Mobile Number Portability: lessons from Hong Kong, China

There's a piece Court Hears Fight Over Numbers Used for Cellphones in today's New York Times about the battle to introduce mobile number portability in the United States. There are perhaps some lessons to draw from Asia, particularly Hong Kong, China. In this "mobile-mad" economy, over 90% of the population has a mobile and it probably has the most highly competitive mobile market in the world with 6 providers for slightly less than 7 million people. A few years ago (March 1999), I happened to be in Hong Kong the day the regulator, OFTA, introduced mobile number portability (MNP). You could barely walk around with huge lines to switch mobile providers flowing out of the shops and stalls (today they also hawk broadband from street stalls but that's another story...). A key reason that no mobile provider has yet been able to dominate the market is due to the high subscriber churn facilitated by MNP. Before implementing MNP, OFTA commissioned a feasibility study and a cost benefit analysis. This study concluded "A wide range of consumers will benefit from the MNP in Hong Kong. Mobile subscribers will be able to switch operators and avoid the costs and inconvenience associated with a number change. Competition in the industry will be heightened as a barrier to switching is removed, further benefiting residential and business users.

2:21:01 PM    Google It!    

Open Source ITU-T H.264

Further to ITU-T H.264: Superior Video Codec Coming, it's nice to run across an open source H.264 project on SourceForge.net.

5:10:37 PM    Google It!    

Roaming between Wi-Fi and GSM Networks

The Register has a piece: Roaming from wireless LAN to phone network discussing that t-net, developer of the Swiss-based WeRoam service, got together with Transat and Performance Technologies to demonstrate (registration required) seamless roaming between Wi-Fi and GSM networks at the recent 3GSM Congress.

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Wireless Frontier: the Phone

Silicon Valley Hikes Wireless Frontier ""People see the PC as played out, and they are looking for new technology platforms to build new businesses on...". "We're on the cusp of the mobile Internet experience, but the key is going to be making sure the technological architecture of this world is open" [New York Times: Technology]

9:30:08 AM    Google It!    

ITU-T H.264: Superior Video Codec Coming

At the next meeting of ITU-T Study Group 16, an important high-performance video encoding/decoding standard is likely to be approved, entitled Recommendation H.264, "Advanced Video Coding for Generic Audiovisual Services". H.264 is the result of work by the Joint Video Team (JVT) which combined the ITU-T Video Coding Experts Group (VCEG) and the ISO/IEC Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG). This article in vnunet.com discusses a possible application of the emerging standard, which includes videoconferencing, digital storage media, television broadcasting, and Internet streaming (also see this earlier vnunet.com article and CNET article. H.264 can deliver the same quality as MPEG-2 (e.g. used in DVD players) but with much less bandwidth.

2:17:45 PM    Google It!    

Mobile Browsers

[from E M E R G I C . o r g] Rafe Needleman writes about Opera in his article Browsers on Cellphones on the new generation of web browsers for cellphones (like the Sony Ericsson P800). The PC was where the action was in 1996, but it's not where it is today. Today the most interesting technological developments are happening in game consoles, handhelds, and cell phones. That's also where the money is: Some 400 million cell phones are sold worldwide each year, yet only 137 million PCs will be sold in 2003, according to Gartner.

12:37:37 PM    Google It!    

UK mobile users sent over 16.8 billion text messages in 2002

According to a press release by the Mobile Data Association (MDA), the total number of chargeable person-to-person text [SMS] messages sent across the four UK GSM networks in 2002 totalled 16.8 billion.

• "For the year ahead the MDA forecasts continued growth with text messaging expected to reach 20 billion for 2003, equating to 55 million messages per day compared to an average of 43 million for 2002. The MDA will monitor the situation with a monthly statistics review - every month the MDA will post the numbers along with a reconsidered forecast for the 2003 figures on its website www.text.it."

3:30:31 PM    Google It!    

3G TV Arriving in Korea

3G News is reporting that Korea Telecom will start beam 9 TV channels to 3G phone users this month for for about 25,000 South-Korean Won (about US$ 21) per hour.

1:57:33 PM    Google It!    

First Look at the Sony Ericsson P800

Infosync has an in-depth review of the new Sony Ericsson's P800, the first palm-sized Symbian OS converged mobile. Not surprisingly, one of the first applications ported to the P800 is Doom.

1:47:06 PM    Google It!