Telecom

Overheard - Difference between CDMA and GSM

“The two biggest differences between the CDMA and GSM standards are international compatibility and how the networks handle activating phones.” Adama D. Brown, Brighthand FAQ: What’s the difference between CDMA and GSM?

Outside the U.S. and Canada, most GSM phones will still work, while almost all CDMA phones simply can’t be used overseas.

CDMA phones are activated remotely, by the carrier, using the phone’s serial number, known as the ESN. Since each carrier has a database of all the ESNs that are approved for its network, this lets most CDMA carriers refuse to activate phones not originally intended for their network.

GSM phones are activated differently. Each account is associated with what’s called a SIM card, or Subscriber Identity Module. This card, about the size of a fingertip and the thickness of a piece of paperboard, carries an encrypted version of all the information needed to identify your wireless account to the network. You slip it into the appropriate slot on a GSM phone (usually under the battery) and that phone is ready to use.

Overheard - Deep fiber

Pushing fiber close to the customer is generically called “deep fiber,” and various acronyms are used to indicate just how deep the fiber is. FTTH means “fiber to the home,” which is the extreme of giving every user an optical-electrical termination. FTTC takes “fiber to the curb,” serving a group of homes, while FTTN means “fiber to the node” or “neighborhood.” Tom Nolle, Fiber-optic networks: Access network design

Overheard - High Speed Packet Access

It’s no secret that 4G wireless technology - aka Long Term Evolution and WiMax - is in the works and actually starting to see some deployment. But until then, a 3G technology called High Speed Packet Access, or HSPA, is seeing the big growth numbers around the globe. Sam Diaz, Growth of 3G wireless broadband illustrates demand for 4G connections

HSPA is a general name for the High-Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) and High-Speek Uplink Packet Access protocols. They are packet-based mobile telephony protocols used in 3G to increase data capacity and speed up transfer rates. One of the primary differences between HSPA and EV-DO networks is that HSPA allows mobile handsets to transmit voice and data simultaneously.

Jonathan Morgan has written a very interesting post explaining why HSPA is so important.  It all comes down to dollars.

Overheard: IPTV vs Internet TV - What’s the difference?

IPTV is a system where video content is transmitted in the form of IP-data packages over a closed secure network. The infrastructure is configured such that viewers can only receive the IPTV provider’s own TV-channels. IPTV focuses primarily on the TV-set in the living room, generally a wide-screen TV with high image quality. A Set Top Box (STP) is required to receive the signal. Rob van den Dam, IPTV AND INTERNET TV DEVELOPMENT - Let the TV-battle begin

Overheard: Location awareness — is it finally here?

GPS brings a whole new level of precision to the mobile experience. Cell phones have been required to be location-aware for several years in order to comply with the needs of emergency response agencies in the U.S. However, the primitive triangulation system that basic phones use isn’t very precise. With GPS, a user’s location could be pinpointed to within a few feet. Paul Gillin, The Promise and Pitfalls of Location-Awareness

If you do a search on Google for location awareness, you’ll find lot of articles written by people who are excited about the possibilities of mobile devices and location awareness. Advertisers, particularly seem excited. If you look at the dates for a lot of those articles, however, you might be surprised to see they were written in 2001. Will the iPhone really be the tipping point for location awareness 3rd party apps? I’m not going to hold my breath.

Overheard: Is the set-top box doomed? Not likely.

Less than two weeks after the blogosphere and press erupted with stories that the cable TV set-top faced extinction as a result of Sony signing onto a major interactive TV initiative by cable operators called Tru2Way, folks close to Tru2Way say the first certification test of the technology is a “disaster of spectacular proportions.” Cynthia Brumfield, Terrible Troubles with Cable’s Tru2Way Initiative?

Cynthia got slammed for this blog post, but even James McQuivey (Forrester) has said “So here’s where I stand on tru2way: I’ll believe it when I see it.” As close as I can figure it, here’s what the big deal is:

1. Cable companies would like to get rid of set-top boxes. They cost them money.

2. TV manufacturers are getting extra press by announcing they are getting behind Tru2way as the standard for allowing the TV itself perform the functions of the set-top box. (True2way is open source.)

3. A lot of industry experts don’t see how the business model for this change is going to work — consumers worry that putting the interface in the TV means it’s one more thing that can break on their TV — vendors remember a former effort to get rid of the set-top box (called CableCard) that just confused everyone and went belly up.

Overheard: 3G iPhone might as well be EDGE

I’m not so sure that all the usage won’t bog down the 3G network until it is little more than EDGE, at least for a while. Even with “regular” 3G phones, the system has encountered issues from intense usage, causing slow downs, crashes, and complete shut-downs. teddgcm, 3G iPhone, Will the Network Crash?

Overheard: The iPhone — death by monthly payments

We have had nearly 24 hours to jump out Steve Jobs’ reality distortion field and put common sense behind the announcements made yesterday – especially the company’s iPhone 3G. Christian Zibreg, WWDC 2008: Will the iPhone 3G kill the iPhone?

Christian Zibreg thinks the money iPhone users shell out to AT&T each month is the deal killer. It is for my family.
Just as I was posting this, Verizon called and offered my whole family free phone upgrades and extra minutes. Coincidence? LOL!

Overheard: Using caller ID spoofing to listen to someone else’s voicemail

Another problem that has arisen with Caller ID Spoofing is when a voicemail service uses only CID to authenticate a mailbox holder and does not ask for the pin. You can actually get in and listen to messages on someone else’s account. I have seen it done with a mobile phone’s voicemail account on a prepaid phone from Cingular (now AT&T). Rick Fiore, IT manager

Video: Using your PC as a phone