Arbitrary "content control" from Vodafone

I've just experienced an object lesson in why it's difficult to get any form of web/Internet application and content filtering "right".

I'm sitting in a cafe using the MiFi device I got a couple of weeks ago, which still has a Vodafone HSPA SIM in it. I'm currently writing up some profiles of various voice and messaging providers for a forthcoming report.

But when I try to get onto some service/software vendors' website, I get redirected to Voda's overzealous "Content Control" page. Now I'm sorry, but no matter how much you might not like "over the top" VoIP services or their ability to offer unfiltered access to other content, there's nothing offensive on the actual website for Skype.com or Fring.com or Jajah.com - where I want to check up press releases, service details and so on. There is absolutely zero excuse for censoring the parent home page, whatever you might want to do in terms of policy for the downloadable app itself.

Yes, sure I could get onto the operator's customer service and jump through their hoops to get myself provisioned with full access to girls, gambling & harmless VoIP websites, but the libertarian in me thinks that it's deeply ironic that the Israel-based Fring is accessible from Iran but not London.

And, of course, I can get to the Fring page on Facebook - or install a variety of Skype-based applications on my page.

But some reason, Voda isn't blocking Truphone's web page, or Vopium's, Vykes or Mig33. But Nimbuzz and Mxit are blocked. Consistent or rational? I don't think so.

It's even more risible when (purely in the interests of science) I use Google's image search to look for something that might upset nanny. The gateway blocks certain thumbnails (presumbly based on URL) but not others.

It's instances like this that make me think that the mobile operators' often blind trust in packet inspection and "content control" will make them lose the trust of end users. How do I know that they won't change their "policy" tomorrow and block something I need?

Bottom line - if you're going to operate a Censorship Server (trademark: me), then make sure your Chief Censorship Officer is on the ball and occasionally thinks from a customer perspective. I'm in favour of intelligent ways to limit children from accessing undesirable things online - but this just highlights the wrong way of going about it.

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3G backhauled femtos.....

There seems to be a common assumption among mobile broadband operators that when they put bandwidth caps on their offerings, most users will still only exploit a fraction of their allowance.

This is probably just as well, as there are strong signs that the underlying per-GB cost of many HSPA networks stacks up rather poorly against the revenues per-GB if customers do actually use all their allocation. In the UK, 3 is giving away 15GB per month for £15, for example.

At that price, I'm wondering if there's a risk that operators start attracting the "wrong" sort of customers.... for example other operators. OK, it might not be ideal to run GSM voice tunneled over HSPA, but imagine if that 3 dongle (with its 15GB per month) was hooked up to one of Vodafone UK's new femtocells.... not a bad way for Vodafone to improve its backhaul economics, perhaps? Especially where its customer doesn't have an ADSL line.

OK, I'm sure there's some stuff in the terms of service which would prohibit this. But it wouldn't surprise me if some operators unexpectedly become wholesalers of capacity, if they price their retail services too low, in the hope of winning the marketing "who's got the biggest cap" war...

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I love the smell of phones in the morning....

Forget about data plans, IM, mobile TV, LTE, two-sided markets, widgets, advertising, ringtones or payments, I've discovered the company with the best way to enhance ARPU and derive more customer loyalty.

OK OK, it's Friday afternoon, but I couldn't pass a chance to make a reference to this company. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the next stage of mobile handset personalisation: smell.

I'd certainly pay £10 to make my phone smell of Wild Cherries. And I'm sure the crowds at Wimbledon will want their handsets redolent of strawberries and cream. Not so sure about "subtle" or "teen spirit" though.....

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NFC in all phones next year? Dream on....

There's a quote from an Ericsson representative about NFC and RFID-enabled handsets reported here.

Apparently, "A year from now basically every new phone that's sold will have NFC. It's a two-way, bi-directional RFID communication link that makes this device work as a tag or as a reader." [I wasn't there, so I'm assuming the quote is correct]

If someone from Ericsson would like to take a spreadbet with me about NFC uptake in 2010, I'm a seller. I'd like to think I'm a fair man, so I won't hold them to the letter of "basically every" - how about merely about half? What about we say 0.00001p per handset, each way from 500m?

And as for the idea of "enabling the phone to take on other roles, such as the keys for your car or house" that's really not the greatest of concepts, if as currently seems likely, the secure element of NFC is controlled by the operator.

"Oh, I'm sorry that you've decided to churn Mr Bubley. No, unfortunately you can't transfer the key account to another operator. But we have a special deal with a local locksmith, we can use your location API to send him to meet you now if you'd like? But next year, we'll be launching a key portability service, which should work fine with only a 3-day transfer period when you'll be unable to use it"

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Femtocell applications - APIs and platform choice

Yesterday the Femto Forum announced its Services Initiative to help drive both adoption and consistency for femto-based applications.

In general, femto use cases can be categorised in three ways:

• Basic improved indoor coverage (as seen in yesterday's Vodafone announcement)
• Data traffic offload from the macro network, either indoor or in hotspots
• "Cool new stuff"

Apps are in the "new stuff" category - things like triggering reminders or messages, or performing other actions when a user gets home and registers onto their femto. Or perhaps exploiting the differential speed or price of connection on femto vs. macro ("upload this video from my phone via femto, as it's not realtime-urgent"). Undoubtedly there will be a range of more imaginative ones as well - some of the demonstrations at the launch event yesterday demonstrated home control (eg phone=TV remote), or even VoIP softphones enabled directly on the device.

The Femto Forum's new special interest group is working on some standard APIs for developers, which I'd definitely say is essential for all but the most important "bespoke" apps for the largest operators.

But in my view it's critical that the femto APIs align with other initatives on devices or in the networks. Realistically, we're only going to get a certain level of femto penetration in any given market.

If you're writing an app for a delivery company, for example, it's unlikely that you'll only want to know when 5% or 17% of your customers get home - you'd like 100%, or at least 50%. So you'll probably want to combine lots of ways of getting that "at home" trigger: femto-based alerts, perhaps browser widgets accessing GPS on phones that have the capability, network-based location APIs, maybe WiFi-based location sensing as well. You'd also want it to work across all operators' femtos in a given country.

In other words, writing a general "tell me when my customers get home" app is likely to involve many different APIs - an iPhone version, one based on GSMA's OneAPI set, perhaps OMTP's BONDI and so on. In some cases, the same user might be identifiable by 3 of these, so there's going to be competition for API mindshare and perceptions of "coolness" by the developers.

Another thing is important for femto applications & APIs - trying to compete head-on with WiFi in the home is a non-starter. I heard lots of excuses about the battery impact of WiFi and complex logons - but frankly that's a story from 2006. How many iPhone users do you know who haven't managed to set up their device to access their home WiFi by now? Or who complain so bitterly about power consumption they've switched the WiFi off? Now, I certainly agree that not all 3G phones have WiFi, and that some of those that do are more tricky to set up than the Apple. But that's not a static situation.

I reckon that really successful femto apps will use some of the unique characteristics - such as the operator's data about you as a subscriber, or its ability to connect you to other services or a payment mechanism. Turning your phone into a remote control for your toaster is equally achievable via WiFi or even Bluetooth - the femto adds no extra value, and may even reduce value if the ToasterMatic app has to be approved by your operator.

(A couple of times yesterday I heard the notion that people would want operator-approved apps for "security" or "reliability" reasons. I'm sorry, but I can't imagine anyone wanting important services for use *in your own home* and *between your own devices & equipment* that's controlled by a third party who charges for the privilege and revokes the capability when you churn. It's like saying you're safer having your PC's printer driver provided by your broadband ISP. There is a role for operator-controlled apps here - but it needs to be implemented intelligently).

I also think that there's a lot of work to be done on handset connection manager software. What happens if you have a multitasking smartphone with both 3G and WiFi - and some apps that are optimised for one network, and some for the other. How do you manage that?

Overall, some definite good stuff. But I think there's a significant amount of work needed to make sure femto apps fit well into the rest of the network/device/app ecosystem.

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The Novatel MiFi - possibilities for new mobile broadband business models

OK, I realise that I've been a bit grumpy and critical of some things recently. But before everyone assumes I'm getting more cantankerous as I get older, I'm actually going to say something nice for once:

I really like the little Novatel MiFi unit I've been playing with the last couple of days. (Peter Judge does too). For the uninitiated, it's a cross between a 3G dongle modem, a WiFi access point and a Linux-powered device.

Basically it's a portable, battery-powered personal "hotspot" that up to 5 people/devices can log onto, multiplexing their data traffic through a single SIM and data connection. Various larger, chunkier 3G routers have been around for quite a while, mostly for residential use, but this one is small, cute, and doesn't need to be plugged into a power socket. You could also compare it to using a 3G handset as a modem/tether.

At one level, it's nice just as a standalone product, especially if you have lots of devices, or work in a small team. It means you don't have to install connection-manager software onto your computer - or worry about conflicts with an existing clients. It just uses the normal WiFi connection, and appears in the list of other WiFi AP's your PC can hook up to. It's also good to have your mobile broadband being powered by a separate battery, rather than mentally juggling your own power budget between screen and modem.

Part of the cleverness, though, is the fact that it's programmable - if sold via an operator (or another channel), it can have various additional capabilities. It doesn't have an open SDK or set of public APIs, but in theory it could be usable for all sorts of cool things - coupled with its memory-card slot for example, an operator could choose to push video or other content down to it during quiet network periods. I'm probably a long way ahead of the curve here, but I guess in the long term something like this could probably be used in conjunction with a content-delivery network or web cacheing architecture.

More prosaically, I can operators trying to charge extra for a MiFi-enabled mobile broadband plan than for a simpler dongle-based one.

On the downside, if I'd bought it via retail I'd have to find a good data-only SIM and tariff. Not too tricky in the UK, but harder in places like the US. You'd have to go via the (quite simple) admin screen on the device to set up the APN and other config settings. It's not obvious to me how it handles SMS-based alerts from the network ("You're nearing your monthly bandwidth cap") although that's a minor niggle.

The one problem I can foresee though is around network data capacity - in areas with congestion, do operators really want to risk too many five-in-one connections? Will it further increase data consumption, without adding revenues in similar proportion.

I'd quite like to see a dual- or triple-SIM version, allowing the user to pick & choose which network to use. The OS could even perform a least-cost routing function, as it has GPS in it. "Hmm, I'm in Spain, I'll use the Yoigo SIM instead of roaming on Vodafone".

One other thing: it looks really good. With a couple of LEDs blinking on the outside, I've had a few people come and say it looks interesting.....

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Rant: Virtual conferences - come back in 2015

Everyone is finding costs tight at the moment. Travel budgets have been slashed, time away from work needs to be justified, everyone is looking for savings. Part of this involves working "virtually" - by phone, by videoconference and so forth. There has been a huge upswing of interest in collaboration technologies, online conferencing and so forth.

For certain use cases - especially internal meetings between team-members - this is OK. Maybe sales meetings with clients, where both parties know each other well, and have access to high-end telepresence rigs and dedicated rooms and high-bandwidth connections. Also, events like public webinars which are 90% "broadcast" and 10% Q&A seem to work OK, up to a point.

But for multi-party, interactive, conferences, it's an atrocious model. It just does not work. Period.

I've attended two supposed online analyst "events" this week - beyond the basic webinar. Both have used some awful metaphor of a virtual conference hall, complete with tacky "lobby" graphics. I'm not going to enumerate all the technical difficulties & useability issues - but I've had enough crashing browsers, random/multiple passwords, indifferent sound quality, interminable logins etc to last me a very long time. Using a netbook with a small screen makes everything worse, too - I can't imagine trying to do this on a phone.

Put it this way - I have 3 PCs with different browsers. All of them crashed or failed to display one of the events at least once. The last straw for me - and the one that prompted this post - was when the after-event "what did you think?" feedback page crashed Firefox.

I hate it when some conferencing app "maximises" itself on my screen - how am I supposed to type notes into a text document? I absolutely abhor the inability to download complete presentations in advance - yes, I know you don't want people to flip ahead, but I'm sorry, I *do* and I'm the "customer" here. I want to know if the next 60 mins will be relevant to me, or go back a slide, or prepare questions for later on. I'm not interested in video, at all.

I have no problem with remote events - but please, please, PLEASE just send me a dial-in number (UK-based or Skype) and email me the Powerpoint.

I haven't - and won't - attend a full large-scale virtual "industry forum", say with 200 participants. Everyone knows that the true value isn't in the sessions, it's in chatting with peers over lunch or a coffee break. It's the little conversations (or even nods/headshakes) with your neighbour. Also, it's "too democratic": I want to be able to make eye-contact with the moderator, who will recognise me & know I'll have a good question, and allow me to interrupt. If I'm chairing the event, I want to see people's eyes, notice attention-span rising and falling, look at what makes people put down their batteries. I want to shake the speakers' hands and swap business cards.

Bottom line - there are plenty of good roles for collaboration tools. But events and conferences aren't in that category. Certainly not now, possibly not ever.

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