I'm trying to get in shape for the Marine Corps Marathon. My recent travel has not helped the training activitiy much. I've got a nagging foot issue that I'm beginnning to get a handle on. Homemade orthotics are helping. this is truly nagging. I remember back when I could run 33 minute 10Ks and would go out in races at 4:45 for the first mile. boy are those days long gone, but, even then this foot problem was an issue.

Running around San Diego is a real pleasure; but that's true in many places. Angermund was, in it's own way, just as fun (and much less hilly). Washington was not as fun, especially in summer running down the tow path a noon...I know...what sort of idiot does that? one with kids and no other available time...but that's an old story.

OK - web cam up...check.

Now, 2 interesting items.

I made the finest phone call of my 41 year life yesterday...it was on a mobile phone. The phone was set up using a wider frequency range than a normal desk phone or cell phone. A typical home and cellular phone has a 3 KHz bandwidth. Those phones have double the input bandwidth (6 KHz rather than 3 KHz) and double the sampling rate...and it sounds like it! You have to do this mobile-mobile too since the PSTN (POTS landline) phone would remove the extra signal. It was Phenomenal!

Second, this MSFT/INTEL story on peer-to-peer-over-WiFi sounds interesting. Now I understand the avoidance of Bluetooth this year...if the PDA is the biggest connection that needs data, why not do that with 802.11 instead of bluetooth? The latter was tweaked for power consumption but is 1/10th as fast..the former is more of a power hog...but...better speed.

Advice: forget about telecom stock prices they are as whacky now as where they were 18 months ago..but..a good buying opportunity

Moved the current booklist up top after (sigh) the Korean loss to fortress GERMANY....well, we can all get up at 4 am on sunday to watch the final

Live and learn. When I visited China Telecom and saw their fixed line SMS enabled home phone I thought it was the first of it's kind...but no. In Europe (not surprisingly) this is also popular. EMC has a report on this very subject.

Polyphonic Ringtones are more fun...than monophonic ringtones. You know, that common sound in every restaurant now? Beethoven's 9th symphony, The Flight of the Bumbulbee and other non-royaltay-bearing tunes that you hear from the table next to you before your appetizer arrives.. Verizon announced today that they are launching polyphonic tones. Check out that link above if you have not heard those yet. they are more pleasing to the ear, but still sound very "Japanese" as if when you hear the ringtone that means you need to "step into the car as the doors are now closing".

Verizon Wireless announced that downloadable Modtones(TM) polyphonic ringtones from Faith West Inc. will be available nationally on the Verizon Wireless Z-800 handset. Modtones ringtones closely replicate songs and distinguish between drums and guitar, for example, and will prove to be one of the most popular downloadable applications.

more on that Verizon announcment.

Don't give up on wireless...what does wall street know? the herd mentality rules suddenly everybody feels they need their turn to "kick the dog". It's funny really, even as KDDI in japan announced today that in less than 90 days they have added 1,000,000 3G customers on CDMA2000.

The financial community is funny.

I had a girlfriend in college (late '70s) who I went to visit late at night. She had roommates I did not want to wake up, so I had the bright idea of throwing small rocks at her window - fully expecting that she would open the window, look out, see me, and come open the front door. Well, life is not always like the movies, and it did not quite go that way. After doing this for a long time the front door opened a crack, and one of her roommates peeked out and recognized me. At that point, every light in the house went on, and there was lots of anger, directed at me. In particular was her loud/macho roommate, who said - "I was about to kick your ass...what the hell are you doing?". Yea. Sure you were pal. You were inside with the girls, in the dark, afraid of the unknown, cowering. Doing what everybody else is doing because it was safe. seems like lots of people are staying inside, counting what they have left and generally being afraid of the future....

Can you believe this (from Unstrung)?

British Telecom (BT) (NYSE: BTY - message board) today named its public WLAN service "Openzone" (see BT Opens Hotspots) and identified the sites to be used for the final tests before the commercial service goes live on August 1. Right: That's the dull bit over with.

Far more interesting are the "indicative" prices -- and hold onto your britches, 'cuz they're dynamite!! Unlimited use is going to come in at "less than" £95 (plus 17.5 percent sales tax) per month per user. That's £1,140 a year, which at today's exchange rates is US$1,710 before tax is added. And we know it says "less than," but that means by a few pence or so.

Geez...I knew that the carriers would try to avoid paying the steep 3G license cost, but that's not working. And I knew that they would cringe at putting in a new "forklift upgrade" to GSM (duh - who's idea was this??) in the form of UMTS base stations...but trying to KILL 802.11x with pricing? What will they think of next??

In a very interesting PDAmeetsSmartPhone check out this new Kyocera 7135 (not on their web site) in the latest Forbes article on PDAs...this looks remarkably like the new Treo that Stewart Alsop showed me during the BREW conference...

What a great morning to jog on the beach. Low tide was at 5:30, and there was enough hard packed sand to accomodate the NYC marathon. After watching the preview of the world cup finale, I couldn't stand it anylonger and headed form Torrey Pines. Befroe Germany played the U.S. I told the kids "I predict, Germany wins 1-0". Forgot to make that prediction about today's game...but..surprise! once again, Germany wins 1-0. When something works you stick with it. And in a juxtaposed sentence, this piece in Telephony on ATM-IP migration seemed to sum up one veiw concisely.

I've been going to the Del Mar Fair on and off since 1970, when I was 10. Not much left to see after 32 years, no much has changed. This fair is held on the same grounds as the famous Del Mar Racetrack - but it is not nearly as fun. Could not have asked for a better day this las saturday though, and the crowd was light before noon. Being held in the city where "the turf meets the surf", they not only had a banner of Elvis, but a sandcastle of him (on the right side in the photo with Elvis). I've never seen a kid go on as many rides in 30 minutes as our 3 year old, who went on 8....there were no lines. A far cry from the streets of Seoul, where the pivotal semi-final game with Korea and Germany will be played tomorrow. It's on at 4:30 am here.

Two articles on wireless growth recently published were both disappointing. First was this one in the economist. It had some decent information, particularly regarding advances in antenna systems, but generally seemed like the sort of article that caused the over-hype of advanced wireless data services (which has been given the snappy acronym 3G) and preceded the trough of dissolution that we've been in for close to two years. I've never been the huge Economist fan some of my friends are, so I was not expecting much. Anyway, they have the euro angle and tend to discount legitimate engineering breakthroughs at the expense of flashy techno-glitz. I expected a bit more from MIT's Technology Review article on wireless. But it was quite similar. These stories have been the same for over a year now - DoCoMo does wireless data right and the U.S. does not...Japan and Europe are smart and doing "3G" to provide higher data services....but who really needs highspeed wireless....i-mode is 9600...etc., etc. Never much logic, or even synthesis with actual historical data. I saw Bill Joy give a speech on wireless a couple of years ago. Along with praising Guns, Germs and Steel (one of my favorites), he took the opportunity to lambast the U.S. for not having a unified wireless technology like Europe. Huh? This coming from the company that is leading the effort to dismantle Microsoft (not that there's anything wrong with that) because of their monopoly position. When a U.S. company comes up with a technology that's 10X as good as GSM, so good that the Euros pick it for their version of 3G, we are supposed to....abandon what was created and use that instead? And now, with FOMA failures...I just don't get it. I realized a long time ago that most witty IT types and internet gurus don't really understand radios. Ham operators do. Wireless technicians and some executives do, and, some savvy IT folks do too. The hardware/data network culture is inseparable to the internet/web culture. The ying/yang. Many are both. The telecom culture - particularly the carrier culture - is intensely hierarchical and "command and control". I was a speaker on a recent NTIA sponsored Spectrum Summit in Washington. One of the questions asked was "how can we set up spectrum management so that more and greater command and control will be possible?" . On the bright side, the same person asked us if the FCC/NTIA should work to free up more spectrum for unlicensed low power use. That was a "yes" from everybody.

Time of the year again for the Del Mar Fair. This was so much fun 30 years ago, and has not really changed much in all this time. This year's theme is a tribute to Elvis. We'll have jelly doughnuts this morning in his honor before heading over. Look at this - a webcam's been installed at the fair grounds this year. Just 500 meters to the west is another cam. My favorite when traveling. A glimpse of home. My wife always turns off my cam...hmmm...I was at a trade show in New Orleans getting a limo demo of a high speed wireless system. I decided to look at my office cam. there was my wife, turning it off. The last image. She had the last laugh as usual.

Well, that was fun. (but this sssllllooooowwww dial-up connection is not! so spoiled after being in Hong Kong and Korea with broadband...but not here in the L.A. Red Carpet Club) The world cup that is. Getting stuck in needless/endless meetings on a "first date" with a vendor was not fun. I'm calm now though. It was the best/most expensive private golf course in Korea. And what a course it was. (can you find waldo in the photo?) Could be that 17 hour flight that induces calmness.

Conclusion after going to 4 countries in 10 days is: i-mode, still going strong, but the freshness has worn off for many. Everybody has it, done it, and now it's pretty common. I don't know the most recent stats, but far more than 50% of the people standing and waiting (for a train, for a ticket, etc) are using some sort of data service in Japan. In Hong Kong it was far less, almost non-existent. Maybe the Grand Hyatt was not a good sample point, or Joe Bannanas, or other Lan Kwai Fong spots - but even during the day it seems slow. . As an aside, is it me...or is the color of those KAL planes HIDEOUS? What were they thinking? Anyway, I was a bit dissapointed with the Korean mobile data-on-the-street use. Sure, you could see it, but they are not quite there. The current uptake is surging and I expect by the end of the year it will be higher. More on that later. In Korea there is only 1X phones being sold. Many have color screens, and the best way to get an i-mode experience there is the BREW on KTF. They are doing VERY well.

Great to be back in the US though, even though going throuh customs and the endless bag checks in LA was quite slow. They always check my bag..must be all the electronics. Just before getting on the plane in Korea the guy next to me says - "see who that is over there?" I was clueless. "The two top players on the Mexican soccer team...heading home...ha ha" I did think they played like jerks the last couple minutes of the game against the US. Anyway, I forget their names, but got a photo of them sacked out waiting to board.

Go Korea! hard not to get up in world cup fever today...Korea plays later tonight and it should be very exciting. Everybody is where the "go red" t-shirts, well, everybody under 30. I'm not. I've got to run to dinner got to run...

later- they did it, and will do it again against Spain - with some help. They are playing with the heart of a college basketball team and without the baggage of the euro teams and south american teams that eat their young

Mobile Messaging Fuels China's Top Three Web Portals
China's top three Web portals - Sina.com, Sohu.com and NetEase.com - have reported higher revenues and narrower losses due to mobile messaging. Industry experts estimate the number of cell-phone users in China is three times larger than that of Internet users. China's wireless growth rate is the largest in the world. With Short Messaging Services, the portals have a market potential of 160 mobile phone users. Whereas most of the portals' revenues now come from online advertising, officials are expecting that to change to a one-third split among wireless services, advertising and corporate services. However, mobile giants, including China Telecom and China Mobile, are expected to guard mobile messaging from providing sufficient revenues to portals

Well, that's not a big shock. Here's a China Telecom fixed line SMS phone. Popularity of SMS in China is so high, and computers/internet use low, that these messaging machines are catching on. Realize now, that it's even more of a pain-in-the-ass to construct and send an SMS message in chinese than in english. My friend in Japan showed me the mulitple steps you need to go through to get a single katagana character on your Japanese i-mode display. Same in chinese, except, they are using something more like kanji characters (of which there are somthing like 200,000)! And still it prospers. I remember years ago somebody explaining to me that in Asia the fax machine would always be perferable to email due to the whole ASCII aspect of computers. Not any more. They figured that out, which, if you ever watched somebody type on a chinese/english keyboard you can see.

<:-)

naive or dumb? after posting a complimentary bit about the Chinese and progress, this happens. And another thing, I used a WCDMA (=UMTS=IMT-200) handset today. It was hot...literarily. But, having never used a live one (who has??) before, and this demo unit in a LarGe Korean manufacturer's lab, it was ok. The DO one was better, and cooler. But back to this Chinese thing...what a puzzle. Really.

USA! USA! USA! what a game! As an ugly American, I forgot how exciting fussball, I mean, football, I mean soccer can be. You just need to get re-familiarized with it. The drama, the athleticism (no pudgy soccer players) and how exciting some games can be. I'll never forget racing back from what was East Germany in 1990 to get to the first town in the west that had the final world cup game on TV after we crossed the border. The city we got to was Branschweig. "West" Germany. The final was against Argentina. We found a little bar on a side street (they all looked like side streets at that point) and went inside. If you have ever seen that seen from "An American Werewolf in London" when they go to the bar called The Slaughtered Lamb..that's what it was like. Everybody stopped talking and looked at us. We looked at them and said "Go Deutschland!" and they guessed we were ok, sort of. By the end of what was a rather dull game, Germany playing a very defensive style, the Germans won on a sudden death score. No matter, the town erupted in a scene I'll never forget. The entire town - I mean it - the ENTIRE town - poured into the street and began a spontaneous parade singing German songs. We were happy to join in the parade and walked in a circle, drinking beer and having fun for hours. Hmmm...fun times... I never had that much fun in any other mass celebration.

Today after a long meeting in one part of Seoul, we were hurring back (no, dammit, I did not score tickets to the game down the street!) and watching on the car TV. In a safety move, the visual feed on the TV only works when the car is stationary. Fortunately, there was plenty of traffic...and BTW, you have never seen intense driving and intense traffic jams until you have driven in Seoul. They have this radical "group" u-turn then they do, with 14 lanes of EXTREMELY aggressive driving...most cars have dents in them or scrapes of some sort. You note I'm sitting in the back seat hear in the photo

Anyway, it was a blast to watch live, so even sitting here in the hotel room before dinner it was great. Too late in the US! One more day here before returning to the US. Watching the crumbling of the telecom and related sectors in the US, hearing stories about $1 copies of DVDs up the road in China that are not available in the US yet, watching Hollywood flail around with digital media rights and silly laws (as if) I had the frightening though - what if people in the future only paid real money for "things" like tvs, mp3 players, computers, cars, planes, watches, teaspoons, toilets, clothing, toys, food, routers, pacemakers, viagra....and much of the soft stuff we are sooo good at in the US became "free"? Am I missing something? Is it possible that only live enternainment and the artists/athletes/actors that produce thoses make real money and bootleg recordings will prosper? Maybe it's time for bed.

Did I say CLEAN? Same could be said of every part of the new Incheon airport. And there's pride in cleanlieness, more than just the random name of the inspector, there's a photo of the washroom cleaner. In a city that's all spruced up for the World Cup it's a matter of national pride. Continuing to leverage the growth of their industries, Korea is really coming of age. To no small extent that is a result of their decision to use CDMA as the national technology about 10 years ago. It was a gamble, but it is paying off. How long can Nokia keep their number one spot? They have a great position now. While the overall industry declined, Nokia extended its lead in the market by increasing its market share to 35 percent in 2001. Gartner Dataquest analysts said fourth-quarter sales of close to 40 million units pushed Nokia's market share to nearly 37 percent in the quarter. Samsung may push them out, depending on the next few years and the growth of non-voice services. Here they are just starting to take off with more data revenue.

Memo to US hotel community - how hard is it to make a great hotel like this one in Seoul? As much as I like the ambiance of the Grand Hyatt in HK, this place is awesome. Perfectly designed (to my taste anyway) with a few simple things taken care of. The plugs are all installed ABOVE the desk, which is large. There is a office chair with wheels instead of a stuffed living room chair of a stiff dining room chair. There is broadband, of course, provided by Inter-Touch, and a great gym. What more could you ask for?? Oh, you could ask for having not just the broadband, but the power be provided in multiple voltages and multiple recepticles, again above the desk so you're not always crawling arond on the floor and plugging in your multi-port power strip you need to bring with you...like a dunce I blew mine up in HK by not checking the voltage first.

Well, time to visit that fantastic gym before getting to work today. After that fantastic meal (did I mention the great 17 course meal?) last night I need to! The hosts of the meal had this great old restaurant as one of their favorites.

I could not get over how new/clean it was, Shenzhen.Row upon row of new buildings, sky scraping condos. Green ones, pink ones, white ones. The streets were immaculate, the hedges are trimmed, and the population is busy and looking very happy and enthusiastic about the future. Volkswagens and Buicks (all made in China, of course) were in the streets. This is a young city. As recently as 1980 there was not that much here, 20,000 people. Now, there is something between 2 million and 6 million depending on where you count. And not, according to my guide, a result of central planning but more of old fashioned progress and hard work. The ride from Hong Kong was a simple 1 hour ferry. The more I saw of the town and spoke to some of the people, the more I saw self-motivated energy that was looking foward. Theis is the wave of the future for sure. Along one of the highways was a barbed wire fence that sepeartes Hong Kong territory with China. And although there were uniformed "guards" in many shops and institutions, this did not appear to be big brother to the people working in and around the city. Despite the fact that China is focused on family and friends, this town is filled with people who's families live elsewhere. But they are working, and excited about the future.

What a wonderful opportunity to visit and see new things and people...and the food! don't ever think that the fried won ton you order take out is real Chinese food for it is not. This was delicate sea food, lobster with wasabi, spicy tofu, and all starting with some delicious tea. they served up a great local beer too. OK, I was there for more telecom related business, but I was treated like a king and eating as well as any king ever did. Traffic was not too bad for a saturday. And today they were celebrating an event. The story I was told was of a depressed leader who tried to kill himself (in the US they give depressed leaders golden parachutes) by jumping in the water, and the villiage tries to save him by speeding towards him in boats and throwing a special cake in the water. That was 2700 years ago and today they celebrate by eating some special food of the region, cakes and the like.

More late, but got to sleep before flying to Korea tomorrow morning...it's 1:20 am here...

A friend of mine at work suggested that data service be re-classified as a utility. Great idea ! I read it again today from the NetEconomy:

He argues effectively that if the Federal Communications Commission passes rules that allow the telephone companies to offer DSL without the cost-effective resale options for their competitors that exist today, it will be making the same mistake it made with the cable industry, when it failed for push through open access to cable data networks. "Reality is, if the RBOCs—who have used their regulated-monopoly financial strength to do everything except give us a broadband outside plant since 1984 -- had been forced to put ratepayer money in the ground here instead of overseas, we would not be on our way to statistically becoming a third-world broadband nation by next year," Bernstein writes. "We'd all have a wavelength to the house by now."

His solution: "Amend the 1934 Act to make universal service 100 Mbps for cable and wireline monopolists. Put a timetable on both regimes, with heavy punitive action if they are not met, to pass every household. Give customers an election for who will be their primary carrier. Enforce a wholesale/retail model on access, and make others who wish to access me help pay the bill so deployment costs are reasonable. Lift the NCTE decision and make termination equipment part of service."

Here's an excerpt from an article by a guy that is using FOMA handsets

DoCoMo's greatest problem, I believe, is in the FOMA handset. Having used a 2.5G handset for a year or so, a casual five minutes with a 3G FOMA handset would have told you the user experience was a step backwards. For example, to use the person-to-person video service you need to know another FOMA subscriber who is in the center of Tokyo.

read the whole Unstrung articel here.

Hey - here's somebody who filed a good report...congrats to Reuters meanwhile the blood is still flowing..um..i mean..red ink.

KDDI Corp has 829,000 subscribers for its new CDMA2000 1x service in Japan, general manager for strategic technology Hideo Okinaka said, according to a South China Morning Post report. "We have 10,000 more subscribers a day," he said at a 3G Congress, attributing the rise in new subscribers to nationwide coverage and low handset prices. Okinaka expects the number of subscribers to reach 7 mln by March.

From the "sex sells" dept., no matter how bad anybody's economy gets, there is never a dearth of images of pam anderson to stimulate sales (or page views). If only I worked out at this club, maybe I'd get to look at her - or better yet - maybe she'd look at me. must work. The gym did look a bit empty though. I did notice while walking around Wan Chai today that hardly anybody was using a mobile phone, and those that were had that good 'ol killer app "talking" in use. no content like your own voice to stimulate use. Please God make there be as many people in Korea using mobile phones as in Japan! I mean, how much bad news can there be? Sprint issued a warning that I can feel over here in Hong Kong today. I'm afraid to hit that "my yahoo" button and see another day of red text on the left side of the page. Please let there be green text in Q3 and Q4. This industry needs an enema - the financial industry too. Needs to clear out the bad stuff so everybody can focus. In the latest issue of MIT's Technology review is an article by Innovator's Dillema author Clayton Christiansen about the need to watch what people do instead of trying to extrapolate from their behavior to what they are supposed to like to do. His example is of people developing study aids for students that were never used when instead they should have created a system like cramming.com that helped people do what they really want to do. I'd say a better example is the now defunct notion that the wireless internet=wireless+internet. We now know that does not work, but, that something like a WIRELESS BLOG would really be the ticket;)... I felt like going up to all the folks in this highly penetrated market and shaking them "where's your phone, dammit! why aren't you using your phone? what's the matter with you? I'm a backwards american who, as we all know, is clueless about wireless - the press tells me so every day - so you savvy asian you, why aren't you on your phone??"

Hey - I forgot to mention I'm on the road..in case that was not obvious - so I put in a yahoo! address for contact info. Too bad about the US team too. depressing game to watch! Bedtime for bonzo..

I've seen the future, and it's cdma2000 1XEVDO. After wondering what a handset that could take a 2 mbps speed signal and display it in vivid color, live, in the palm of your hand...AND...it makes phone calls! This device was something you cannot purchase outside of Korea today..to be honest I'm not sure if you can purchase it is Korea yet anyway. I heard last night that they are carrying these around in Seoul during the World Cup to view replays. Truly remarkable. But how to spread this wonderful technology to the old US?? This blows i-mode away. Period. No surprise that FOMA service is... A BIG STINKING FLOP. Even in gadget crazy japan. After being in Japan a couple days ago this is an order of magnitude better. Oh yea, FOMA=WCDMA...but I'm not supposed to say bad things about WCDMA oops. Harmony. that's what it's all about. Somebody should tell the successful game industry that....they eat their young. The word is that 6 million of the 12 million J-phone customers in Japan have image phones - who'd of thunk it? Not everybody is thrilled. and now this? But KDDI has passed them up with their own service. So now they are subsidizing the phones and "the street" is pissed. Not only is there this phone, but a wall full of real, buttoned up 1X phones too. Turns out that with all the growth in CDMA around the world that there are now more than 120 million subs.

Really looking forward to heading to Korea this weekend and see some of these devices on the street and in shops. Keep your eye on Samsung - they are a gorilla that's getting bigger all the time. When Sprint launches 1X this summer it could be the beginning of more demand...but I'm loathe to make predictions, just suggest possibilities. While many of the comments during the show were the typical slide-ware vu-graph technology, there were some pretty interesting comments. One of my favorites was a comment from a Davina Yeo from IDC who described a wireless application that was saving money: rat traps. that's right - wireless rat traps (only in Asia!). It used to be that the trap cleaner would have to look at each and every trap, every few days, to see if there was a dead rat in it. With the wireless rat trap, the sprung trap emits a wireless signal that alerts the pest control firm to go get the stinking dead rat from the trap. Great to see some promising app growth! Longest journey begins with first steps.

Well, I used the Nokia 7650 and the Nokia 9210 communicator. I saw the first version of this at the GSM world Congress in Cannes, France in 1996! 6 years ago! Still no market for a $1000 phone you that is big, heavy and hard to use. I like, no make that LOVE the blackberry as somebody though about keyboards and understood that power of thumbs. Fingers are powerful too, but you need to do one or the other. This communicator is the worst of both worlds - too big to enter text with your thumbs, too small to type like a normal sized keyboard. What's the point?? I really wanted to like this device. I tried to type a couple of sentences into it and it was really frustrating. I mean, this is Nokia's most expensive terminal!! I really think they are good at industrial design, but apparently a new team got this project. The 7650 is so much better. you can use it with one hand, the image on the phone is good, it's got that sliding feature, etc. So picture phones will be coming to GPRS too.

I may have mentioned that I heard Stewart Alsop mention during the BREW conference last week that he thought that the convergence of the cell phone and the camera was dumb. I may have further mentioned that when I talked to him afterward and asked him why he thought that he told me "well, I had one of those Sony computers with the camera on it and never used it at all...and this seemed the same". Well, I forgive him for not knowing about the j-phone success. .. Most people, even smart guys like Stewart, would conclude that. You have to use digital cameras and phones to know that there is real power there in convergence. One thing that he keeps pointing out is that Nokia will be threatened by the gorilla of Samsung and others with cellphones, but, that phones (talking) is the key to phones. One example he made was the 9210. I could not agree more. I hope Nokia responds like a leader and comes up with a great CDMA phone that has the great Euro styling in a neat package.

oops...I'm way off topic....did I mention how great it was to see old friends who are now working in China again??? More on old friends and fun later


The conference closed up with some comments about China. What a tough cookie, the Chinese market.
China Unicom's CDMA sales are below projections and everybody is freaking out. When asked what people could do about it, the Nortel representative said "well, don't call your congress the 3G congress...1XRTT is not 3G it is 2.5 G..this name is just conference hype" there was some nervous laughter and applause. . Everybody loves conflict. makes for better entertainment. Calling technology evolution "3G" was always stupid and everybody did it. Still do. But it's adding insult to injury to then insult your host by accusing him of doing something that you have been doing yourself for years. The ITU set up some technical details for next generation wireless services. One of them, mobile data speed of 144 kbps, is met by 1XRTT mobile technology. The other - 2 mbps, is met by 1XEV-DO. So it meets the spec. But don't insult WCDMA by calling 1X technology 3G or anybody who is trying to sell equipment to UMTS carriers will get mad at you. I guess we'll have to let the miracle of time solve this one. A guy from CSFB asked "hey...why doesn't Unicom just launch a service like the guy from Leap was talking about yesterday and go for the mass market instead of going for the high end services?" Good idea. could not thought of a better idea myself. What a way to end the conference. Maybe I missed it, but that last couple of panels were rather disappointing. .

OK. I was going to mention the after hours activities. Those were fun too. People stimulated after a day of thinking and talking cell phones, who write/analyze/think/work in the industry are my idea of great dinner guests.I was lucky enough to have dinner every night with great dining companions; the editors and writers of: WirelessWeek, Telephony, Red Herring and industry pundits from Seybold and Schosteck. This was, of course, followed by drinks and further conversations late into the morning in Lan Kwai FongDinner conversations ranged from the Spectrum Cap to text messaging to packet switches...As much as I like Chinese food, I'm getting a little bored with it though. Nothing boring about Lan Kwai Fong though! I was thinking about how little the Hong Kongians use their mobile phones compared to the Japanese - especially for data. But the way traffic is, that would be really unsafe. for pedestrians that is.

When you go somewhere new, it always is great to go with locals, or at least pseudo-locals who know just where to go. Seemed we ended up at Al's Diner I never met Al, and it did not seem much like a Diner..in fact...I don't think I ever went inside. Just stood in the street and drank vodka drinks and VB beer. Beer always bloats me out, so the later it get's, the more I stick with the vodka drinks. Of course, then you get tired and switch to those deadly Red Bull and Vodka's. I guess I never learn. They just feel sooo good and the party keeps going and going. Everybody had a great time. Funny thing was this drinking beggar. You know the "deaf" beggars that tap you on the shoulder and beg? This guy was so relentless that it was almost funny. Almost. Not that funny after the fifth time. I swear he was picking up anybody's drink if they turned their back and guzzling it. that WAS funny. I mean, the guy picked up a nearly full Heineken and drained it in a few seconds.

. . Well, when those drinking VB got tired and went home, I joined the group going to Joe Bannans. That was too fun, but it felt like a minor mistake this morning. I had forgotten about that classic, Dancing Queen (except for the Muriel's Wedding theme music). The ex-pat crowd makes me fell not quite so old - that is - any other "disco" like bar would have much younger people in it and this place had a fair share of gray and missing hair in it to not make you feel like a geezer in the making, which of course, I am. We all are. Well, on to Shenzhen tomorrow. Never been there but they tell me it's nice.

After Perry LaForge's opening remarks the 3G World Congress in Hong Kong kicked off on Tuesday with a speech from Irwin Jacobs. He got right to the point, discussing the progress of the technology and the lower cost of service as a result. The photographers from the local and international press treat Irwin like he's Claudia Schiffer on stage - I guess you need to get YOUR photo of Irwin (well, I did too). Chinese paparazzi. Well, he went on to discuss EVDO and pointed out what I've always thought was the real key to that technology - not the peak speed, but the amount of people you can support at "high" speeds from a single carrier. Some of the speech highlights included a calculation of 2.3 cents/MB of cost, generational compatibility, pin-for-pin compatibility on the hardware and more. There are now 10 million cdma2000 3G customers worldwide. He reminded the audience of his prediction (that as I recall began the slide in telecom stocks, but that's probably just a coincidence) that WCDMA/UMTS would not really take hold until 2004-2005. He made that prediction well over a year ago, I recall, and now he still hopes" that I'm wrong" but looking more right every day. Other than that it was a short speech stuffed with as many CDMA factoids as the new QUALCOMM baseband ASICS which seem to have everything except a CCD on them. The other keynotes included Scott Kriens of Juniper Networks who gave the view from below the ground. He said we should stop waiting for the "telecom industry to come back...it is not going to do that" Well, I agree, but, his perspective is biased. But he made some excellent points - more people typing than talking, or maybe ust doing both. The need for increaseds in network intelligence and security will increase...today's mobile problems were the problems 4 years ago on the internet...don't confuse capacity with scale; the former is a one shot deal while the latter is really the ability to have sufficient flexibilty to meet multiple needs. Distribution, and telecom reliabiltiy will help grow 3G. OK. Got it. David Nagle of PalmSource focused on the big challenges: discover the killer app (which once again got the award for "most overused phrase" at yet another convention) discover the killer device (could it be...a Palm device?) pricing that works for carriers and subs (free?) achieving the ubiquity of the networks (ahmen), ease of service provisioning and a great user experience. Starting at that last point, and having just added a Palm 705i to my arsenal of devices, . I wholeheartedly agree with that! I still have wierd issues that the Palm support group has been helping out with. I've given them a break during this trip. He had a great vugraph of the history of the handheld device:Eo, GriD 1910, Casio Zoomer, Apple Newton. He finally finished up with that palm commercial with the two trains where the two people beam their contact info from train to disappearing train, followed by the Letterman copy where the message from the hottie on trian b says "quit staring at me, freakshow" that even got laughs with the chinese crowd. I saw Yankowski, the former CEO show this same set of video clips at the Andy Seybold conference in Arizona a couple of years ago. There were some other good talks too, including Pascal DeBon from Nortel, and Rob Glaser, founder of RealNetworks...boy can that guy talk fast! I don't think anybody told Rob it was a CDMA conferenceHe had charts about 3GPP (a GSM focused group), and did a demo on what I thought was a GPRS phone, only later to learn it was a HSCSD phone. Never heard that last acronum have you. seldom used, it stands for High Speed Circuit Switched Data. GSM on steriods, but with no packet service and no latency. I think it was the Nokia 7650. Anyway, he played a short audio clip from netaudio and pointed out that netradio was far more popular than video (not surprising). His point was to gradually role out better and better services instead of swinging for the fences the first time up. Apparently there were many streaming video players that dropped out of the market due to poor performance while Real was growing a market share from low speed/low quality streaming audio. He also made a good point about price elasticity with broadband, pointing out that in Korea penetration is much higher than in the US which he attributed to the lower $22 price point compared to Cable/DSL $45 price points. All in all a decent opening act to a mid-sized crowd.

Here's an article on the CDMA World Congress...

"Seems is always rains in pretty Hong Kong Harbor...seems I've often heard that kind of talk before...it always rains in Hong Kong Harbor" (sung to the tune of...name that tune) Enough of that. Well, it does seem that way to me. Before they built the new airport every time I flew through Hong Kong I had to put on one of those clear hefty garbage bags they called a "temporary raincoat" along with the other 200 or so people as we tromped through the rain across the tarmac to the plane. Now it's so much better. That airport is really something, if you've not seen it. The train that takes you to Kowloon and Hong Kong has individual touch screens with all sorts of useful information on them. I was wondering why my view of the harbor last night was so, well, dark. When I woke up this morning all was revealed as I saw my room was smack dab in front of the famous Hong Kong Convention Center where the hand over from GB to China (back to China that is) occured a few years ago. That's in the right of the photo above and blocked the view of the remainder of the harbor. If only I was on a higher floor. I read a couple books in the last couple of days. One is the famous Cluetrain manifesto. What can you say about that one that's not been said alread? . I read it without stopping if that tells you something. While tempting to describe it as a cross between revenge of the nerds and Apocolypse now, it left me thinking many new thoughts, which is my goal in reading. The concept of finding a voice, which is what Thoreau found during his tenure at Walden Pond, is powerfull. I've read Doc Searls blog a few times and always came back to it. As a guy with four children, I always find that little heed seems to be paid to role of family in the lives of so many "netizens" though. Oh well, time to workout and get moving...

Those long plane flights seem shorter all the time. On this most recent flight from L.A. to Narita, I stayed up and worked most the flight, and in no time, I was there. Heading down to Numazu to visit my good friend and old college roomate began to feel like "planes, trains and automobiles" though. It's always that second step after the flight - finding the right track to get the train from Tokyo main station after taking the Narita express. This time I opted to store the big bag at the station..that made it a bit easier. It seemed like I just made it to the right track with no time to spare! I never get over how friendly and helpful people are in Japan. I asked a train station attendent to help me out finding the right track. Feeling like the idiot american, as usual, with no japanese language skills, he tried to help, but could point and gesture. I just went in the direction he gestured and reached another maze of twisty little passages when, all of the sudden, he re-appeared to continue to direct me..he had been watching me the whole time and was worried! Anyhow, made to Mishima in time for Rob to take me out to eat at what could only be described as "supra sushi". Numazu is on the water near the Izu peninsula, and talk about fresh fish! this sushi is to die for! just melts in your mouth. I was taken aback only slightly at the appetizer of raw translucent whole "mini" fish. That's not something served at ichi bahn. Later we went to a bar owned and operated by a couple he knows and watched some world cup action and had some sake and beer. Gave me time to try out his new i-mode phone. I was able to send a quick email back to the US , and browse the typical selection of i-mode screen savers and other items. not too much has changed in the i-mode fare since I was hear 2 years ago. The biggest new service is the advent of the picture phones that j-phone rolled out, then KDDI and finally i-mode. It was not supposed to be this way. There was supposed to be, by this time, the FOMA (Freedom of Mobile Access) 3G phones here in Japan. But alas, I guess that's just not working yet. Well, it was great just to try out i-mode again and then get some sleep. As brief as my visit was, it was great to see the kids and Rob and Takako again. Funny thing, no matter where you go in the world, if there is a video game machine or PC, there will be one kid playing and another watching him play. Everyhwere. No difference here either. We did take a long walk through the neighborhood and visit the local buddhist temple. I'd been there before. Amazing how, in the middle of lots of activity how incredibly peaceful it is inside the temple grounds. Three of us (including his 6 year old daughter) relaxed and had a real tea party there. The day went by quickly indeed and before we knew it we were going back to the train station where I was getting dropped off... ready to head off to the next stop - Hong Kong and the CDG World Congress. No trip would be complete however without visiting his private collection of pottery. Rob is one of the leading American experts on pottery in Japan, and he has an incredible collection of Bizen pottery, primarily Sake cups and serving jars. If you are interested in learning about japanese pottery, I suggest you visit his site. It has lots of good links and information..and...you can purchase some of these fine pieces of art there as well. Well, on to HK and CDMA...

The second annual BREW conference was a big success, by all observations. BREW seems like such a good idea, and like other QUALCOMM inventions, should help accellerate wireless growth. The company is faced with naysayers a plenty who would like to whip up the press and everybody else into some "Java vs. BREW" war or allege that BREW is some sort of nefarious plot by QUALCOMM to "Lock" people into ASICs. Strange.
Stewart Alsop gave a speech on the second morning that praised both Java "...will finally, as a client side operating system, find it's home on cell phones...it will be the platform of choice going forward". Later he stated that BREW would become another big hit for mobile phones. So, both can - as QUALCOMM showed, co-exist, on the same platform. The KDDI speaker who also spoke later added that "we don't want to lose the Java programmers" and wanted QUALCOMM to promote the standard at home and open the platform up. One final note, Jamdat (who won an award at the BREW conference) and other's will be able to have interactive games possible more readily when 1XRTT is completely deployed. The dormant mode operation will create "always on" pricing that carriers will be creating new pricing schemes for.