The Race To 5G

Jonathan Margolis, the FT’s erudite technology editor, claimed in the How to Spend It magazine this weekend that “one of the surprises about the iPhone 11 … was that it does not have 5G” and then went on to laud the recently launched Samsung Galaxy S10 5G.

I found that an odd view. Indeed I’m surprised that he thought that it was a surprise. Apple has rarely added network features until they were widely available. That’s both because there needs to be a viable market for a service (if I turn on my expensive 5G phone and don’t see, immediately, a 5G symbol in the top left or right, I will surely feel let down and perhaps worse) and also because Apple will want to be sure components that provide the service are robust, reliable and ready for delivery to as many as 200m phone buyers a year.

Every few years we go through the xG hype cycle. I was closely involved in the 4G rollout some years ago and, despite best efforts, reality was far behind PR for many of the network operators (arguably only EE got delivery done in line with their PR and that was because of some clever reuse of spectrum).

There are plenty of 5G challenges ahead starting with a lack of agreed standards. This, in turn, means risk in buying components which may not be entirely compatible with the final versions. It also means that components are not yet optimised – they are much larger than their 4G equivalents, run much hotter, and take up valuable space that is needed for batteries (which, given those same components will be shorter). And, besides, we know that heat and batteries don’t mix.

There are other challenges ahead for 5G, particularly for operators. Network equipment manufacturing is in the hands of only a few suppliers, installation is a lengthy and cumbersome visit involving many 3rd parties and a dozen visits to each mast, the spectrum available is at a far greater mix of frequencies than previous rollouts (which means modelling and planning are more complicated and that there will be a need for infill masts, especially in highly populated areas) and so on.

The truth is that 5G is still some years away, at a general population level. There will be exceptions – specific use cases – of course. But for most of us, it is 2-3 years away.

So, no, it’s no surprise that Apple hasn’t shipped 5G compatible iPhones. It’s also no surprise that other companies have – some like to be first, some like to claim “me as well”, some want to trial new things to differentiate otherwise lacklustre offerings, and some want to get a sense of how the technology works in the field. This is what makes a market. The early adopters adopt. Some wait a while. Some wait much longer.

Close Encounters Of The Fourth Kind

Much to my surprise, O2 sent me a text on Wednesday.  The text wasn’t the surprising bit – they often send me texts offering me something that I don’t want.  The surprise was that this time they didn’t offer, they told me that I was just going to get it.  It was 4G.  And I wanted it.

4G. For nothing.  No options. No discussion. No questions allowed.  No SIM change needed.  No conversation about impact on battery life.  Just: turn off your phone in the morning and turn it back on, and if you’re in a 4G area, it’s all yours.

The next morning I was in Camden Town – no sign of 4G there.  Clearly Camden is a bit rural to have coverage just yet.

But later, in Whitehall, it worked just fine.  And fine means a consistent 15mb/s download (versus the previous day’s 3G download speed of 2mb/s).

During 2012/13 I set up a JV owned by the four mobile operators, called at800, that had the task of managing any negative impact from interference with TV signals that might occur because the bottom of the 4G range aligns with the top of the TV range (and, until some recent work by Digital UK, overlapped).

at800 – you might have seen the ads or had a card, or maybe even a filter through your letterbox – has been a great success (last I checked, they’d been in touch with probably 45% of UK households).  That’s in part because the problem that all the TV technologists worried might affect up to two million households has actually been far less of a problem but, for the most part, it’s because we put together a great team, worked closely with the mobile operators and the broadcasters, ran pilots, tested everything we could and smoothed the way for the 4G roll out.  In truth, we were ready long before the operators were.  They were all fun/challenging/annoying/exciting to work with, but I liked O2’s approach most.

After a couple of days testing 4G, I have this to say:

– Coverage in buildings where 3G coverage was previously poor to non-existent has much improved (I can even make calls from the dead centre of buildings where previously I stared only at “No Service”)

– Download speeds are certainly faster (roughly equivalent to what I get from Satellite broadband, but without the round trip lag)

– Battery life seems unchanged (I wonder if battery usage is higher during download but because download is so much faster, there’s less overall drain)

That said, the nearest mast to my home is still some 200 miles away.  Keep rolling it out O2.

I have no idea how widespread this offer is but, if you get the same text, say “yes”. Not that you’ll have any choice.  But so far, it’s all upside.

The Trouble With … Nokia

A little over two years ago I wrote a prescription for Nokia. I said they should do many things, some of which were very wide of the mark versus what’s actually happened and some of which were reasonably close.
One thing I thought was really important was that Nokia:
Develop a brilliant and obvious naming convention. Years ago when I
started using Nokia I understood the convention … There was the 6210
which was replaced by the 6310; not long after came the 7210 which I
understood to be better still. It all went wrong with the 8xxx series –
the 8250 was small and sexy, the 8800 was shaped like a banana. Now, I
couldn’t tell you how it works with C, E and N series.
On hearing that Nokia had chosen “Lumia” to lead their branding, I was impressed.  Lovely word.  But how confusing does the range look now:
Not yet two years old, the Lumia range already numbers 12 models (albeit with two coming soon and, apparently, only one marked as “best seller”).  Looking at the pictures above, taken from the Nokia website, I struggle to figure out what’s what (not aided, I think, by the overwhelming similarity of the screen images on each).
The 625 … “lets you see more of everything” …
… the 925 has eye catching design and Smart Camera …
… the 920 has a Carl Zeiss lends and PureView technology (but perhaps not a Smart Camera?) …
… the 520 has a 1Ghz processor (I’ve always wanted one of those, it’s right after “ability to make calls” on my list of user needs) …
… the 820 has colourful and wireless charging shells (is that what makes it a best seller)? …
… and the 620 packs a punch (which presumably means it has none of the above, or perhaps all of it?)
Confused?  Yes, thought so.
Is a 6xx better than a 5xx?  Is a 925 better than a 920 but not as good as a 1020?

I’m told that there are other variants, such as the 928 which is exclusive to a US carrier and even a “Model T” which is exclusive to a Chinese carrier.

It begins to look like Nokia need to publish a simple key, as Which? does for Samsung TVs:

‘D’ is an LCD TV
‘E’ is a plasma TV
‘EH’ and ‘ES’ are LED TV models
The
final four numbers signify the series – a ‘4000’ model is from Series
4, a ‘5000’ model from Series 5 and so on. The higher the number, the
more premium the model is – ie it has more gadgets and better features.
Series 4: Entry-level range and all HD Ready (720p)
Series 5: Just above entry level. All are Full HD (1080p) and offer additional features – some are 3D and smart TVs
Series 6:
Mid-range. All are Full HD (1080p) and offer additional features. All
come with 3D and smart TV capability, plus Freeview HD and Freesat HD
tuners
Series 7: Premium models with a dual-core
processor. In addition to the key features of the series below, there’s
also a built-in camera and voice and motion control
Series 8:
Flagship premium model. In addition to the features of the series
below, this range features Samsung’s premium image processing and a
touch-sensitive remote

Nokia also need, in my view, to introduce new brands to make it easier to choose between phones – they can stick to derivatives of Lumia if that’s where their heart is (how about Lumila for cheaper phones? Lumaxa for the high end, flagship phone?) though I don’t like those much.  Maybe Photia for the phones that focus (ha) on the camera. Or maybe they go for Lumia P for the multi-megapixel phone? 

Or perhaps Lumia Z for the Zombie phone … because I think they might get there soon if they don’t do something to make it easier for the customer to choose.

Blackberry – Audible Corporate Relief?

CIOs across the world breathed a huge, collective sigh of relief this week.  Blackberry, the company that makes, ummm, Blackberries, finally produced a new device.

Ok, so the new device hardly deserves the tag “innovative” but it is a pretty good match for last year’s devices from Apple and Samsung.  Blackberry’s previous range was, by comparison, a pretty good match for the ZX81.  A chasm has, perhaps, been leapt.

CIOs will now hope that the clamour for sexy, touch screen, do everything devices from other companies will go away so that they can capitalise further on their not insubstantial investment in infrastructure, licences and whatnot for the existing devices.  Why would they want to go out and spend more (new) money on infrastructure and licences to support devices from other manufacturers when they can just give these shiny new gadgets to their road warriors?

There is, of course, much to ask of this new device.  Will the work/play mode work as well as it’s suggested?  Will the new device be as secure as the old one, or have the Indians and the Saudis already made a play for a backdoor? Will BB be able to issue over the air updates or will corporates be stuck with a tested, accredited version of the same software (and the same functions) a year from now? Now that they’ve released the Q10 and the Z10 have BB shot themselves in the foot, needing to wait a year before they can release the Q11 and the Z11?  Or will they go for the R, S and T10 sooner? How will consumers know the difference beyond keyboard or no keyboard? Is it backward to name a device “10” in 2013?  If email was the BB killer app in 1999 and BBM in 2005, what is 2013’s equivalent – and does anyone care?  Is it enough to be “as good as” the competition?

CIOs that do breathe a sigh of relief won’t be able to relax for long though.  Blackberry, like Nokia, is clearly fighting it out for third place (with less than 4% of the market) and it’s a long way up from where they are.  A family of phones and tablets is what is needed, all working together, coupled with file stores, a huge range of apps and new capabilities dropped in regularly.

The pressure on corporates to accommodate multiple devices and to provide secure, easy to use environments across all of them won’t let up. One size won’t fit all and nor should it.

BB has yet to complete the leap of the chasm.  Instead, they are still in the air, legs furiously spinning.  I wish them luck getting to the other side.

Mobile Monopoly #RIM

Governments don’t like monopolies.  Except when they have no choice (at which point they usually, but not always, bring in constricting regulation).  Windows on the desktop might be considered an example where governments have had little or no choice. Today, though, there is a real option of moving to a Bring Your Own Device model though I think this is still rare in government (even the Government Digital Service which is perhaps the most relaxed about these kinds of things still buys Macs for its staff).

There is, though, a complete monopoly in the mobile world.  Every single central government department that wants to allow on the move access to email supports only one device, a Blackberry.  This is because, today, it’s the only device that is accredited to run at Restricted (otherwise known as IL3) level.  All central government departments (and many that connect to those) run at this level, mostly because they connect to the GSI which kind of forces you there.  That said, most emails sent and received to or from these devices are, of course, not about important matters of state – doubtless 20% are about what’s for lunch, a further 20% about whether the squash court is free, 40% about information that is already subject to FoI and the remaining 20% might be considered to be sensitive in some way, thought perhaps only a quarter of that is truly restricted.

If you’re curious about IL3, for something to be classified at that level it needs to demonstrate any one of the following:

– Risk to an individual’s personal safety or liberty
– Minor loss of confidence in government
– Make it more difficult to maintain the operational effectiveness or security of UK or allied forces
– Cause embarrasssment to diplomatic relations
– Disadvantage a major UK company
– Damage unique intelligence operations
– Hinder the detection or impede the investigation of low level crime

You can see, I think, how hard they are to assess for any given email and so perhaps understand why it’s easier for everything to be classified as restricted rather than to assess any individual mail.

The Blackberry has achieved the hallowed status of IL3 because Research In Motion (RIM), the parent company, actively focused on it – and then ran away with it whilst everyone else just watched.  It was a genius move made all the more astonishing as they then failed to capitalise on it and offer more services – after all, their servers were on the inside of the government firewall; you couldn’t ask for a better position.  They would have gone through a lengthy process of review and certification, submitted their code for review, agreed to provide tools that disabled the camera, Bluetooth, web browsing and pretty much everything that actually made the device useful.  And so they monopolised the market – in the UK, the USA and, I imagine, pretty much everywhere.  Even though all of the emails wing their sweet way to Canada and back, no state is worried because the encryption is all at the device end (hence the panic when nations such as the UAE and India asked to be able to see emails composed on Blackberries).

RIM is now facing all sorts of problems (how fast it has come – in 2007 I certainly didn’t see the big switch.  Within weeks it may look nothing like it does now.  It could, perhaps, be owned by a Chinese company such as Huawei (something that would probably not bother the British or the Canadians but would certainly both the US government), it could be broken up into several pieces (with its patents going one way, its BBM service another and its hardware division being offered on eBay).  RIM claim to be readying a new operating system (and hardware device ranger) based on an operating system that has never previously been used on mobile devices (the Playbook excepted, though I think that really doesn’t count) and that lacks a comprehensive set of published APIs that developers could access so as to speed production of applications.  They announced only the other day that this new release would be much delayed – certainly into 2013.  It’s easy to speculate that it will never see the light of day because RIM, by then, will realise that they just can’t catch up with iOS6 or Jelly Bean or whatever is on the market by the time they do think they’re done.

So with RIM fading (and perhaps already finished as I’ve written before), it must be time for government to open up to alternatives – potentially ones that would allow even greater productivity rather than shutting down all of the interesting features in today’s mobile devices.  After all, the Blackberry has been ensconced in this monopoly position for nearly 10 years – a time in which the mobile market has turned itself inside out perhaps 3 or even 4 times.

UK government is now doing one thing that could blast this market right open – looking at moving away from the current IL0 to IL6 to a far simpler model.


Some have entirely misunderstood what this move is about and labelled it has halving the number of impact levels.  In fact – and this is by no means confirmed yet but it looks that way – within the next few weeks we will see guidelines published that move much of Government’s day to day traffic (perhaps as much as the 95% I suggest above) to a new level of accreditation which would be roughly equivalent to IL2.  Suddenly, vast numbers of new entrants could bring products to market (collaboration, email, social networks, project planning tools etc) and a new set of mobile devices would be eligible for government use, including Apple, Android and Windows.  This change in impact levels need not reduce security or increase the risk of data loss – devices would still be protected with various types of management software and could be wiped remotely (with plenty of choices available on the market).

At the same time, I hear talk that other device manufacturers are investing in the accreditation process to bring their device security up to the current IL3 level – not a daft move given that other countries or are not as progressive as the UK are also monopolised by Blackberry and would like alternatives.

Surely it is then a short step away from Windows pervasively on the desktop to other computers, whether they be iPads, Macs, Linux or whatever?

Twenty Years Of Nokia Phones

A picture paints a thousand words.  And here’s a picture of a thousand phones – from an interesting Wired article on Nokia.
One word leaps to mind though when I look at the picture – #fail.  The phones highlighted in green are the ones I used to own.  From 1992 to 2003, I owned a dozen Nokias.  From 2003 to 2012, precisely none.  Over a ten year period when their portfolio roughly quadrupled in size (just from this picture), they sold none to me. And they still aren’t selling to me.
On a day when they announce a further 10,000 job losses – bringing the total to 40,000 – as well as the sale of 90% of Vertu (see my Prescription), it’s sad to look back and see a company that once dominated the market continuing to fail.   Nokia’s own Kodak moment continues on a very slow exposure (note: I still believe Nokia will survive, propped up by Microsoft’s absolute need for a partner in mobile but there is still plenty of trouble ahead).

As Went Nokia ($NOK), So Goes $RIMM

It’s about 7 months since I last wrote about Nokia.  Since then I’ve been transfixed by the total slamming that Research in Motion (aka RIMM aka the maker of Blackberries) has had.  The graph below compares Nokia and RIMM over the last 5 years.  Whilst RIMM largely outperformed NOK, the last year has been brutal for them.
Zooming in and Looking at year to date, NOK has outperformed RIMM (not that you’d have wanted money in either of them).  RIMM is down around 70% this year.  What a stunning fall from grace. The latest fall was triggered by a write-off of their planned iPad competitor, the Playbook. The write-off amount is staggering, at $485m, suggesting that RIMM had pre-bought many hundreds of thousands of units (it’s probable that it was more than that, and that there are actually millions of the things sitting, gathering dust, in a warehouse or two), expecting them to sell by the truck load – that would seem to go against the long since in vogue “Just In Time” manufacturing process.  It’s also possible, I suppose, that this isn’t a write-off of just inventory but actually a write-off of the entire product.  RIMM’s results are out soon and we’ll perhaps find out then.
Nokia has new product with its Windows Phone-based Lumia range; new blackberries are on the horizon and RIMM, like Nokia, has also to execute an operating system shift (moving to QNX).  Such moves are fraught with risk, especially in a world where your corporate customers have already been hit by email outages.  Making QNX work – keeping old apps working, making the UI consistent enough (but allowing new capabilities to feature highly), zeroing in on the bugs and getting the security accreditation right (for the many government customers) will all be hugely challenging.  And remember, the Playbook is powered by QNX.  Uhoh.
My guess is that RIMM won’t pull it off and further falls are on the way (although they will be interrupted by rallies as the market hopes that the tide has turned).  So where does that leave RIMM?  An acquisition target? It’s hard to see an industry player stepping up, but private equity houses have plenty of money now.  Bankrupt?  That seems unlikely too – they are still selling millions of devices, and it’s a long way to zero.  A CEO change?   That seems likely before either of the above – new CEO cleans house, reverses some wrongs and tries to get it all back together.
Rumour has it that RIMM will name their new operating system “X”.  It might mark the spot.  But I think the spot is quite a lot lower than it is today.

Gove Makes Case For Cloud

With today’s FT front page story (update: and a BBC story not behind a paywall which says that there isn’t a story after all), we might just have found another supporter for increased use of the cloud in government, albeit an inadvertent and perhaps unlikely one. Who knew that Michael Gove would be such a help?  Maybe he just wants a GoveCloud?

New arrivals in government are often surprised by the processes and controls that they operate under. I suspect this government, perhaps the first to be truly wired, felt it more than most. After all, when Tony Blair took office, a web was something spiders spun. It strikes me that the last thing anyone was trying to do was to hide information from the FoI act.

Instead they were, in my view, reacting to:

– A desire to be in control of their own inbox so that they could read and answer every email rather than have a gatekeeper or administrator preview it

– Their experience in opposition when they were doubtless used to reading email on their phones, their tablets, a web browser on holiday or on their sleek MacBooks.

– A first time experience with a government laptop and an all too common 40 minute boot time coupled with the requirement for probably 3 passwords (alphanumeric and mandatory special characters) not to mention a dongle. All enough to drive anyone to an alternative solution.

Cloud in and of itself isn’t the solution to these problems but the consideration of the cloud will force departments to think about the realistic security controls their data needs. That will lead to downgrading much of the perceived need for increased security – after all, corporations the world over who doubtless worry about their corporate secrets just as much as government worries about its own secrets.

Data in the cloud and in a government domain, held under a government contract, will be just as liable to the rules of FoI as data within the big data centre firewall. But it will be more useful to its users. Alongside that costs will fall and productivity will even go up, discounting for the changes in work/life balance.

And then the non-story that is today’s FT front page will, instead, be asking questions about why government data is still locked behind big, expensive, unwieldy, dedicated, 20th century systems.

Meanwhile, I suspect a lot of people across government swallowed hard when they read this story – almost certainly after it was forwarded to their private mail accounts – and wondered whether to carry on using their android tablets for email.