Apple IPhone, already in Canada!!

To my surprise, from an extremely reliable source, there are over 7000 subscribers with unlocked/hacked Apple IPhone's already registered and working on Canada's Rogers Wireless network including Fido.


Thats 7,000 out of 7,000,000 subscribers or 0.1% market share. This is quite impressive considering that All these mobiles have been imported from the gray market/ Probably mostly form ebay.com.

Wireless Mobile Data Capabilities In the available near Future

Wireless Mobile Data Capabilities In the available near Future

Wireless Technology is booming. In the not so distant future it will surpass today’s broadband technologies 10 fold; including Cable, DSL, and even fiber optics. Downlink, Uplink and Latency parity will occur within a few years. From then on, Wireless Technologies typical for small WIFI routers will be available to the masses over an evolution of GSM. 80% of the world will be covered. Start developing your super hi-speed wireless applications today as an investment in the future.

Platform: WCDMA
Year: (2004)
Down Link (Mbps): 0.384
Up Link (Mbps): 0.064
Latency [ms]:~150

Platform: HSDPA Year: (2005)
Down Link (Mbps): 3.6
Up Link (Mbps): 0.384
Latency [ms]: ~75

Platform: Enhanced UL
Year: (2006)
Down Link (Mbps): 14
Up Link (Mbps): 1.8
Latency [ms]: ~50

Platform: MIMO Year: (>2006)
Down Link (Mbps): 30
Up Link (Mbps): 5.8
Latency [ms]: ~30

Platform: Higher BW Multicarrier
year: (near future)
Down Link(Mbps): 100
Up Link (Mbps): 30
Latency [ms]: ~30

VOIP over GSM/GPRS/EDGE

VOIP over GSM/GPRS/EDGE
There's been a lot of talk lately about VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) over Cellular Networks at the Mobile level. In contrast VOIP has already been exploited by most operators to lower their service costs but haven’t passed the buck to consumers.

I couldn't find a mobile device that supported this configuration so out of curiosity; I did a relatively simple experiment.

Thesis
VOIP is possible over GSM with GPRS/EDGE

The Materials
ROGERS GSM/GPRS
TREO 650
D-Link Blue Tooth DBT-120
IBM ThinkPad T30
FLYFONE VOIP USB

Putting it all together is simple enough.

I choose Flyfone as my VOIP provider as they claim that they can operate over dial up. A college of mine did the dial up test and the results were fine. Rogers Wireless was chosen as my GSM Network Provider as they support GPRS and even EDGE.

The Results
Originally I had some trouble configuring the VOIP Flyfone client. I first verified I could make a voice call over broadband. It worked.

Separately I verified I could switch to the Bluetooth dial up network via the Treo 650 built in blue tooth dial up networking client. It worked.

I connected to the Edge Network via the blue tooth D-Link adapter and Treo. I switched the connection from broadband to Edge, and verified I could browse web pages. Google came up pretty fast including Google News.

Everything needed to support the experiment seemed to work independently. It was now time to test it all together.

I dialed a local land line phone number (PSTN) in the next room, and waited to hear the PSTN phone ring. It worked.

During the call the person speaking on the VOIP phone (uplink) could not be herd clearly. Words could barely be made out.

During the call the person listening on the VOIP phone (downlink) could hear clearly, although there was a noticeable delay. This delay was very similar to the delay of a mobile to mobile call.

During the call the person speaking on the PSTN phone (uplink) could be herd clearly.

During the call the person listening on the PSTN phone (downlink) could not hear clearly.

The results are as expected knowing that the VOIP provider requires a minimum of 28.8kbs on both the uplink and downlink. GSM with GPRS/Edge can provide these rates for the downlink but cannot sustain this for the uplink, hence the poor voice quality.

Overall the experiment was successful. The technology however in this form isn't ready for production or general populous use.

Blue Bombed on the Nokia 6230

For some time now I’ve been using a Nokia 6230. Its defiantly is a great compact candy bar phone with all the bells and whistles.

Bluetooth, FM Radio, Camera Phone, MP3 Ring tones and Expandable Memory (MMC Card)

It does however have a number of faults worth mentioning. Most people mention only the good. I’m gonna let everyone else fill you in on the good, and take care of the bad.

1) For starters, the MMC memory card should have been an SD Card and accessibly via the exterior, without having to take out the battery; Similar to the Palm Treo 650. Why stop there? All Expandable Memory including SIM Cards should be accessible this way. Its not brain science.

2) Near the phones internal memory limits, the mobiles phone would simply operate in slow motion, Threw me back to the Commodore 64 era, except I couldn’t go on a 30 minute coffee break, and come back to have it complete its task.

3) By fluke I easily copied a read only mp3 file from the MMC Card to the phones internal memory only to find out that it could be subsequently deleted. It took up almost half of the phones available memory. I tried everything to delete it with no avail including a hard memory reset and ROM update. I even had a Nokia technician look at it only to get a few not so funny faces back. I was able to rename the file to “BlueBomb” after hearing about the many Bluetooth security threats emerging. Who knows, if the underground community of hackers and virus authors integrate these schemes into an exploit. There’d be a lot of useless phones and angry people out there.