OMTP IMS requirements - killing the “bearer agnostic” myth
June 14th, 2007I got a chance to wade through the OMTP’s new IMS handset requirements document in full, on a flight yesterday. There’s some good stuff - and some less good stuff in there.
Best of all is that it wants to make handset applications “bearer aware”. I’ve been banging on about this for as long as I can remember. The notion that advanced handset apps on highly-intelligent devices should be ignorant of what network is being used as transport is ludicrous.
I’ve argued passionately & at length about why applications should behave differently over cellular and over WiFi, for example, because of different bandwidths, latencies, contexts, ownership, cost, security and so on.
I know that some handset ecosystem participants (eg Symbian) are already up-to-speed on this, and that some operators (eg BT) have also been ahead of the curve. So it’s nice to see OMTP spell all this out in black and white as a standard requirement:
“IMS-1160 The UE MUST provide an API to allow an application to request the list of all available radio access technologies supported by the UE (e.g. WiFi, EDGE, UMTS, GPRS, etc)”
“IMS-1180 The UE MUST offer an API to allow an application to choose the bearer (from the list provided in IMS-1160) for a media connection subject to Bearer Policy.”
I’ve given a lot of thought to the possible use cases of this type of capability, and it should significantly improve user experience.
(Incidentally - the “less good” stuff in the document? How much time & money is going to be wasted on implementing & testing the useless PoC capabilities of future phones? Why couldn’t the OMTP have just killed that stone dead? Also… no mention of how to deal with multitasking-capable phones)
Finally, some standardisation for IMS handsets
June 13th, 2007Almost exactly a year ago, I published a report on the severe problems involved in getting IMS-capable mobile phones to market. At the time, I’d been tracking the area for around 18 months - it was blindingly obvious that the 3GPP and other standards bodies had effectively abdicated all responsibility for actually making sure IMS actually worked on handsets in the hands of the user. Yes, the basic plumbing like SIP signalling was standardised. But there were dozens of companies trying to develop their own, proprietary software and UI frameworks for IMS, usually with a bunch of in-house applications.
The standards had been driven largely by network infrastructure people, who had simply assumed that phones would “naturally follow” and would have a user interfaces “defined by the market”. That might have been true in the early days of GSM, when handset software was confined to a dialler and phonebooks, but is woefully inadequate today, where phones OS, application and UI software runs to millions of lines of code, with a high % of the pain of any handset development project related to software integration and testing.
It was clearly a poor situation for most operators, handset OEMs and application/service developers, and has contributed to the dearth of serious IMS rollout in the mobile industry. What was supposed to be a cellular core IP technology has instead been adopted more quickly in the fixed-VoIP and even WiMAX sectors.
So yesterday’s announcement by the OMTP (a group of operators that try and harmonise handset user interface requirements) that they have finally published a requirements document for IMS-capable handsets is very welcome, but about 3 years overdue. To be fair to the OMTP, they recognise that the standardisation process has been lacking “In its current form the IMS proposition fails to sufficiently address these four key areas and falls short of the full end-to-end experience that is required”.
I haven’t had a chance to read the full spec yet, but I spoke to the OMTP recently and it certainly seems as though they’ve tackled some of the main deficiencies, although I suspect that there will need to be a couple of subsequent iterations before the IMS on-handset experience is truly integrated with all the other non-IMS functions of the phone.
As the organisation is specifically about phones, it also doesn’t address the issue of IMS application development and distribution. For me, one of the worst things about IMS is that it doesn’t support the type of broad innovation and ultrarapid, viral, cross-network uptake that drives the Internet / Web 2.0 world. A small startup in Santa Clara or Bangalore cannot develop a cool IMS app, “put it out there” in beta form, and have 10m people around the world download it and forward a link to their friends (irrespective of their operator) by next Wednesday.
Incidentally, for those readers new to the OMTP, you might be interested to check out the list of work items here. Especially the one innocuously called “Multipath Routing”, which is actually about controlling VoIP clients on handsets, and which includes the rather unambiguous objective to “ensure that terminal platforms have the capability to offer mobile operators the opportunity to uphold current business practise”. Supposedly, this will only apply to subsidised handsets though.
Lastly… a word of advice to OMTP. Rename yourself OMDP or OMHP (Device, or Handset). The word “terminal” ought to be expunged from the mobile industry - it’s exactly why things like IMS are in the troubled state we have here. People from the network side still routinely ignore the fact that millions of handsets with 200MHz-1GHz processors now constitute the overwhelming proportion of intelligence in the mobile ecosystem. “Terminal” comes from a centralised, 1970s mainframe/green-screen view of the world. Wake up and listen to Moore’s Law.
Need A Cisco Router??
June 13th, 2007Need to find an authorized Cisco dealer or partner in your area?
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The Cisco dealers who have registered with VARSearch(tm) specialize in the installation and sales of the most popular Cisco WAN and LAN routers, including the Cisco 801 ISDN/Ethernet Router, 801-1CAPI, 802 ISDN Router, 803 ISDN BRI/Ethernet Router, 4PORT HUB, Cisco - 803-20PK ISDN/Ethernet Router, 4 port hub 2 POTS, and the Cisco 805 Ethernet/Serial Router.
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Think Big to become Big
June 12th, 2007Web search has become one of the hottest markets on the Internet. Many companies are furiously developing advanced tools and techniques that will index the Web more effectively and so, they hope, draw visitors.
Google fields more than 150 million worldwide queries every day. When a visitor types a keyword into the search field, its Web servers send the request to an index server, which identifies Web pages containing words that match the query. Document servers with the matching pages deliver links to the visitor in less than half a second, according to Google’s site.
So what if you aim to reach the Top?
You have first to be in Google and the other few Search Engines that count, then to be in a very good position in them, let’s say among the firs thirty or a little more.
And if you think you cannot do it by yourself, it pays to find a goodwebsite optimization firm that can boost your webpage or blog.
Because to arrive there you not only need to do the right marketing, you also need the right website or blog or whatever.
That is called SEO, search engine optimization and means to create a site search engine friendly (besides of course being good).
ThinkBig will do it very fast and a much lower cost than all the competition.
How? With Corporate blogging, link building, business and social networking and strategic blog marketing techniques. this is the only way to reach the success you are working for.
This will also drive more website traffic creating new business opportunities for your organization.
They start with fully functional Web Design to create the right image for your company. Then comes the blog marketing which is the best way to reach your customers on a regular basis. This will allow the website ranking to rise very quickly.
The next step is using a database which stores the necessary web content that will be used to create a webpage “on the fly” when needed. They use web programmers to create the right applications for your corporation’s success.
One thing you shouldn’t under evaluate is having a reliable web hosting, which is what they offer at very good pricing.
Last and very important is the Optimization of your website, so that it reaches the first positions and is among the first to show up when possible customers look for your kind of products or services.
To all you add a very good support and you can really Think Big.
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Pornography
June 12th, 2007Pornography has been forbidden on TV. The voyeurs can only see it encrypted. The Communications Authority has forbidden 24 hours on 24 “pornographic images that involve the description, the illustration or the visual and/or verbal representation of erotic subjects and of acts or activities that relate to the sexual sphere that are offensive to modesty”.
The intention is to defend the sense of modesty. That’s a good thing. But why start from sex? Basically Eros is natural and gives a certain satisfaction.
Agcom should extend its prohibition to subjects that are more harmful. To the great immodest people. To the convict politicians who are honoured guests on Anno Zero like Gianni De Michelis. Think of the child whose father has a fixed income, workman, office worker, at 1,200 Euro a month, watching that programme.
What will they think? What will they grow up to be? Will they straight away join the Socialist party to get their impunity?
The convicts remain in Parliament, in their prison of gold and silver. A TV appearance can destroy years of civic education for our children. If they want to show off, they’ll be doing it on a talk show that can only be seen directly in prisons.
Apart from the convicts our children can enjoy series of murders on the TV News in the early and the late parts of the evening. The description of bloody events is always accurate. For the assassins who are just starting out it’s a source of continual inspiration.
Human beings smothered, shot at, burned alive, knifed, tortured to death, hit repeatedly, buried alive. Often during dinner time, between a slice of pineapple and the ice cream. Then there’s the drink after the meal and the comment. Violence is worse than sex. Let’s encrypt it together with Andreotti.
Posted by Beppe Grillo
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Immigration
June 12th, 2007The word immigration is taboo. Something that you have to talk about in ‘politically correct’ ways to avoid being called a racist. By definition, the immigrant needs help and is trying to survive in Italy.
The Minister Ferrero has declared: ” … it’s necessary to propose an articulated strategy. First of all we must facilitate the legal entries to our country” and “in the continent of Africa there may be 30 million young people in the age group 18 to 25 who are ready to leave their homes and loved ones” and finally: “they are the ones who come to do the work that often the Italians no longer want to do .. today we have to understand that we have become a country of immigration”.
These declarations are irresponsible even though they are “electorally correct” for the party of the Minister Ferrero. Italy is still a country of emigration. At one time it was the farming community that emigrated, today it is the graduate community. Italy has a density of inhabitants in the territory among the highest in the world. In comparison, the United States is depopulated and Africa is a desert. It’s not true that Italians no longer want to do “certain jobs”. But what are these jobs?
The thousands of posts that I have received in the “modern slaves” section bear witness to the contrary. They describe a generation of Italians paid a few hundred Euro a month or unemployed. Young men and young women who would jump at the chance of doing “certain jobs” but in safe conditions and with a decent salary.
But the “certain jobs” are those of the tiny factories that import underpaid workers and then throw the social costs on to the community. That gives advantages to the small-time bosses, not to the Italian economy.
Ferrero talks about young men who want to emigrate to rich countries, not families.
But there are hundreds of millions of young people like that in the world. How many CPT {Centri di Permanenza Temporanea e Assistenza= Italy’s detention centres for foreigners} are needed to house them? Is the house of the Minister big enough? This demagogy is dangerous.
The migration flows must be handled at the origin. The most developed nations should put aside a part of their GDP, at least as much as they spend on arms, better if its in places of arms, to help poor countries. Distributing wealth throughout the world so as to avoid importing slaves and social instability.
Posted by Beppe Grillo
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