Friday, February 26, 2010

Telecom: Mobile's big moment at Games

By J. Sturgeon | Vancouver Sun | Feb. 16 2010

Using a BlackBerry to snap Sidney Crosby on a breakaway or deliver a medal-clinching pass at GM Place in Vancouver will be a dream turned reality for thousands of flag-waving, smart-phone-toting Canadians over the next couple of weeks.

For the wireless carriers responsible for managing the networks all those digital images will be zipping over, that dream could easily become a nightmare if they are not prepared.

The 2010 Olympic Games offer a rare moment. The two-week burst of wireless activity as an estimated one million tourists converge on British Columbia's lower mainland is the first real test for how carriers like BCE Inc., Telus Corp. and Rogers Communications Inc. will cope with a torrent of demand for all that the mobile Web has to offer -- myriad multimedia applications, streaming video, updates, stories, texts.

"The Vancouver Olympics will be a good test bed for network capacity issues," says Michael Wade, a professor at the Schulich School of Business at York University and an expert on the Canadian telecommunications industry.

"At the Olympics, more so than normal life, it won't just be voice and texting," Prof. Wade says. "People will be taking pictures and even short videos, which they'll be sending out through their cellphones."

Prof. Wade says wireless carriers have roughly doubled network capacity at every Games for the last decade or so, or every two years. BCE's Bell Canada, the premier sponsor in Vancouver and official communications provider took that into account but went one step further, adding an additional 25% to the Vancouver region.

These Games are different in that the number of data-hungry smartphones in use between Vancouver and Whistler is expected to surge. At the Beijing Games in 2008 the iPhone was brand new. Waterloo, Ont.-based Research In Motion’s BlackBerry was still something used almost exclusively by corporate types.

Consumer sales for both have soared in the two years leading up to yesterday's opening ceremony. Both Apple and RIM are now flanked by competitors such as Google Inc.'s Android, which has partnered with handset makers such as Motorola and HTC Corp. to lure ever more consumers into the smartphone category. Figures from research firm Gartner Inc. suggest global penetration of smartphones reached 14% last year.

The fact that Olympic tourists are generally more affluent may also affect usage. "Bell has gone 225% above the capacity they had in Beijing, anticipating the extra load," Prof. Wade says.

"[We] did forecast what the traffic would be like and took into consideration that more people were doing more things with their phones now," said Bell spokesman Jeff Meerman.

Wireless expansion was one element of Bell's converged "all-IP" network, itself a first for the Games. It means every event broadcast, wireless email sent or call made -- in fact seemingly every form of communication short of smoke-signaling -- will run across a single Internet Protocolbased network and out to the world.

The network has been a massive, years-long undertaking, requiring literally thousands of kilometres in new fibre cabling buried in the ground, 42 new wireless cell sites, 7,000 IP phones, and 9,000 provisioned cellphones. The price tag -- more than $60-million.

But Bell is not the only one braced for the mobile onslaught. Rival carrier Telus has also been busy building additional cell sites and expanding capacity on its core network with more fibre. All in, the Vancouver carrier invested $51-million to install its new high-speed packet access (HSPA) network in Vancouver, Burnaby, Richmond, the North Shore, and Sea-to-Sky corridor, doubling capacity in those areas, according to spokesman Shawn Hall.

"They have invested quite a bit making sure that everything goes well," says Nizar Assanie, principal analyst at IE Market Research in Vancouver of both companies.

How these beefed up networks respond to the influx of traffic during the Games will be closely monitored. The event will serve as a litmus test for what will be required in the not-so-distant future when smartphones have replaced cellphones as the dominant personal device and other wireless products like Apple's new iPad encourage users to seek out bandwidth-hogging multimedia content.

Both Bell and Telus have special engineering teams assigned to compile every last bit of datum that will be used to determine how to meet demand when it arrives and avoid network overload.

And some important groups have raised red flags about a looming crisis. In the United States, Julius Genachowski, head of the Federal Communications Commission, the regulatory body for the U.S. telecom industry, raised the issue at an industry summit in San Diego last fall: "What happens when every wireless user has an iPhone, a Palm Pre or BlackBerry Tour?" he asked.

But the carriers are convinced that wireless networks will remain ahead of the rising tide of demand. Globally, the large majority of them are migrating, or at least making plans to, toward an ultra-fast technological standard called Long-Term Evolution.

In Canada, no major carrier has plans of rolling out LTE technology for at least the next few years. However, all are now armed with HSPA-based systems designed to move to the new standard when the market is ready.

"Carriers are investing a lot of money to ensure that the capacity is there," says Mr. Assanie of IE Research, a company that analyzes global trends. "It is their business to make sure."

Monday, February 01, 2010

Media: Great on paper, iPad not ready to save printed word yet

By J. Sturgeon | Financial Post | 01. 30. 2009

They stole headlines last year and were championed as the saviours of the newspaper, magazine -- in fact, all print media. This year, industry observers say e-readers like the Kindle made by Amazon.com will take off with consumers as we continue to shift reading habits from paper to screens.

Steve Jobs brought things to a fever pitch this week when his Apple Inc. introduced the iPad, a device many said would accelerate and revolutionize that trend. With it would be the return of paid content.

"We're going to stand on [Amazon's] shoulders and go a bit further," the celebrated chief executive said during the introduction of the product: an oversized touchscreen device with the dimensions of a large hardcover book.

Integral to Apple's e-book approach is the creation of iBooks, an application that serves as a storefront for the Cupertino, Calif. firm's new online e-bookstore. It will sit on the iPad's main screen, allowing readers to purchase major titles from the world's biggest publishers, including Penguin and Harper Collins.

Still, if the iPad is to convince readers to pay for digital print products, it struggled to impress veteran media observers.

"It checked off on its to-do list everything that was obvious. Make an e-reader application. Make sure you have a bookstore integrated into it. Use the elegance of the device to create a reading experience and be able to pull books off bookshelves. All of that," said James McQuivey, media technology analyst at Forrester, a U.S. researcher.

"But there is an opportunity missed here to take it to the next level."

In general, the iPad is simply an enlarged version of the iPod Touch with the addition of an e-book application, many analysts said.

For instance, the New York Times, which plans to begin charging for its Web content next year in another attempt to stem falling ad revenues, unveiled a new app for the iPad at the presentation. Yet there is no indication it differs to any great degree from the free one now offered on the iPod Touch through Apple's App Store.

As important, innovation on the social media front -- which could provide a value-added service and thus, be worth paying for -- is lacking from the iPad's e-reader experience. There is no way for users to tell their friends or Twitter followers automatically what they are reading (or buying).

"[Apple] could have demonstrated a much more integrated reading experience," Mr. McQuivey said.

It does not mean it cannot be done later on. But the iPad's saviour status took a tumble in the wake of Mr. Jobs' presentation on Wednesday.

That may not be lost on Apple, which priced the base model at a modest US$499 (16GB). The most expensive model is only US$849 (3G-capable, 64GB), perhaps in recognition that Apple has not reinvented the wheel with the iPad as it did with the iPod in 2001 and the iPhone in 2007, analysts say.

Canadians can get their hands on it in March. But it will be a version strictly made for local Wi-Fi networks. After that, a more expensive "3G" model that can access the Web through a cellphone carrier's wireless network will be introduced, possibly in late spring or early summer --it will be available first only in the U.S. through AT&T.

"Apple was in a position to say, 'Look, we're going to partner with publishers that create apps that are innovations in reading.'" Forrester's Mr. McQuivey said.

It may still be, but the iPad and its army of developers have more work to do yet.

jasturgeon@nationalpost.com