Ringing In The Changes To `moby' Technology
Sydney Morning Herald
Tuesday January 23, 2001
Portable wireless Net access is not all it's cracked up to be.
Mobile phones have become as ubiquitous as mobile timepieces. Indeed, one market study has found that in Finland there are actually more mobile phones than wristwatches. Finland leads the world in mobile phone penetration, but the rest of the world is not far behind.
The other Scandinavian countries are right up there, as are some Asian markets such as Singapore and Hong Kong, and of course Australia. Market penetration figures change daily, but there are now as many mobile subscribers as fixed line subscribers in many parts of the world.
Mobile phones have enabled many countries with poor telecommunications infrastructure to leapfrog into the 21st century. Telephony is now available to hundreds of millions of people where no landlines have been laid. I loved the recently published photo of the semi-naked Indian holy man clutching a mobile phone to his ear.
Mobile phones are called just that in Australia, though I find that I am now calling mine my ``moby". In Singapore they are called ``handphones", and in the US ``cell phones". It is a testament to how quickly the technology has become popular that there is no common term. It may also be a function of the fact that the US has trailed the rest of the world in mobile technology, preventing any mobile Americanisms from entering world English.
Mobile telephony, like most other forms of electronic communication, is now digital. And that means it can be married to other forms of digital communication, such as the Internet. So far, so good. It seems a short step to using mobile phones as Internet terminals.
But it is not so simple. The first halting attempts at combining mobile telephony with the Internet have appeared, and the results are less than outstanding.
Mobile phone companies around the world have spent massive amounts of money on new technologies and greater bandwidth, but there are increasing signs that usage levels will not justify the investments, and that we will see many carriers fail, and many dashed hopes and broken dreams, before portable wireless Internet access becomes commonplace.
The first attempts have been with a technology called WAP, which stands for wireless application protocol. WAP is an attempt to use existing mobile phone technology to access the Internet. It has failed dismally, because of two simple problems. The first is that existing mobile phones simply do not have the bandwidth for decent digital communications. You can tell this from the voice quality, which is often very poor and degrades significantly as bandwidth drops, as it does when you move from areas of strong signal to areas of weak signal. It's also a function of how many other people are using the same cell.
Mobile phones have a comparatively short range just a few kilometres, depending on conditions. They switch from cell to cell (hence the name cell phone) as you move around, which is why there are so many of those attractive towers everywhere. The bandwidth of the current (``second generation") technology of mobile phones is lucky to reach 20 kilobits per second (Kbps), which is sufficient for voice communication, where some degradation is tolerable.
But non-voice digital communications allows for no degradation. This means speeds are even lower. WAP communications are laughably, even impossibly, slow. Add to that problems caused by the very small screens on current mobile phones, and they are practically useless as Internet devices. WAP allows for some Internet screens to be displayed on mobile phones, but the limitations of low speed and small displays mean they are impractical for any reasonable use. The phrase ``WAP is crap" has already entered the lexicon.
Enter so-called ``third generation" (3G) mobile phones. The 3G standard is being developed in Europe, and promises much higher bandwidths (up to 400Kbps and eventually 2000Mbps), with phones with liquid plasma displays that will be like mini TV screens. The technology is marvellous, and not too far away.
But there is a major problem, at least in Europe. Carriers have spent billions of dollars buying the bandwidth necessary to run 3G services. The money spent servicing the debts they incurred in so doing cannot now be spent on research and development, or customer service, or marketing. Mobile usage will increase, but revenue per customer will decline. Profits will disappear, and many players will go out of business.
In the US, the situation is even worse. The bandwidth is simply not available, having been staked out by TV operators years ago. The Japanese seem to have it right, but their technology does not travel well. Shares in mobile phone companies around the world have plummeted as reality has set in.
In Australia, we can't be sure what will happen, because we have a government that simply has no idea about digital technology. We also have some carriers who, to put it mildly, have unreal expectations. Eventually all this will sort itself out, but don't expect to be surfing the Net from your phone for quite a few years yet. Who wants it, anyway?
geepee@philipson.com.au
© 2001 Sydney Morning Herald
