how their identities appear online. The company is backed by 3i and Doughty Hanson.
Innovative Silicon, with offices in California and Lausanne, Switzerland, develops highly dense memory technology for microprocessors and semiconductors. The company is backed by Index Ventures, Highland Capital Partners, and others.
Norwalk, Connecticut-based Kayak calls itself a travel search engine. The company says it scans the web for the best deals on flights, hotels, cruises, and rental cars. It takes feedback from its users to display the lowest fares.
Russian startup Yandex is the largest Internet portal in the country today. The site offers search, e-mail, news, web hosting, comparison shopping, a business directory, and more. The company said it receives 4 million visitors per day.
Malmö, Sweden-based Polar Rose combines facial recognition, biometrics, and social networking to allow search engines to visually identify people in photos. The company is backed by Nordic Venture Partners.
Some of the biotech startups that made the Technology Pioneers list were U.S.-based 23andMe, Switzerland-based Anecova, and Israel-based InSightec.
by Justin Moresco
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From towing ships with wind-powered kites to 3-D facial recognition software, the 47 companies chosen as this year’s Technology Pioneers come from 10 countries and do work in the fields of IT, Energy, or Biotech. The companies were selected from a group of 225 nominees by a panel of leading technology experts.
Below is a snapshot of 10 of the winners.
Energy
Washington, D.C.-based GridPoint builds “smart grid” platforms that give utilities more control over energy demand, storage, and production. The company said its technology will help utilities plan and place online renewable energy plants, reducing carbon emissions, and conserving fuel. GridPoint is backed by Goldman Sachs Group, Susquehanna Private Equity Investments, and others.
San Carlos, California-based LS9 said it makes biofuels designed to resemble petroleum-derived fuels while being renewable, clean, and cost-competitive. The company is backed by Flagship Ventures and Khosla Ventures.
Hamburg-based SkySails builds ship towing kite systems that use wind energy for propulsion. The company says its products produce up to 5,000 kW and can lower fuel costs by between 10 percent and 35 percent. SkySails is backed by a combination of private and public investments.
Redwood City, California-based Nanostellar develops nano-engineered catalyst materials for the automotive and power industries. The company said its materials can reduce exhaust emissions and increase the effectiveness of catalysts, enabling industries to meet emission standards. Nanostellar is backed by 3i Technology Partners, Monitor Ventures and others.
Eindhoven, Netherlands-based fluXXion develops high-tech membrane assemblies for liquid filtration markets. The company applies technology from the semiconductor and micro-system industries.
IT
British startup Garlik enables consumers to find and understand what personal information is in the public domain about them and manage how their identities appear online. The company is backed by 3i and Doughty Hanson.
Innovative Silicon, with offices in California and Lausanne, Switzerland, develops highly dense memory technology for microprocessors and semiconductors. The company is backed by Index Ventures, Highland Capital Partners, and others.
Norwalk, Connecticut-based Kayak calls itself a travel search engine. The company says it scans the web for the best deals on flights, hotels, cruises, and rental cars. It takes feedback from its users to display the lowest fares.
Russian startup Yandex is the largest Internet portal in the country today. The site offers search, e-mail, news, web hosting, comparison shopping, a business directory, and more. The company said it receives 4 million visitors per day.
Malmö, Sweden-based Polar Rose combines facial recognition, biometrics, and social networking to allow search engines to visually identify people in photos. The company is backed by Nordic Venture Partners.
Some of the biotech startups that made the Technology Pioneers list were U.S.-based 23andMe, Switzerland-based Anecova, and Israel-based InSightec.
by Justin Moresco
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Feb 4, 2010
How to design a Li-Ion battery charger to get maximum power from a solar panel
Power available from a solar panel is heavily dependent on the operating environment. Here's what you need to know to get charged.
By Jinrong Qian, Applications Engineering Manager and Nigel Smith, System Engineer, Texas Instruments
Page 1 of 4
Solar energy is an attractive energy source for powering portable devices. For some time, it has been widely used in applications like calculators and spacecraft. More recently, solar power is being considered for a much wider range of consumer applications including mobile phone chargers.
However, power available from a solar panel is heavily dependent on the operating environment. This includes such things as light intensity, time and location, etc. Therefore, batteries typically are used as energy storage elements. They can be charged when extra power is available from the solar panel, as well as to power the system when the available power from the solar panel is insufficient. How do we design a Li-Ion battery charger to get the most out of the solar cells and efficiently charge the Li-Ion battery? First, we'll discuss the operating principle and electrical output characteristics of a solar cell. Then, we'll cover battery charging system requirements and system solutions for matching the solar cell characteristics to get the maximum power from the solar cells.
Solar cell I-V characteristics
Basically, a solar cell comprises a p-n junction in which light energy (photons) causes electrons and holes to recombine, generating an electric current. Because the characteristics of a p-n junction are similar to those of a diode, the electrical circuit shown in Figure 1 often is used as a simplified model of the solar cell's characteristics.
Solar Cell Simplified Circuit
Figure 1: Simplified Circuit Model of a Solar Cell
The current source IPH generates a current proportional to the amount of light falling upon the cell. With no load connected, nearly all the current generated flows through diode D, whose forward voltage determines the solar cell's open circuit voltage (VOC. This voltage varies somewhat with the exact properties of each type of solar cell. But for most silicon cells, it is in the range between 0.5V and 0.6V which is the normal forward voltage of a p-n junction diode.
The parallel resistor (RP) represents a small leakage current that occurs in practical cells, while Rs represents the connection losses. As the load current increases, more of the current generated by the solar cell is diverted away from the diode and into the load. For most values of load current, this has only a small effect on the output voltage.
Power Management DesignLine
(02/24/2007 4:12 PM EST)
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By Jinrong Qian, Applications Engineering Manager and Nigel Smith, System Engineer, Texas Instruments
Page 1 of 4
Solar energy is an attractive energy source for powering portable devices. For some time, it has been widely used in applications like calculators and spacecraft. More recently, solar power is being considered for a much wider range of consumer applications including mobile phone chargers.
However, power available from a solar panel is heavily dependent on the operating environment. This includes such things as light intensity, time and location, etc. Therefore, batteries typically are used as energy storage elements. They can be charged when extra power is available from the solar panel, as well as to power the system when the available power from the solar panel is insufficient. How do we design a Li-Ion battery charger to get the most out of the solar cells and efficiently charge the Li-Ion battery? First, we'll discuss the operating principle and electrical output characteristics of a solar cell. Then, we'll cover battery charging system requirements and system solutions for matching the solar cell characteristics to get the maximum power from the solar cells.
Solar cell I-V characteristics
Basically, a solar cell comprises a p-n junction in which light energy (photons) causes electrons and holes to recombine, generating an electric current. Because the characteristics of a p-n junction are similar to those of a diode, the electrical circuit shown in Figure 1 often is used as a simplified model of the solar cell's characteristics.
Solar Cell Simplified Circuit
Figure 1: Simplified Circuit Model of a Solar Cell
The current source IPH generates a current proportional to the amount of light falling upon the cell. With no load connected, nearly all the current generated flows through diode D, whose forward voltage determines the solar cell's open circuit voltage (VOC. This voltage varies somewhat with the exact properties of each type of solar cell. But for most silicon cells, it is in the range between 0.5V and 0.6V which is the normal forward voltage of a p-n junction diode.
The parallel resistor (RP) represents a small leakage current that occurs in practical cells, while Rs represents the connection losses. As the load current increases, more of the current generated by the solar cell is diverted away from the diode and into the load. For most values of load current, this has only a small effect on the output voltage.
Power Management DesignLine
(02/24/2007 4:12 PM EST)
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LCD panel prices down despite glass plant woes
Panel oversupply will cut fourth quarter prices
LCD panel prices to fallLiquid crystal display panel prices will fall in the fourth quarter, despite a power outage at a Corning production plant in Taiwan that reduced glass supply to liquid crystal display (LCD) makers, according to researcher iSuppli.
The average price of an LCD panel will fall by about 3% in November and in December says the researcher.
Corning, the largest maker of glass LCD panel substrates, suffered a power disruption at its plant in Taichung, Taiwan in October. The outage shut down several of the facility's glass melting tanks.
It may take two months to repair the tanks and bring the plant back up to full operation. As a result, glass supply to Taiwanese LCD manufacturers will be reduced by 5-10%. Total global supply will be cut by less than 5%.
The shortfall will affect supply of LCD panel used in notebook computers and 32-inch LCD televisions. However, prices will still decline because there has been an oversupply of LCD panels since September, says Sweta Dash, senior director, LCD research, for iSuppli
"Many panel suppliers were hoping that a glass shortage would mitigate the downward pressure on LCD prices," says Dash. But it won't happen because of high inventory levels.
In addition most electronics OEMs have already purchased LCD panels they'll need for the holiday selling season and LCD sales already started to decelerate.
The shutdown of the Taiwan plant was the second operational setback in as many months for Corning. In August, an earthquake in Japan forced Corning to shut down a glass factory in Shizuoka.
Jim Carbone -- Purchasing
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LCD panel prices to fallLiquid crystal display panel prices will fall in the fourth quarter, despite a power outage at a Corning production plant in Taiwan that reduced glass supply to liquid crystal display (LCD) makers, according to researcher iSuppli.
The average price of an LCD panel will fall by about 3% in November and in December says the researcher.
Corning, the largest maker of glass LCD panel substrates, suffered a power disruption at its plant in Taichung, Taiwan in October. The outage shut down several of the facility's glass melting tanks.
It may take two months to repair the tanks and bring the plant back up to full operation. As a result, glass supply to Taiwanese LCD manufacturers will be reduced by 5-10%. Total global supply will be cut by less than 5%.
The shortfall will affect supply of LCD panel used in notebook computers and 32-inch LCD televisions. However, prices will still decline because there has been an oversupply of LCD panels since September, says Sweta Dash, senior director, LCD research, for iSuppli
"Many panel suppliers were hoping that a glass shortage would mitigate the downward pressure on LCD prices," says Dash. But it won't happen because of high inventory levels.
In addition most electronics OEMs have already purchased LCD panels they'll need for the holiday selling season and LCD sales already started to decelerate.
The shutdown of the Taiwan plant was the second operational setback in as many months for Corning. In August, an earthquake in Japan forced Corning to shut down a glass factory in Shizuoka.
Jim Carbone -- Purchasing
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Feb 2, 2010
Intel, Google take seats on smart grid board
Standards effort includes 370 organizations, 13 countries
SAN JOSE, Calif. — Google, Honeywell, Intel and Panasonic are among the companies elected to a seat on the board of a broad new group chartered to help manage the evolution of smart electric grids.
The Smart Grid Interoperability Panel (SGIP) will provide technical guidance on smart grid standards and specify testing and certification requirements for grid interoperability.
SGIP includes members from 370 organizations from 13 countries representing 22 different stakeholder sectors. The group was organized by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) as part of its effort to accelerate the move to smart grid standards.
The SGIP held its first meeting this week, electing a government board of 20 members. Board members include Internet veteran Vint Cerf of Google; Brian Markwalter who heads up standards efforts for the Consumer Electronics Association and Matt Theall of Intel who also heads the Home Grid Forum that promotes the ITU G.hn home networking standard.
Three at-large board members were elected including Paul Di Martini, vice president of advanced technology for Southern California Edison and representatives of Electric Power Research Institute and GE Energy. Mladen Kezunovic, a professor at Texas A&M University, is a representative to the board from the academic community.
NIST released a first draft of smart grid standards recently. "We've design the [SGIP] process to make sure all the stakeholders have a voice," said George Arnold, national smart grid coordinator at NIST.
A separate group, IEEE 2030, is working in parallel on standards for smart electric grids. At least one organization from China is taking part in the SGIP group. Some observers have said China will set de facto smart grid standards given its aggressive plans to build out its grid.
Rick Merritt
EE Times
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SAN JOSE, Calif. — Google, Honeywell, Intel and Panasonic are among the companies elected to a seat on the board of a broad new group chartered to help manage the evolution of smart electric grids.
The Smart Grid Interoperability Panel (SGIP) will provide technical guidance on smart grid standards and specify testing and certification requirements for grid interoperability.
SGIP includes members from 370 organizations from 13 countries representing 22 different stakeholder sectors. The group was organized by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) as part of its effort to accelerate the move to smart grid standards.
The SGIP held its first meeting this week, electing a government board of 20 members. Board members include Internet veteran Vint Cerf of Google; Brian Markwalter who heads up standards efforts for the Consumer Electronics Association and Matt Theall of Intel who also heads the Home Grid Forum that promotes the ITU G.hn home networking standard.
Three at-large board members were elected including Paul Di Martini, vice president of advanced technology for Southern California Edison and representatives of Electric Power Research Institute and GE Energy. Mladen Kezunovic, a professor at Texas A&M University, is a representative to the board from the academic community.
NIST released a first draft of smart grid standards recently. "We've design the [SGIP] process to make sure all the stakeholders have a voice," said George Arnold, national smart grid coordinator at NIST.
A separate group, IEEE 2030, is working in parallel on standards for smart electric grids. At least one organization from China is taking part in the SGIP group. Some observers have said China will set de facto smart grid standards given its aggressive plans to build out its grid.
Rick Merritt
EE Times
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Taiwanese solar cell maker to buy GE Energy plant
SAN FRANCISCO—Motech Industries Inc., the Taiwan-based solar cell manufacturer that is 20 percent owned by chip foundry TSMC, has signed an agreement to acquire GE Energy's Delaware solar module assembly operation, the company announced Monday (Dec. 28). Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
The plant, located in Newark, Del., assembles crystalline silicon based photovoltaic modules and currently employs 75 people, according to Motech (Tainan, Taiwan), the largest solar cell manufacturer in Taiwan.
With the purchase, Motech gains the right to use GE Energy's module trademark for two years, Motech said. As a condition of the purchase agreement, Motech will be required to maintain GE's standards for solar module manufacturing at the site, the company said.
The agreement also calls for Motech to assume the responsibility to provide warranty services to GE's existing module clients, Motech said.
Motech has been a supplier of solar cells to GE Energy for the past four years, the company said.
"We will do our best to maintain the high quality and safety standards GE has established at this factory," said Simon Tsuo, Motech chairman and CEO, in a statement.
The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions and is expected to close early next month, Motech said.
Earlier this month, TSMC (Hsinchu, Taiwan) announced it would pay NT$6.2 billion (about $192 million) for a 20 percent stake in Motech.
Dylan McGrath
EE Times
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The plant, located in Newark, Del., assembles crystalline silicon based photovoltaic modules and currently employs 75 people, according to Motech (Tainan, Taiwan), the largest solar cell manufacturer in Taiwan.
With the purchase, Motech gains the right to use GE Energy's module trademark for two years, Motech said. As a condition of the purchase agreement, Motech will be required to maintain GE's standards for solar module manufacturing at the site, the company said.
The agreement also calls for Motech to assume the responsibility to provide warranty services to GE's existing module clients, Motech said.
Motech has been a supplier of solar cells to GE Energy for the past four years, the company said.
"We will do our best to maintain the high quality and safety standards GE has established at this factory," said Simon Tsuo, Motech chairman and CEO, in a statement.
The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions and is expected to close early next month, Motech said.
Earlier this month, TSMC (Hsinchu, Taiwan) announced it would pay NT$6.2 billion (about $192 million) for a 20 percent stake in Motech.
Dylan McGrath
EE Times
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Reporter's notebook: Why iPad isn't cracking the Japanese market
TOKYO — While the rest of the world goes gaga over Apple's iPad, I find an island of calm here -- some 5,000 miles away from the epicenter of Apple's announcement Wednesday (Jan. 27).
I'd be lying if I said I felt no frustration. Nobody wants to miss a big story. That's the essence of being a reporter.
Still, I wasn't exactly tearing out my hair over here.
The reason is that this nation of avid readers doesn't seem to give a hoot about e-books -- Apple's version or anybody else's.
I was on a commuter train to Tokyo the other day and, unlike the U.S., saw not a soul reading an e-book. I did see a many fellow straphangers staring down on their mobile phone displays.
This afternoon, I was over at Yamada-Denki, one of the largest consumer electronics retail stores in Japan. Not a single e-book device is on display. It couldn't be! They carry almost anything electronic. But not e-books.
What's going on here?
The last time I checked, many Japanese companies were developing their own, innovative e-paper displays.
For one, Bridgestone (yes, I know -- they make tires) last year showed off at a trade show here an e-paper display that, some say, beats anything currently in use. Unlike other e-readers on the market today, Bridgestone does it without depending on E-Ink's pervasive e-reader technology. By developing its own electronic powder, Bridgestone came up with a home-grown, low-power, electrophoretic technology.
The company also claims that it's developing a color e-paper display that uses a series of filters covering each individual pixel. The hitch in this technology is its slow refresh rate.
Sony, a player in the U.S. e-book market, isn't armed with an e-book display technology of its own, but it has learned a thing or two about e-books: it led the revolution of electronic dictionaries in Japan several decades ago.
Not only is Japan a nation of gadget-lovers, it's a country where people still read -- a lot -- whether it's books, cartoons, magazines or newspapers.
So, how to explain the unanimous ennui among the Japanese over iPad and, more significantly, e-books in general?
The answer is simple. It's the "ecosystem," stupid!
First of all, there are few Japanese e-book models. Nothing available here really rivals Kindle, although Japan is the land of hardware.
Amazon sells Kindle in Japan, but very few Japanese users are actually reading on Kindle books published in Japanese — because Kindle's software inexplicably does not support the Japanese language. (Apparently, the default fonts in Kindle don't contain non-Latin alphabets.)
The exception is a buddy of mine, Yoichiro Hata, editor-in-chief of EE Times Japan, our sister publication here.
Hata is blessed with the sort of geek skills that allow him to tweak the Kindle software to read e-books in his native tongue. Hata loves Kindle. But he complains that few new Japanese books are available in the e-book format.
It turns out that the real problem is neither the display technology nor the software (or the lack thereof supporting the Japanese language).
Despite interest among Japanese hardware manufacturers in e-paper technologies, no e-book companies (Sony included) have enough clout to persuade hidebound Japanese book publishers to release their latest books on e-readers.
A few Japanese publishers ventured into the e-book market in the past by teaming with e-book manufacturers. "None succeeded," said a sales clerk at Yamada-denki, "because of the lack of content."
But there is hope, he said. "Because of Apple's iPad announcement today, we are hoping that Japanese consumers may finally wake up to the e-book fad."
Will they? After all, the land of mobile phones is virgin territory for e-books.
Hata quipped: "If Apple really wants to be a player in Japan with iPad, the company's strategy is straightforward. It should go aggressive in signing up leading Japanese book publishers for iPad."
As with Steve Jobs' deals with major music labels that have led to the success of Apple's iPod, Apple may have "an opportunity to create a landslide for iPad," said Hata, in Japan's yet-to-emerge e-book market.
Jobs will have to pick up his iPhone and start making cold calls.
Junko Yoshida EE Times
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I'd be lying if I said I felt no frustration. Nobody wants to miss a big story. That's the essence of being a reporter.
Still, I wasn't exactly tearing out my hair over here.
The reason is that this nation of avid readers doesn't seem to give a hoot about e-books -- Apple's version or anybody else's.
I was on a commuter train to Tokyo the other day and, unlike the U.S., saw not a soul reading an e-book. I did see a many fellow straphangers staring down on their mobile phone displays.
This afternoon, I was over at Yamada-Denki, one of the largest consumer electronics retail stores in Japan. Not a single e-book device is on display. It couldn't be! They carry almost anything electronic. But not e-books.
What's going on here?
The last time I checked, many Japanese companies were developing their own, innovative e-paper displays.
For one, Bridgestone (yes, I know -- they make tires) last year showed off at a trade show here an e-paper display that, some say, beats anything currently in use. Unlike other e-readers on the market today, Bridgestone does it without depending on E-Ink's pervasive e-reader technology. By developing its own electronic powder, Bridgestone came up with a home-grown, low-power, electrophoretic technology.
The company also claims that it's developing a color e-paper display that uses a series of filters covering each individual pixel. The hitch in this technology is its slow refresh rate.
Sony, a player in the U.S. e-book market, isn't armed with an e-book display technology of its own, but it has learned a thing or two about e-books: it led the revolution of electronic dictionaries in Japan several decades ago.
Not only is Japan a nation of gadget-lovers, it's a country where people still read -- a lot -- whether it's books, cartoons, magazines or newspapers.
So, how to explain the unanimous ennui among the Japanese over iPad and, more significantly, e-books in general?
The answer is simple. It's the "ecosystem," stupid!
First of all, there are few Japanese e-book models. Nothing available here really rivals Kindle, although Japan is the land of hardware.
Amazon sells Kindle in Japan, but very few Japanese users are actually reading on Kindle books published in Japanese — because Kindle's software inexplicably does not support the Japanese language. (Apparently, the default fonts in Kindle don't contain non-Latin alphabets.)
The exception is a buddy of mine, Yoichiro Hata, editor-in-chief of EE Times Japan, our sister publication here.
Hata is blessed with the sort of geek skills that allow him to tweak the Kindle software to read e-books in his native tongue. Hata loves Kindle. But he complains that few new Japanese books are available in the e-book format.
It turns out that the real problem is neither the display technology nor the software (or the lack thereof supporting the Japanese language).
Despite interest among Japanese hardware manufacturers in e-paper technologies, no e-book companies (Sony included) have enough clout to persuade hidebound Japanese book publishers to release their latest books on e-readers.
A few Japanese publishers ventured into the e-book market in the past by teaming with e-book manufacturers. "None succeeded," said a sales clerk at Yamada-denki, "because of the lack of content."
But there is hope, he said. "Because of Apple's iPad announcement today, we are hoping that Japanese consumers may finally wake up to the e-book fad."
Will they? After all, the land of mobile phones is virgin territory for e-books.
Hata quipped: "If Apple really wants to be a player in Japan with iPad, the company's strategy is straightforward. It should go aggressive in signing up leading Japanese book publishers for iPad."
As with Steve Jobs' deals with major music labels that have led to the success of Apple's iPod, Apple may have "an opportunity to create a landslide for iPad," said Hata, in Japan's yet-to-emerge e-book market.
Jobs will have to pick up his iPhone and start making cold calls.
Junko Yoshida EE Times
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Top 10 growth markets for ICs
So what are the top-10 growth categories for 2010? ''The DRAM market is forecast to grow over 30 percent in 2010, leading all segments. Not surprisingly, flash memory also made the list. Several products serving the automotive and computer segments are also forecast to see better-than-industry average growth (e.g, better than 15 percent) in 2010,'' according to a report from IC Insighs Inc.
According to the firm, here's the top-10 growth markets: 1. DRAM--31 percent; 2. 32-bit MCU--18 percent; 3. Automotive—Special Purpose Logic/MPR--18 percent; 4. Flash Memory--18 percent; 5. Automotive App-Specific Analog--17 percent; 6. Computer App-Specific Analog--16 percent; 7. Computer and Peripherals—Special Purpose Logic/MPR--15 percent; 8. Consumer App-Specific Analog--15 percent; 9. MPU-- 15 percent; 10. Data Conversion--14 percent; Voltage Reg. & Ref--14 percent.
The IC market is expected to hit $270.7 billion in 2010, up 15 percent over 2009, according to IC Insights. In 2009, the IC market hit $235.4 billion, down 10 percent.
Mark LaPedus EE Times
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According to the firm, here's the top-10 growth markets: 1. DRAM--31 percent; 2. 32-bit MCU--18 percent; 3. Automotive—Special Purpose Logic/MPR--18 percent; 4. Flash Memory--18 percent; 5. Automotive App-Specific Analog--17 percent; 6. Computer App-Specific Analog--16 percent; 7. Computer and Peripherals—Special Purpose Logic/MPR--15 percent; 8. Consumer App-Specific Analog--15 percent; 9. MPU-- 15 percent; 10. Data Conversion--14 percent; Voltage Reg. & Ref--14 percent.
The IC market is expected to hit $270.7 billion in 2010, up 15 percent over 2009, according to IC Insights. In 2009, the IC market hit $235.4 billion, down 10 percent.
Mark LaPedus EE Times
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Feb 1, 2010
Networks Based on Fiber-Optic are Top Choices for Internet, TV and Telephone
Fiber-optic service providers for Internet, TV and phone services scored tops overall in the Consumer Reports latest survey of telecom services. Verizon FiOS (News - Alert) and AT&T U-verse, whose networks are fiber-optic based, received top scores for Internet and TV service and were among the better phone providers.
Story continues below ↓
Results of the Consumer Reports survey of some 69,000 reader experiences with telecom services found that, although coverage areas are increasing,Verizon ( News - Alert) FiOS and AT&T U-verse are not available everywhere and many consumers must consider other options for Internet, phone and TV services. The article also includes individual Ratings of these three services, which are typically bundled, from various providers.
In areas where telco-delivered service is not available, a highly-rated cable company is the next-best choice for many households. Consumers may not have an option when choosing a cable provider because a majority of homes only have one cable company available in their area. According to the survey, better cable companies include Wow, Insight and Bright House, which although small, received scores that rivaled those of the fiber companies and are fine alternatives in areas that they are available.
Consumer Reports' survey also found that satellite TV had strong points. While DirecTV (News - Alert) and Dish Network scored below fiber and the best cable services for TV service overall, they were on par with those top providers for channel selection and picture and sound quality.
Additionally, the report found that bundling Internet, TV and phone service has many satisfied customers. Overall, 85 percent of readers who get all three services from one provider said they would probably or definitely bundle telecom services with the same company. And bundling has its advantages -- triple play bundles can help maximize savings as low rates may be guaranteed for a longer period of time and extras, such as free installation.
However, consumers can likely take advantage of providers' promotional rates even if they buy just one or two of the services. Bundling also allows for integrated services such as the display of caller's phone numbers on the TV screen.
What’s more, bundles still come with snags, as providers accustomed to offering single services grapple with supporting a group of them. About 60 percent of those surveyed by Consumer Reports said they had at least one problem with their bundled service. Billing issues led the pack -- notably bills that were higher than expected due to extra taxes and fees or bills that were hard to understand.
When a bundle's promotional-price-period is about to expire, consumers should re-negotiate with their current carrier. Many readers of Consumer Reports' Electronics blog reported success in doing so. Switching carriers is disruptive, but consider doing so if the current provider won't match offers that others are providing.
Overall there were fewer problems with bundling for cable companies, perhaps because cable has been offering bundles longer. Despite the possible drawbacks of bundling, Consumer Reports recommends consumers opt for a bundle if it offers the desired services at a price that is attractive.
Cable bundles are the easiest to find as most neighborhoods have at least one service provider. Consumer Reports estimates that about one in four households can now get fiber optic service, though the percentage in suburban areas and networks continue to grow. Being wired for fiber doesn't assure availability of all services via the technology, at least not yet. For example, some bundles still package fiber phone and Internet with satellite TV. But choosing fiber may expand options for consumers as a growing number of bundles from Verizon and AT&T include the option to add cell-phone service too.
Cutting the Cord on a Home Phone: Things to Consider
More than 20 percent of U.S. households have dropped home phone service entirely and rely solely on their cell phones. Consumers considering doing so should make sure that they can receive service from their cell carrier in at least one location in their home and are comfortable with the 911 limitations of cellular because in some places, 911 operators cannot locate a caller unless they provide them with their location.
Those who are not ready to cut the cord, there are other VoIP options aside from those offered by major telecom providers. Vonage and Skype (News - Alert) were among the highest-scoring phone service providers in Consumer Reports' Ratings and were noted for their value.
Another low-cost option: Magic Jack, a $40 device that allows consumers to make calls from their computer for a flat fee of $20 per year.
The complete report also features information to help consumers choose a service that suits their needs and a guide to negotiating for the best price on telecom services.
By Hans Lewis
TMCnet Contributor
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Story continues below ↓
Results of the Consumer Reports survey of some 69,000 reader experiences with telecom services found that, although coverage areas are increasing,Verizon ( News - Alert) FiOS and AT&T U-verse are not available everywhere and many consumers must consider other options for Internet, phone and TV services. The article also includes individual Ratings of these three services, which are typically bundled, from various providers.
In areas where telco-delivered service is not available, a highly-rated cable company is the next-best choice for many households. Consumers may not have an option when choosing a cable provider because a majority of homes only have one cable company available in their area. According to the survey, better cable companies include Wow, Insight and Bright House, which although small, received scores that rivaled those of the fiber companies and are fine alternatives in areas that they are available.
Consumer Reports' survey also found that satellite TV had strong points. While DirecTV (News - Alert) and Dish Network scored below fiber and the best cable services for TV service overall, they were on par with those top providers for channel selection and picture and sound quality.
Additionally, the report found that bundling Internet, TV and phone service has many satisfied customers. Overall, 85 percent of readers who get all three services from one provider said they would probably or definitely bundle telecom services with the same company. And bundling has its advantages -- triple play bundles can help maximize savings as low rates may be guaranteed for a longer period of time and extras, such as free installation.
However, consumers can likely take advantage of providers' promotional rates even if they buy just one or two of the services. Bundling also allows for integrated services such as the display of caller's phone numbers on the TV screen.
What’s more, bundles still come with snags, as providers accustomed to offering single services grapple with supporting a group of them. About 60 percent of those surveyed by Consumer Reports said they had at least one problem with their bundled service. Billing issues led the pack -- notably bills that were higher than expected due to extra taxes and fees or bills that were hard to understand.
When a bundle's promotional-price-period is about to expire, consumers should re-negotiate with their current carrier. Many readers of Consumer Reports' Electronics blog reported success in doing so. Switching carriers is disruptive, but consider doing so if the current provider won't match offers that others are providing.
Overall there were fewer problems with bundling for cable companies, perhaps because cable has been offering bundles longer. Despite the possible drawbacks of bundling, Consumer Reports recommends consumers opt for a bundle if it offers the desired services at a price that is attractive.
Cable bundles are the easiest to find as most neighborhoods have at least one service provider. Consumer Reports estimates that about one in four households can now get fiber optic service, though the percentage in suburban areas and networks continue to grow. Being wired for fiber doesn't assure availability of all services via the technology, at least not yet. For example, some bundles still package fiber phone and Internet with satellite TV. But choosing fiber may expand options for consumers as a growing number of bundles from Verizon and AT&T include the option to add cell-phone service too.
Cutting the Cord on a Home Phone: Things to Consider
More than 20 percent of U.S. households have dropped home phone service entirely and rely solely on their cell phones. Consumers considering doing so should make sure that they can receive service from their cell carrier in at least one location in their home and are comfortable with the 911 limitations of cellular because in some places, 911 operators cannot locate a caller unless they provide them with their location.
Those who are not ready to cut the cord, there are other VoIP options aside from those offered by major telecom providers. Vonage and Skype (News - Alert) were among the highest-scoring phone service providers in Consumer Reports' Ratings and were noted for their value.
Another low-cost option: Magic Jack, a $40 device that allows consumers to make calls from their computer for a flat fee of $20 per year.
The complete report also features information to help consumers choose a service that suits their needs and a guide to negotiating for the best price on telecom services.
By Hans Lewis
TMCnet Contributor
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