Friday 11 January 2008

Packet Data; what you should know

Wasn’t 3G supposed to be ‘broadband’ on your mobile?

There is considerable user confusion in the mobile space over technology terminology. We are as very guilty of creating a raft of wonderful acronyms that mean absolutely nothing to the consumer or business, so it potentially would be very easy to assume that 3G is broadband on your phone. Fact is 3G is a faster than GPRS (another great acronym!) internet based protocol connection available in certain geographic locations such as major cities and conurbations, that can provide data and content to and from a mobile phone to a laptop. The speed of the connection will be between 80Kbps to 128Kbps which comes nowhere close to your home wired broadband connection which is 2Mbs to 8Mbs.

Where does HSDPA fit in? Are there alternatives to this technology?

HSDPA is simply a software protocol enhancement to 3G to improve its performance, with the HSDPA you can expect data speeds of up to 4 times that of 3G. An alternative does exist to both 3G and HSDPA this is Wireless LAN (WiFi) and Public Wireless LAN. Like 3G WiFi tends to be available in certain geographic locations, however the locations tend to be where people congregate such as shopping centre’s, hotels, airports, pubs, etc WiFi is more available than HSDPA.

Do consumers really want a replica of the desktop internet experience on their mobiles?

Consumers only use technology if it easy to use, available and cost effective. Replicating the desktop experience is not a practical approach to mobile internet since the screen sizes and wireless data speeds prohibit a rich experience. However mobile content provision on the move does work provided that the content is provisioned take into account the smaller canvasses of mobile devices. There are many examples of this being delivered successfully; the kings of content the BCC have a mobile content version of their news web site and recently introduced video podcasts of BBC Breakfast news Google has a mobile version of there search page. However the majority of internet content as yet to take into account mobile devices thus the experience of mobile internet currently is poor.

Can the handsets cope?

The average pixel resolution of a screen on a 3G mobile device is considerably less than that of a desktop computer, provided the content is rendered to support small screen then handset can cope. Sending large amounts of data that the mobile device need to interpolate to fit on its small screen is a waste of data and processing power.

What’s more important – access speed or access to content?

Content is king. Without content there is no demand. So it matter not a hoot how fast you connect, if there is nothing to connect to speed is irrelevant. Which is the situation that many operators are finding themselves in, they have the 3G networks but other than PC users on data cards there is no driver for users to start consuming large amounts of data bandwidth. Content like streaming TV, video clips, music downloads etc are starting to get things moving and this just proves the point that content is King.

Whatever happened to WAP?

WAP is alive and well and living in most mobile devices. These days no one refers to WAP, but WAP push technology allows you to push rich content to a mobile user. I think the industry learned the lesson and also learnt the good stuff from the WAP protocol suite.

Mobile Learning

Recently the Mobile Data Association were asked for an opinion piece on Mobile Learning. As a result I worked with my fellow director Ed Williams on the following article.

Mobile Learning- does it have a place in a modern education system.

Over the last decade there has been a steady but slow increase in the number of students attaining 5 or more grade A to C GCSC’s, the current target set by the government is 60% by the end of 2008. It is concerning that the result difference between deprived areas and affluent areas are huge 44% in the poorest area’s compared to 66.3% in affluent areas. Whilst improvement in education is important in all regions the government must focus on improving the education process in deprived area’s.

So how can technology help improve our children’s education and compliment our educational system?

Well it already is, in some cases, where children have access to a computer at home they can access a range of educational based web sites and peer to peer messaging systems such as Microsoft Messenger to help them with the challenge of homework. The BBC Bytesize website being probably the best example for technology based education. The use of computers in schools have become pretty much a standard. As a result any child not having access to a computer and broadband at home is significantly disadvantaged.

Government has long acknowledged is the role that technology can play in education. Therefore ensuring ‘education is for all’ becomes an imperative in a modern technology based society. To ensure no one is disadvantaged requires creative solutions from government, to ensure that technology is available to all. Potentially this is where mobile technology can assist, wireless enabled PDA’s and smartphones could bridge the gap bringing low cost Internet access, web browsing, and e-learning applications to ALL. Internet connectivity could be delivered by either public wireless LAN (government wireless cities programme) or by a subsidised wireless broadband from a cellular network provider.


Will mobile technology deliver a favourable e-learning experience?

Children in Britain today have grown up surrounded by technology, and as such this makes them critical of technology that fails to deliver. Most children will have a mobile phone from around the age of 10; they will be familiar with the Internet and video game boxes. This means that if the learning experience is rich, interactive, intuitive, compelling and entertaining, children will be eager to use. This has recently been proved by Nintendo with their potable DS gaming platform, they have developed a range of challenging but entertaining games focused around ‘Brain Training’ these have proven very popular with children and adults.

Harnessing this new wave of entertaining educational approach with wireless technology means we can extend and enhance, perhaps introducing virtual classrooms, collaborative knowledge sharing between students and teachers, between schools and even between countries are easy to set up. All of which makes education cool, exciting but more importantly compelling.

Mobile technology also has other major advantages; mobile data platforms allow learning to happen where schools or teachers are not present. It allows teachers in one school (or country) to remotely tutor others bridging skilled teacher shortages. And it allows us to bring education to the masses quicker than we can build schools or train teachers.
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Mobile data platforms connected to mobile data devices will undoubtedly bring education in line with today’s businesses – where messaging and communications have become king, where global customers and supply chains are becoming the norm and where the ability to collaborate and communicate, anytime anywhere is paramount.

The model for 21st century education still has a long way to develop, but at least the sign posts are becoming clearer.