Fight for the 4G dominance

Although GSM & CDMA still rule the roost in most parts of the world & 3G n/w deployments have just begun to yield returns, the fight for the nextGen n/w has already begun. Its called the "4G War".

The 3 contenders are WiMax (Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access), LTE (Long Term Evolution) & UMB (Ultra Mobile Broadband). In this article, I'm analyzing the potentials of each of technology from various perspectives.

From technology point of view, all use OFDMA air interface with IP for data (and voice as VOIP) transmission. But UMB is supposed to provide the best bandwidth, with upto 260 MBPS (Fwd Link).

From backward compatibility with existing n/w's perspective, LTE with a strong evolution from UMTS-HSPA & UMB evolving from 1x EVDO, prove to be favorites among the Service Providers (SP) cos due to lesser deployment costs.

But from a 1st entrant perspective, WiMax had a clear lead over the other 2. Its already been deployed in some developing countries such as India, Egypt & Indonesia. In a sense, these countries have taken a leap above 3G & have embraced 4G technologies, making 3G to restricted mainly to North America & Europe.
LTE is nearing initial development & could be installed for trail runs very soon. UMB has got a long catching up to do here.

Regarding getting SP providers patrons, Sprint has already announced that it'll deploy WiMax for its 4G costomers, while Verizon has pledged to spend a few billion dollars on LTE upgradation of its current UMTS n/ws. But after its Alltel acquisition, will there be enough money for this venture remains to be seen.
UMB seems to have lost here also. Until now none of the SP's have announced that it would install UMB.

So, with two large disadvantages but being the best technology, can UMB still make it? Can Qualcomm, its sole evangelist right now, find good customers to support its development work?
But right now, it seems that only LTE with a strong customer backing & a logical evolution path from UMTS, can provide some competition for WiMax.

Note added on 6/7/8:
Chinese CDMA giant, China Mobile has also announced that it favors LTE for its 4G evolution. Can this be a death blow to UMB?

hey..

Dear friend,
Another weekend draws to a close. So less time, so much to do..
Mind is full of ideas to write, but not getting time to think abt them put them here. Since I'm planning to go to Dharmastala next weekend, not sure if I'll get time next weekend also.
Anywayz, please be assured that I'm doing the best I can to maintain this relationship.. :)

Blackberry & DoT locking horns

It happens only in India!!
The executives of RIM must have realized this in a nasty way. Nowhere else in the world have any governments asked the Blackberry to reduce encryption levels so that the government can spy on what their citizens are mailing each other & to the outside world.

The DoT (Department of Telecom) officials seem to have realized bit late how their supercilious demand will impact the entire E-Commerce industry. For an economy that has risen to power on the back of information technology industry, such a move will for sure send wrong signals to the rest of the world. Hence they have started a backing off action such that the government's face is not lost.

We need to wait & watch what these babus are going to do. The Canadian High Commission backing RIM is not doing any good to them.

On the other hand, RIM, well aware of the fact that India is the world's fastest growing mobile market & already having half a million customers, is discussing with Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) the various possible solutions for the encryption issue & for setting up a Blackberry server within India.

I'll be tracking this story & post updates as & when they arrive.

some respite atlast..

So, after eventually getting the education loan sanction letter, I for the Canadian Visa on 06/06/08 ( 6th of June in either American or English style :) ). So now the waiting starts. Hope everything goes fine & I get my Visa before July 28th, 6 PM, the time for my flight.

After running from pillar to post during the past few weeks, I certainly deserved a break. So I headed off with Vinay & Raj to one our friend's brother's marriage in Tiptur. I had armed myself with the Canon S5 IS & wanted to try something myself after seeing so many mesmerizing pics in BWS.
Here's a link to some of the better 1's:
http://picasaweb.google.com/raghu.ramu/TipturTrip
The quantity is low coz of the high battery consumption of this cam. But thanks to the cam, I made an effort to explore this small town, somewhere in the middle of southern Karnataka & got to learn a few things about this place:
There were umpteen number of British style old buildings, many dating back to early 1900's. This showed that this town was well developed even during pre-Independence era & was of importance to the British Raj. The is in quite a contrast to other similar towns I had been to, such as Kolar, Chintamani, Chikkaballapur, etc. These towns must have gained importance and prosperity more recently due to proximity to the capital, Bangalore & even more recently due to the real estate boom.
So, this begs the question, what does Tiptur have that the other latter towns lack?
I guess I should be the coconut trade that happens here. Apparently, this place is supposed to be having one of the largest coconut godowns in India. That's the answer in a nutshell.. :)
Speaking of godowns, I have suddenly realized even I need to shelve myself off into my godown now till morning.
Good bye..

@ STARTUP CITY

I had been to a convention yesterday, organized by SmartTechie called Startup City. The program was to showcase the works of the some of the high-technology startups that have been groomed in Bangalore. The were also some sessions & panel discussions catering to the startups' needs.

A panel discussion moderated by Dr. Y.L.R.Moorthi (an IIMB prof) focussed on marketing techniques for startups.
Bharat of Amazon.com opined that a strong word of mouth is essential for a startup.
Paul Murphy of Microsoft felt that its important to build a good network of partners, a B2B network.
Suresh from Nokia said that a product needs to have key differentiators & it needs to be innovated continously.
If you were wondering what were these people from the big companies doing in a convention meant to focus startups. The answer is these companies were main sponsors for the event & these companies are supposed to have initiatives specifically focussed on startups as customers. (I haven't been able to explore them yet)
In the Q&A section, when someone asked how the big cos reward failures. Paul answered that his department used to give bonus to the concerned executives on each failure!!

Later, I attended a seminar by Jinseh Varia from Amazon Web Services on Utility Computing or Cloud Computing.
Basically, Utility Computing has emerged with the idea that access to servers for storage or computation is no longer dependent on the server location, thanks to high speed broadband. Hence there's no more need for companies to have their own dedicated servers. Instead, they can make use of several terra-byte servers from host companies who provide the service for a fee. Use of such a service are supposed to allow you to work "under the clouds", anywhere on earth. This is also supposed to make your web portals more agile to sudden spikes in accesses.

After this I visited few of the desks of startups & got to see some of the cool work that's currently being done by these cos. Surprisingly, most of the apps showcased were for m-commerce, mainly catering to the local market.
A application developed by Seclore caught my attention. This application allows secured, password protected access to documents (MSWord, PDFs, etc) having different options to save locally, print, distribute, modify the document, etc.
I also got to talk to guys from Sloka Telecom who have developed a patented architecture for WiMAX. I was awestruck to see a Base Station of a size of a 14'' laptop, this was drastically smaller compared to its UMTS equivalent that I work on. The company has already deployed its solution in France, Sweden, Indonesia, etc.

Even though I wanted to attend few more sessions & explore more stalls, I was constantly getting calls from my gang to return soon as we had to go to Bonda's marriage. So with a heavy heart, I left early.

my recent updates

Dear friend,
I am sorry I was not able to write much in the past few weeks. Colloquially speaking, I have been "busy like anything" or "sakkat busy maga" in the last couple of weeks. :)

The IEFC loan rejection has had few serious repercussions. Now I had to apply to Indian banks which besides the exorbitant interest rates require an endless number of docs to be submitted. I finally got all the relevant docs ready & submitted my loan application last week. I would be hearing from the bank about my loan in a week's time.

With the Indian loan I can get only half of my estimated expenses. In order to show to the Visa authorities that I have sufficient funds to fulfill all my expenses I needed to prepare another extensive set of docs. The entire last week was spent on collecting that. This week I need to get all my finance docs certified by a CA. After this is done & I get a sanction letter for my loan, I can apply for my Visa. I hope to do this ASAP.

I am also working on tickets booking & on the look for a good laptop.


Things have got a bit hectic at work place also. I submitted my resignation last week & have got a mail mentioning the formalities of the exit process. I need to follow up on this.
I'm currently working on quite an interesting & a challenging feature. I need to finalize the Deisgn Document before quitting.


The biggest causality of my hectic schedule is my reading. I've stopped reading Telecom Flash newsletters altogether. In my mailbox I see I have 30 unread CS newsletters. I hope I finish going through them before the content becomes too stale.

Despite of all this I've able to take some time off to meet my would-be class mates gang from Bangalore yesterday night. Chatting with this guys definitely helps to take off some pressure since these guys are also sailing in the same boat as I am.

Bonda's marriage, the 1st marriage in my gang, is coming up this weekend. Vinay, Viji & I had been to Commercial Street in the evening to get a nice little gift for him.
Its Sunday 11 PM now & another weekend draws to a close. Time to sleep & prepare myself for another high activity filled week. Good night.

its voting time guys..

Just a week to go for the 1st phase of Karnataka state assembly elections & the campaigns are reaching a feverish pitch. Thanks to the Election Commission, buntings have been banned, effectively eliminating pollution due to plastics & the use of loud speakers has also been banned that has reduced the regular din that we were so much used to all this while. Doesn't this seem a lot more mature now? The way to go for the largest democracy & unarguably the country that sees the maximum elections in a year.. :)
The candidates don't seem have an option but goto each voter & literally beg each one for his/her vote. This might help them in shedding a kg or two from their bodies.. :)

It was shocking to see a common problem among all the leading parties: so many contenders for a single party ticket. This has lead to quite a few skirmishes, the defeated has promised vendetta. I felt a bit pity for these guys; the booming economy has created so many nouveau riche & each of are in a mood to "serve the people". How can you accommodate all of them without increasing the seats? Why couldn't have the delimitation committee created some more constituencies?

If you are a rich guy, planning to stand for elections, here's an argument you could make: each year the IITs & IIMs increase the number of seats to accommodate the ever increasing number of applicants, in the same vein, why shouldn't EC increase the number of constituencies?

For the rest of us, from the voting fraternity, who still don't know how to choose the "best among the worst" (as one thinker asked us to vote), here's an argument that you could make: Why shouldn't the ballot paper contain a "none of the above" option? There have been on & off discussions on this & I think its something worth a try, instead of lamenting on low voter turnout.

As for me, I am still thinking how to make the "best among the worst" choice. If you know how to make this choice please let me know.. :)
Happy voting !!