WiFi Phones Taking Hold?

Light Reading has reported that Action Technology is currently testing WiFi telephony is collaboration with Earthlink. Here’s a link to the article: http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=119882&site=cdn

The testing is being done using Earthlinks Muni WiFi system in Anaheim, California. Here’s a quote from the Light Reading article:

"What separates our Wi-Fi phone from others is its ability to work over EarthLink's municipal Wi-Fi networks," said Steve Howe, EarthLink's senior vice president of voice. "This means that EarthLink is now bringing cheap phone calls using the Internet to the world of mobile -- a major breakthrough. We expect that many people who use cell phones today in our municipal Wi-Fi markets will want to switch to a Wi-Fi phone to take advantage of the significant cost savings." He added that EarthLink's Wi-Fi phones round-out the company's full suite of Internet voice products, which also include trueVoice, a low-cost telephone service, and DSL and Home Phone Service, which combines low-cost phone service with ultra-fast high speed Internet.

In addition to Earthlink, T-Mobile has been testing their HotSpot @ Home service in Washington State since last fall. T-Mobile bundles a router and a Samsung UMA (Unlicensed Mobile Access / Voice Over IP) WiFi-enabled phone. The T-Mobile system provides both cellular and WiFi connectivity and allows the user to have a single phone that can be used in the home and while out of range of the home network. Here’s a link for more info on the T-Mobile product: http://www.theonlyphoneyouneed.com/

Systems that provide both cellular and WiFi connectivity in one device make a lot of sense to me because they allow the user to have a single phone with a single bill.

Vonage and Verizon

Yesterday Vonage Holdings (2.2 million customers) was ordered by a federal jury in Alexandria to pay $58 million to Verizon Communications. The jury ruled that Vonage has infringed on Verizon patents by connecting the Vonage Internet based voice network to the Verizon Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN).

There were actually three Verizon patents that the jury said we infringed upon by Vonage – the most significant one involves technology that links Internet voice with the PSTN. The two others involved call forwarding and wireless headsets.

In addition Verizon has asked the court to issue a permanent injunction that would stop Vonage from ever connecting to the PSTN. A permanent injunction would allow Vonage customers to only communicate with other Vonage customers using the Internet – something you can already do with many free services like Skype, Yahoo IM and Google Talk. There is a hearing scheduled for March 23 based on Verizon’s injunction request.

Last year the Supreme Court ruled to give judges in patent cases more latitude so the ruling comes as no surprise to both Vonage and Verizon. It will be interesting to see how this affects other providers offering similar domestic and long distance services.

Certification versus Training by Guest Blogger Mike Qaissaunee
You can read Mike's blog at: http://q-ontech.blogspot.com/

Global Knowledge conducted a salary survey of 1,607 IT professionals during the fourth quarter of 2006. The survey yields some interesting results - in particular with regard to certification and training. More than 80% of the respondents hold a certification, with Microsoft certifications leading the way, followed by CompTIA. Key concerns are which certs to maintain and which to pursue - not surprising, since there are more than 850 certifications available. What's interesting about the certification results is that 41% of the certifications are more than two years old and only 12% plan on updating their certs and less than half plan on pursuing any new certifications. In contrast to certification results, 62% have attended training with the past nine months. What's even more surprising, is that only 5% attended as an employer requirement and a staggering 20% paid for the training themselves.

The report confirms what has become conventional wisdom for IT educators in the ongoing debate regarding certifications versus training. Certifications are still valued by employers, particularly for new hires and employees with little or no experience. Absent any other data, certifications serve as a strong indicator of a potential employees skills and ability to learn. As an IT professional gains experience, the pendulum starts to swing - for both the employee and the employer - from certification to training , as evidenced by the results above and the stated number one concern for IT professionals - keeping up their skills.

2007 IT Salary and Skills Report
http://images.globalknowledge.com/wwwimages/pdfs/2007_SalaryReport.pdf

Mike Qaissaunee 2007 Global Wireless Education Consortium Educator of the Year

Congratulations to Mike - GWEC Educator of the Year at the two-year associate program level. From the GWEC press release:

The GWEC award is given annually to up to two academic instructors from all levels of postsecondary education (associate, baccalaureate, graduate) in recognition of programmatic and individual contributions to wireless engineering, communications, systems and/or technology education. The award acknowledges the fundamental and foundational work of educators in preparing students for employment in the mobile and wireless industries and underscores the importance, from an educational perspective, of keeping pace with technological advancements when developing tomorrow’s technology leaders.

Here's more about Mike from the press release:

An Associate Professor of Engineering and Technology at Brookdale Community College in Lincroft, New Jersey, Mr. Qaissaunee is founding Director of the Mid-Atlantic Institute for Telecommunications Technologies (MAITT), established through funding from the National Science Foundation to develop cutting-edge technician education programs in wireless communications. As Principle Investigator (PI) of this project, Mr. Qaissaunee has led the development and implementation of nine (9) new courses related to wireless communications technologies and has presented at over thirty (30) conferences and seminars. Mr. Qaissaunee is also Co-Principle Investigator (Co-PI) for the National Center for Telecommunications Technologies (NCTT) located in Springfield, Massachusetts, serving as a subject matter expert in wireless communications and leading NCTT's national dissemination efforts.

Mr. Qaissaunee is also working with Hofstra University's Center for Technological Literacy to develop contemporary, high-interest materials for high school technology students and teachers that address standards-driven technological concepts and skills and promote promising STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) career choices. Mr. Qaissaunee has been active at his own campus and around the country in promoting the adoption of new technologies in and approaches to teaching and learning, including: blogs, audio and video podcasts, wikis, mobile computing, and educational gaming and simulation.

Michael Qaissaunee received his Masters Degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Delaware (Newark, DE).

Mike will be in fine company with Dr Moe Z. Win, the award designee at the graduate level. Dr Win is an Associate Professor at the Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems (LIDS) and the Department of Aeronautics & Astronautics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

And even more from the press release:

Selected from a competitive pool of nominees, Dr. Win and Mr. Qaissaunee are being honored for their demonstrated leadership in wireless education, documented collaboration with the wireless industry, support and mentoring of students in wireless projects, their own innovative research and educational initiatives, and their efforts in preparing students for employment in wireless and wireless-related industries.

The 2007 GWEC Wireless Educator of the Year Awards will be presented at the world’s largest telecommunications event dedicated exclusively to wireless, convergence and mobile computing technologies: CTIA Wireless 2007 (www.ctia.org/ctiawireless). The two distinguished award recipients will travel to and attend the convention March 27-29, 2007 in Orlando, Florida, as part of their recognition. An award ceremony is scheduled for 3:00 p.m. Tuesday, March 27 on the CTIA’s MEX Stage, Orange County Convention Center, Orlando, FL. The event is free and open to all CTIA show registrants.

The Global Wireless Education Consortium (GWEC) is a membership organization committed to the development and expansion of current wireless technology curricula in academic institutions worldwide. Sixty-seven colleges and universities currently participate in GWEC as active education partners. Industry members include Award Solutions Inc., Emona Instruments, Intel Corporation, LCC International Inc., Movilnet, National Instruments, Sprint Nextel, T-Mobile, UGS Corporation and Verizon Wireless. Affiliate members include IEEE and Andrew Seybold’s Outlook4Mobility. The year 2007 marks GWEC’s 10th anniversary. For more information about GWEC, please visit www.gwec.org.

I cannot think of anyone more deserving of this award - CONGRATS Mike!!

Content Recognition – ID of Copyrighted Material

Audible Magic (http://www.audiblemagic.com), a Los Gatos, CA content protection and information services, has developed some new content recognition software that can quickly identify copyrighted material. Vance Ikezoye, CEO of Audible, demonstrated how the application worked. In the demo he downloaded a video clip from You Tube that he claimed had been shot with a handheld camcorder in a theater and then dubbed in Chinese. When the clip was analyzed using the application, it was identified as a scene from the movie Kill Bill: Vol 2. the application went as far as identifying the scene starting point in the film at 49 minutes and 37 seconds!

There is current interest in this product from MySpace, which announced a pilot program (http://www.audiblemagic.com/news/press-releases/pr-2007-02-12.asp) using the Audible product to block videos containing unauthorized copyrighted content from being posted in its community. This service is being offered free by MySpace to copyright holders.

Passive Optical Networks

Don Wade from Nassau Community College on Long Island passed along an interesting article from EE Times today titled “'Last mile may be light-centric” (http://www.eetimes.com/news/design/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=197005751). The article discusses last mile options for voice, video and data services and references a "Last Mile Options" panel held at the International Solid State Circuits Conference. The panel discussed the advantages and disadvantages of passive optical networks or “PONs”.

A passive optical network (PON) is a point-to-multipoint, fiber to the premises network architecture that uses fiber and wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) to pass multiple signals (typically 32) over a single fiber strand. Point-to-multipoint networks are more efficient that the legacy point-to-point copper networks the phone companies have been installing and maintaining over the years. In addition to using less fiber, PON optical splitters do not require power.

Here is a list of popular PON versionstaken from Wikipedia:

• APON (ATM Passive Optical Network). This was the first Passive optical network standard. It was used primarily for business applications, and was based on ATM.
• BPON (Broadband PON) is a standard based on APON. It adds support for WDM, dynamic and higher upstream bandwidth allocation, and survivability. It also created a standard management interface, called OMCI, between the OLT and ONU/ONT, enabling mixed-vendor networks.
• GPON (Gigabit PON) is an evolution of the BPON standard. It supports higher rates, enhanced security, and choice of Layer 2 protocol (ATM, GEM, Ethernet). In actuality, ATM has not been implemented.
• EPON (Ethernet PON) is an IEEE/EFM standard for using Ethernet for packet data.

A PON is basically a shared network with an Optical Line Terminal (OLT) in a provider central office feeding a single fiber with multiple signals. Imagine a single fiber running down your street serving 32 homes with voice, video and data services. At your home you have another box called an Optical Network Terminal (ONT) that reads all encrypted packets (all packets are encrypted for security) on the fiber and only accepts ones addressed to you.

The EE Times article discusses current technical plans for cable and telco companies including a brief piece on using wireless for the last mile.

References:

Last mile may be light-centric: http://www.eetimes.com/news/design/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=197005751

Wikipedia.org: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_optical_network

802.11 Moving Fast

According to TG Daily and posted at Netstumbler.com Intel announced the release of a new 802.11n WiFi chipset code-named Kedron on 1/30/07. According to Netstumbler.com:

The firm originally planned to launch the product along with its new mobile chipset code-named Santa Rosa in the second quarter of 2008. The Kedron 802.11 n draft-capable version will be named "WiFi Link 4965 AGN" while the non-draft n capable variant will go by the name "WiFi Link 4965 AG".

802.11, with its high theoretical data rates of up to 540 Mbit/s, has been bouncing around without a standard since first proposed by the IEEE in 2004. The lack of a standard has not stopped the manufacturers with the first pre-standard or “pre-n” routers made available to consumers in April 2006. I am sure you have seen these products from most of the big manufacturers including D-link, Netgear and Buffalo for sale in the Sunday papers and many of you may have actually purchased pre-n devices.

It looks like we may be getting a little closer to a standard now. On January 19 the IEEE 802.11 Working Group unanimously approved a request by the 802.11n Task Group to issue a new Draft 2.0 of the proposed standard.

With the Apple TV product announcement at Mac World it may be more than just a coincidence that we are seeing movement now. According to Netstumbler.com, AppleInsider and MacFixIt are reporting Apple will charge $1.99 per machine to enable the draft 802.11 standard on:

…. any Mac running Core 2 Duo or Xeon processors, with the exception of the entry-level 17-inch 1.83GHz iMac. These machines have had 802.11n technology built in, but not switched on.

If you do go out and purchase a new $179 Apple AirPort Extreme Base Station, you will not have to pay the $1.99 per Apple machine for the upgrade. It is important for Apple to move quickly here because the Apple TV product shipping in February depends on the higher 802.11 bandwidth for video and audio streaming. The Apple TV box connects to your ED or HD television and content is streamed from a Mac or PC running iTunes. You can get more information on the Apple TV box here: http://store.apple.com

It is important to realize these are local area network bandwidths – this means transfers machine to machine inside your home or business network will be very fast but you will still be limited by your broadband provider bandwidth when accessing the Internet.

References:

Intel To Launch 802.11n Wi-Fi Chipset Next Week: http://www.netstumbler.com/2007/01/25/report-apple-will-charge-for-802.11n-access/

802.11n Devices Are Fully Compatible With .11b/g: http://www.netstumbler.com/2007/01/25/report-apple-will-charge-for-802.11n-access/

Report: Apple Will Charge For 802.11n Access: http://www.netstumbler.com/2007/01/25/report-apple-will-charge-for-802.11n-access/