robertshaw.info Telecoms, Internet and Convergence  25 July 2002 OFTEL asks investigation on mobile termination rates In a follow-up to my note last month referencing the INTUG paper on Mobile Termination Rates, the UK telecommunications regulator, OFTEL, has formally asked the UK Competition Commission to investigate whether the charges that the four mobile network operators make for connecting calls to their networks are too high.  3:16:04 PM    Google It!     Quote of the Day H. H. Williams. "Furious activity is no substitute for understanding." [Quotes of the Day]  1:55:45 PM    Google It!     Isochronous mesh networks Talk about timely. CommsDesign has a recent piece on the development by Motorola of an "isochronous network, developed with input from Nintendo Co. Ltd., Sony Corp. and other game platform developers, [that] will be extended into other markets to serve as a "feeder" for future ad-hoc mesh-based piconets that use 802.11 wireless technology as their underlying infrastructure". Slashdot also has a related thread. Isochronous ad-hoc mesh-based piconets? Wow. This almost seems like it could have been generated by dack.com.  12:27:53 PM    Google It!     Seeding Mesh Networks Last month, in Watch this airspace and parasitic networks, I flagged the emergence of mesh networks, where end user devices can also be routing devices. Wired Magazine has a short article: A New Spin on the Wireless Web this month and mentions the interesting start-up Mesh Networks.  Mesh networks, where user devices and routing nodes can get co-mingled, might be an interesting twist on Metcalfe's law, which says the value of a network is proportional to the square of the number of users or nodes. Think about it. Where all user devices are also routing devices, it's pretty obvious that, at least for the beginning part of the 'S' innovation curve, the value of network externalities is even greater. This has some interesting implications for seeding 'core' networks by seeding the 'edges'. I'll have to think about that.  12:11:32 PM    Google It!     Wind-up and talk Last month, I mentioned the arrival of Wind-up Mobile. There's now a first review of the Motorola Freecharge in ZDNet UK. Just like prepaid rechargeable GSM cards, I imagine this will become very popular in developing countries.  10:49:33 AM    Google It!

July 2002 Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat   1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31       Jun   Aug View Categories All Broadband E-Government ENUM The Grid Indicators ICT Development ITU News Naming, Numbering & Addressing Mobile Open Source Quotes of the Day Regulatory Security Serendipity SPAM Wi-Fi Weblogs I read Scripting News icann.blog.us Links of Interest Individuals Peter Cochrane Larry Lessig Eli Noam Andrew M. Odlyzko Hank Perritt Rob Frieden Larry Lessig Eli Noam Andrew Odlyzko Organizations ITU Strategy & Policy Unit OECD DSTI World Dialogue on Regulation for Network Economies