Wireless & Mobile WorldExpo

Dec 08, 2005

by Patrick Harkins

My trip to the Wireless & Mobile WorldExpo (http://wirelessandmobile.wowgao.com) in Toronto this past May (May 18 - 19) turned out to be a great learning experience. I went into it as a real newbie, and there was a lot to assimilate. The event took place at the National Trade Centre at Toronto's Exhibition Place.

My first impression was of a buzz of excitement and activity. The conference had several tracks running concurrently. Hauling my video camera, notepad and behind from room to room, I often wished I could be in more than one place at a time. What to attend? It's always a gamble. Because it was a business-oriented conference, the content was heavily packaged for sales and self-promotion, but the best speakers left you with more than just a sales pitch, and the quality of the sessions overall was high.

The organizers from wowgao.com are down-to-earth and dynamic. On the second day I ran into an old friend, who knows Frank Gao and introduced me. Mr. Gao turned out to be the energetic, friendly, smiling man whom I had seen popping into different sessions to take snapshots. He came across as a genuine, "hands-on" kind of guy, with an infectious enthusiasm. WowGao are also the creators of itmob.com, an online network of IT professionals that seems to be doing well, if the interest at the conference was any measure.

My learning process at the conference was an uphill battle, and what I took away from it reflects my own interests and idiosyncrasies. Rather than focus on each session by speaker, I will focus on the concepts instead. Having found myself awash in a sea of acronyms, buzzwords and abbreviations, here is a sampling of some of the ones that held my attention:

RFID

RFID or Radio Frequency Identification refers to an existing technology that has started to find wider use in the last few years. It consists of a tiny chip and radio transponder that "talks to" a reader that receives the information embedded in the chip. This information can be extremely detailed and is finding a myriad of new practical applications. These mostly involve electronic identification of an object for a commercial purpose, be it theft prevention, inventory management, shipping instructions, or "Identity Preservation", the latter involving food products carrying identifying information with them from source to table. It represents a creative commercial opportunity for business and yet another potential source of anxiety for privacy-conscious consumers.

Bad news for the paranoid: RFID technology is already here. RFID tags are currently used in bookstores and libraries to prevent theft and to identify books. According to Wikipedia.org, the American Express Blue credit card now contains a high-frequency RFID tag, a feature American Express calls ExpressPay. Their largest use, though, is to replace bar codes for inventory monitoring. This means, for example, that in the future, a customer in a supermarket will potentially be able to walk under a receiver with their cart and it will scan the entire cart rather than them having to run each item along the conveyor belt.

What's the good news? It's an on-site technology. It won't follow you home and send details of your private life back to Big Brother Corporation. Yet. Just kidding! It really won't.

Used in conjunction with existing UPC Bar Codes, they are starting to put RFID tags under the bar code label. Tricky, huh? The speaker from Symbol Technologies said that they are pushing some of the business logic out to the tag readers so that decisions such as whether or not to send a damaged or under-stocked skid can be made on the spot without having to send its status to a server and wait for a response.

RFID technology is currently riding a wave of hype as well as negative media attention, but will likely experience a bursting of the bubble in the next months and years. The speaker from Symbol Technologies indicated that it will be many years before we see bar codes disappear, and that they will remain as a backup for when tags or readers fail.

For more information, see http://www.torwug.org/TechnicalAreas/networks/RFID.asp

Convergence, or Anytime, Anywhere

Convergence seems to be the hot topic, as well as the ideal that companies are pursuing. For my dollar, the most interesting discussion of convergence came from Brent Nixon of 3Com in his discussion "Voice Over Wifi or VoWiFi." Using a GSM/VoWifi combination phone can allow you to use the cell phone over the company wireless network and not use your mobile phone minutes, not unlike how VOIP allows you to use the Internet for your home phone.

GSM stands for Global System for Mobile Communications and is one of the newer cellular telephone standards. It is rapidly replacing the older TDMA standard, which is more established but less flexible. GSM is an open standard that is currently being developed by the 3GPP.

This eliminates the need for a desktop phone, because the mobile becomes your single number to be reached at. When you leave the office it runs in GSM mode and when you return it flips into VoWiFi mode.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GSM for more information. See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TDMA.

These combination GSM/VoWifi phones are already in production. See, for example, http://www.vonmag.com/issue/2004/sepoct/features/voice_over_wifi.htm.

I haven't sorted out how to get in on this yet, but I am looking forward to saving money on long distance while traveling. One option would be to have a combination GSM/VoWiFi phone and use the VoWiFi where wireless is available and purchase international calling cards for the GSM phone for other times. These cards are usable from cell phones. You need to make sure your GSM phone is on the right frequency for the country you are visiting or is "quadband," which means it works on all the main broadcast frequencies. You also need to make sure that the phone's SIM card is not locked to prevent it from being used outside your area. If it is locked, you can usually find a service to unlock it, which as yet is not illegal.

I can't give a definitive list of which companies use GSM standard phones, but I can tell you that in Ontario, Bell/Telus still uses the older and more established TDMA cellular standard and as a result has better coverage in rural areas. Rogers, on the other hand, uses strictly GSM phones, which gives them an edge as far as international portability but poorer rural coverage. For rural areas, I have heard that Fido is the worst of the three cell providers.

Zigbee

I just like the sound of it! Apparently my toothbrush uses it! It's used in low-power/close proximity things like wireless chargers. It's not an acronym. It takes its name from the silent, zig-zag dance that bees perform in order to communicate to other hive members such vital information as the location, distance and direction of a newly discovered food source.

Looking at http://www.zigbee.org, their mission statement reads: "The ZigBee Alliance is an association of companies working together to enable reliable, cost-effective, low-power, wirelessly networked, monitoring and control products based on an open global standard."

SIP - Society of Internet Professionals

SIP is a Toronto-based support network for professionals using the Internet for business purposes. I visited and spoke with these guys and was favorably impressed. They say they are " ...dedicated to helping Internet professionals and promoting Internet certification standards." SIP looks to me to be a kind of peer-reviewed certification. Accredited Internet Professionals are held up to a certain standard of professionalism, competence and ethics.

I experienced this level of ethical scrutiny when I wandered into what seemed to be a fairly casual meeting and set up my video camera at the back and started filming. I hadn't been organized or coordinated enough to contact the speaker in advance to ask his permission to record things. As luck would have it, the speaker was Max Haroon, the president of SIP, and he was not impressed that I was recording, even if it was only for my own notes.

Did I mention this conference was a learning experience? Well, intellectual property and the Internet is a serious issue, I agree. Max and I connected later through a mutual friend and I ended up by signing on as a member of SIP!

See: http://www.sipgroup.org/index.html
Also: http://www.sipgroup.org/Photogrid/05may18show/

TORWUG - Toronto Wireless User Group

They offer courses on wireless tech. I recently attended their VOIP course and learned a lot and enjoyed it. Their website is also an excellent resource for learning about all things wireless: http://www.torwug.org

WWS - Wired Woman Society

I won't be signing up, but it sounds like a good thing! You can find out more at http://www.wiredwoman.com.

SOS

SOS is a company that raises the bar for tech support by including a headset and CD-ROM when you purchase items such as digital cameras or PDAs from companies that bundle the service with their hardware, and providing live video chat through software installed from the CD-ROM. You chat with them on video cam and they help you make the most of your electronic devices by troubleshooting problems or assisting with features you haven't tried yet. You get 30 minutes of live coaching and the software includes a screen-sharing feature. For more info see: http://www.soslivecoach.com/

QIIQ

A company offering wireless products such as Call Shop, a turnkey Internet phone booth system, WiFi hotspot systems and many related hardware and software products. I mention this company for those that may be looking for a business opportunity in wireless.

Bluetooth

I didn't attend the Bluetooth sessions, but if you want to learn more, this site is ideal: http://www.torwug.org/TechnicalAreas/networks/bluetooth.asp. I tried to Bluetooth a file from my dog trainer's palm to mine but ran into authentication problems and gave up! Guess I have more learning to do!

WIMAX - Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access

WIMAX is similar to WiFi but WIMAX is to WiFi as Cellular is to a Cordless Phone.
It comes at a higher cost, but provides much higher power; we're talking a 5-8 km range compared to a few hundred feet, and also much higher speeds.
WIMAX uses licensed frequency spectrum.
It requires a new chipset - 802.16e on the way.
WIMAX will complement existing and emerging networks.
It supports shared throughput of 75 mbits per second!
NLOS (non line of sight): WIMAX functions more like an umbrella. Line of Sight is not required between the base station (BTS) and customer premises equipment (CPE).
WIMAX is good news for rural and remote areas, for the spread of broadband generally, and also for new technology, such as wireless video streaming.
WIMAX is not bound by proprietary standards. Thus the WSP (Wireless Service Provider) and the user can purchase hardware from different vendors.
"Cost effective new opportunities for extending bandwidth"
"Is Mobile Wireless Data the new Killer app?" - I guess the idea here has to do with easier/quicker availability and portability of larger volumes of data.

My Conclusions

In addition to what I learned from the presenters, I also used my Palm wireless card for the first time, with some difficulty, and was able to pick up my email using the free access points provided by the facility. It's always fun to play with a new gadget. :)

I would recommend attending one of the WowGao conferences anytime. The e-Financial WorldExpo conference is coming up October 27-28. See: http://e-financial.wowgao.com/