The Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) is planning to release a new version of Bluetooth in mid-2009. As expected, Bluetooth 2.2 will deliver transfer rates at higher speeds than previous versions.

The idea of the new High Speed Bluetooth specification is to work with WLAN or USB for improved data rates, and will be known as Bluetooth 10x and Bluetooth 100x, respectively. For this to work, a mobile phone will need to be equipped with WLAN or UWB radio. Hence Bluetooth 10x will be used first, since many of the newer handsets already have WiFi capabilities built-in.

Unfortunately, we don’t know which of the existing devices will be upgradable to the new Bluetooth specification. The way I see it, smartphones should stand first in the line for any upgrades, although some of the modern WiFi-enabled feature phones could also see such an update. Naturally, we’ll get back to you as soon as we hear something new on the subject.

orignal source Cnet

The DECT Forum and Informa Telecoms and Media announce that the registration is open now for the 13th Global DECT CAT-iq Conference on February 3rd and 4th 2009 in Amsterdam.

With the release of CAT-iq 2.0 and version 3.0 coming soon, the DECT Forum has reached a milestone and technology shift, enabling innovative products and leadingedge services for IP based broadband home communication. CAT-iq – introduced in 2006 as a new technology standard for All-IP networks and successor of DECT – is reality now and has the potential to leverage the profitability of the entire home communication industry.

“If you are in the home or enterprise communication business or in the broadband home gateway business you should attend the DECT CAT-iq World Conference in
Amsterdam. The quality of information and number of attendees has grown constantly over the last years and I am sure that 2009 will become the most successful
conference ever”, says Erich Kamperschroer, Chairman of the DECT Forum.

The DECT CAT-iq Conference 2009 will present the winners of the first International CAT-iq Student Design Competition, which has been initiated by the DECT Forum. With the Design Competition the DECT Forum inspired design students from all over the world to create out of the box products and exciting services for the next generation of home communication.

As a participant of the conference you will be able to be one of the first to see exciting award winning CAT-iq design studies and meet their creators.

An ABI Research study on residential gateways forecasts home networking consumer premises equipment and aggregation devices will deliver at least $1.8 billion in annual revenues by the end of 2013.

A separate, second ABI study says shipments of four classes of wireless audio and video connectivity products for the home (150 million this year) will increase to nearly 700 million units worldwide by the end of 2013.

Bluetooth, WiFi, UWB and 60GHz (for in-home wireless distribution of HD video.) will coexist and become closely integrated according to their strengths and specialties. Analysts say once UWB begins to hit its stride around 2010, it will show the highest Y-to-Y growth rate of any of the four technologies.

Starhome, the leading provider of roaming services and converged solutions, is part of a consortium that has completed integration of an “extended home” remote control platform. This innovative concept will provide mobile services for the “extended home,” an area that will include the home and the car.

As part of the Celtic EnComPAs2 (Enabling Community Communications – Platforms and Applications phase 2) project, Starhome is developing an innovative concept for mobile services for the “extended home.” This environment includes the home, the car and other remote sites acting as a virtual home environment, enabling remote access to home content such as videos, photos, music and other media.

Celtic is a European R&D programme that initiates and runs privately and publicly funded Information and Communication Technology (ICT)/telecommunications R&D projects. EnComPAs2 is being led by Telefonica I+D. Consortium members include Acciona Infraestructuras and Ikerlan from Spain, and TNO ICT from the Netherlands.

The Starhome concept links mobile networks and home networks for the first time, enabling mobile operators to provide value added services for the home. The implementation combines the Next Generation Network architecture, which consists of IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS), and a home residential gateway. Starhome is providing the IMS connectivity for the project, including mobile services such as smart call routing between GSM/UMTS and Wi-Fi, depending on the user location.

Shai Ophir, Starhome’s Technology Specialist, believes that Starhome’s concept has the potential to revolutionise the convergence market. “Completing integration was an important step for Starhome and our consortium partners in the development of this cutting-edge technology. This project has the potential to significantly enhance the mobile landscape by both improving the home service environment and extending its reach.

“One exciting prototype being developed by Starhome for this project will converge voice and messaging between car and mobile. The mobile network will capture an SMS being sent to a mobile subscriber who is driving, for example, and will convert the message into a voice call in order to increase driving safety,” said Ophir. 

MZA has recently released its “Worldwide Consumer Cordless Telephone Analysis” report for 2008. This report details historic and forecast market trends as well as providing analysis of key competitor market shares.

In 2007 the total number of base units sold declined by 4% to just over 117 million units, compared with 122 million units in 2006. This decline was influenced predominantly by a 12% decline in the North American market. The Latin American market showed strong growth of 25% and the Asia Pacific and Eastern European regions witnessed 3% and 8% growth respectively. Western Europe and Middle East and Africa markets witnessed marginal declines. Despite the fall in total base units sold, worldwide handset volumes remained robust at 166 million units in 2007.

In respect of segmentation by technology, DECT technology continued to grow its share and accounted for 47% of total volume. Analogue’s share fell to 33% with the remainder of the market being made up of other digital technologies (predominantly 2.4 GHz and 5.8 GHz).

DECT technology’s growth in share was largely attributable to phenomenal growth in the North American market, where the technology was only licensed in 2005 and yet in 2007 accounted for 13% of total base units and is predicted to grow to more than 50% by the end of 2008. Latin America and Eastern European DECT market also witnessed strong growth.

Supplier Brand Share
Five major brands currently dominate the worldwide consumer cordless telephone market. Panasonic retained their number 1 position in 2007 with their share rising to 19% of base units shipped (all technologies). They were followed by Uniden, Thomson/GE/Alcatel Vtech and Siemens (now renamed Gigaset Communications), all of whom command market shares of between 9% and 11% of the worldwide market.

DECT now commands a significant share of the overall consumer cordless telephone market and as such the supplier brand positions within the DECT market, influence strongly overall success. Panasonic and Siemens (now Gigaset Communications) continued to vie for first position, with Panasonic just usurping Siemens to take the number one position in DECT base unit sales in 2007. Siemens (now Gigaset Communications) followed closely behind, with Philips, Thomson/GE/Alcatel, Binatone and VTECH also being significant.

Outlook
Many of the regional markets (notably Europe and North America) are increasingly saturated with growth in market volume being driven by replacement of existing models with more feature rich models and in North America the displacement of analogue and 2.4GHz/5.8GHz by new DECT technology models has driven market volumes.

A relatively flat market is predicted worldwide between 2008 and 2013 as growth in lesser developed market such as Eastern Europe, MEA, APAC and Latin America is offset by declines in North America and a flat market in Western Europe. DECT technology will continue to take share from other technologies and by 2011 is predicted to account for almost 80% of total worldwide market volume.

About MZA

Dutch operators KPN and Reggefiber are planning to roll out FTTH services across the Netherlands, in an investment that could reach EUR6-7 billion over the next five to seven years.  Steve Liput, Lead Consultant and Matt Yardley, Partner at Analysys Mason, look at the significance of this latest annoucement.

In May 2008, KPN announced plans to take a 41% shareholding in Reggefiber. This signalled that KPN was considering a move from an FTTC/VDSL to an FTTH strategy.
Now, according to reports in local paper Trouw, regulatory approval is likely to be granted to the KPN/Reggefiber deal, paving the way for an incumbent-backed
EUR6–7 billion investment in an FTTH network that covers the vast majority of the Netherlands.

Reggefiber was founded in 2005 to provide open-access fibre networks across the Netherlands. It is a stakeholder in several local initiatives in the Netherlands (such as OnsNet and AlmeerNet) and also operates its own network, Glashart, which is currently present in 15 different Dutch communities. In Q3 2008, the company’s various initiatives connected about 150 000 homes. The latest announcement from KPN takes Reggefiber into a new league – up to 7 million homes will eventually be directly connected to fibre.

What precedent is there fore this approach? Significant FTTH deployments have only been seen in Japan and Korea (where there is strong government backing), the USA (though Verizon’s network is mainly urban), and Hong Kong (which has seen commercial deployments of FTTB, but has probably the most conducive demand density in the world). The Netherlands will therefore see one of the first nationwide FTTH projects outside of Asia.

The Netherlands has a number of interesting characteristics that have led to this position:

• Near-nationwide (>90%) cable coverage provides strong competition to KPN’s infrastructure.
• Municipal fibre projects (such as OnsNet) have shown that a new entrant can quickly gain very high, localised market share.
• publicly-supported projects (like the CityNet open-access FTTH initiative) have gained traction in Amsterdam
• new entrants such as Reggefiber have been successful in obtaining the necessary funding to take small municipal projects to a larger scale.

Comment by the editor
Living in Nuenen, The Netherlands, where OnsNet succesfully deployed FTTH, there are some remarks. Allthough a 100Mbs symetric connection is great, in reality the use of that is still limited. Yes, it is great to download and upload huge files in matter of seconds, but no new services have arrived yet. 

Half of the buyers of a computer, mobile phone or other electronic device does not get their newly acquired thingy to work without assistance. This was revealed by a study by the Pew Research Center, that surveyed more than twothousand Americans about their experiences with new technology.

A large portion of the participants also had to get help when devices suddenly stopped working. 40 percent called the helpdesk of the company that supplied the device involved, while 15 percent sought (and found) the help of friends and familiy. 15 percent just gave up.

Especially the Internet connections lead to a big number of complaints (oh no, really?). 44 percent of the people claims to have had trouble with that in the last 12 months. 39 percent reports trouble with their PC or laptop and 29 percent had problems with their mobile phone, and 15 percent mentioned a cumbersome MP3-player.

Source www.uselog.com

In the recent organised event (by mashup*) about the future of mobile phones, the conclusion was that simplicity of these smartphones in particular is key.

There was much discussion, and many points put forward and received - but it’s a fascinating conclusion, given where the mobile devices/services ecosystem has been going recently. Of course, simplicity may not necessarily mean the dumbing-down of the diverse range of apps, devices, and services - it may just mean that people want access to potentially complex offerings, but in an intuitive and clear way.

If you want to read more  about the thoughts of the group, then got to the  the mashup* site, here.

The European Parliament formally adopted a range of new telecoms measures yesterday but significantly watered down plans to create an EU-wide 'super regulator' that would have power to overrule national regulators, reports Reuters. Instead, the Parliament has backed the creation of the Body of European Regulators in Telecoms (BERT) group, an enhanced version of the existing European Regulators Group (ERG) that comprises the 27 member state national telecoms regulators.

Rather than giving the European Commission a veto over regulatory decisions - as was the original plan - BERT will take decisions by a two-thirds majority. BERT will be funded by a mix of EU money and national government money, says Reuters, also watering down a proposal for full EU funding that would have made the body independent of national governments. The decision to create BERT was first reported in the summer after a number of national regulators were understood to have objected to the original proposals. 

According to Reuters, the new regulations will also allow national regulators to impose functional separation on incumbent fixed-line operators, and also remain in charge of decisions on spectrum - rejecting plans for a pan-EU approach to spectrum allocation. Other measures include increased consumer rights disclosures and increased e-privacy provisions.

Source http://www.gsm.org/

Today we could read that LG in the UK has decided to use phone stores for their netbook (a notebook with an embedded SIM card) launch. Until 2009 no sales via the traditional computer retailers until 2009, instead launching the device through Phones4U shops. According to a spokesman of LG the combination of a laptop and mobile broadband will become very important, even for the Christmas season, and that requires other sales channels.

What has that to do with CAT-iq, you might ask. 

Originally, CAT-iq sales have been seen as “operator only”, meaning that the operators would install CAT-iq-enabled gateways, and that handsets would be sold to connect to the gateways, mostly through the operator channels. More or less the same as routers are being sold, a combination of a ADSL subscription and a router.

Strangely enough DECT products are mainly sold via the retailchannel, and still quite sucesfully.
Why couldn't this be valid for CAT-iq as well. Is this not mainly depending on the type of products? I would guess that a sort of router could be sold via the operator channels, but other more home communication products and 'phones' could be sold in the retail.

It is still too early to see where it is going, as there are not many CAT-iq products around, but operators and retailers be warned. You have to think about the sales channel  fo CAT-iq products.