Strictly by the Numbers

No matter how you look it, the data from our web and network logs is compelling and even a bit alarming.

Consider the following about our Wi-Fi network last month:

• Total devices grew by more than 7%.
• Smart Mobile devices (think iPhone, Windows Mobile, etc) increased by 16%.
• 1 in 8 devices is a Smart Mobile device.
• We’ve seen nearly 90,000 unique devices on Wi-Fi since October, 2007.
• iPhone/iPod Touch use grew by over 22%.
• 1 in 12 devices is an iPhone or iPod Touch.
• Macs now account for 23% of Wi-Fi devices.

In any month these numbers would be extraordinary, but this was a summer month. A month when many students, faculty and staff are away. School starts again in a week, I wonder what the next couple of months will bring.

Let me know what you think.

In the mean time, I’ve updated the UW Mobile Usage Stats for your viewing pleasure.

OK, I’m sold. How do I configure the thing?

Before proceeding much further you need two things: an iPhone/iPod Touch with 2.0 software and an UW Exchange account. If you haven’t yet upgraded to 2.0 we’ll wait while you do so now…..Don’t forget to upgrade to iTunes 7.7 as part of the process. There is a freshlymobile.com article to help you find latest iTunes and the 2.0 software if you don’t already have it.

Let’s get started

The first step is to tap the Settings icon from the iPhone home screen.

Tap the Mail, Contacts, Calendars button

Choose Microsoft Exchange at the top of the screen.

Now we enter the meat of the configuration. The smudged text in this screen shot generally illustrates where personal information is entered, while the clear text is likely the same for everyone.

Email: enter your @u.washington (or other) email address.

Username: enter netid\ (yes, that’s a backslash) followed by your UW NetID.

Password: enter your, ehh, password.

Description: enter UW Exchange or any other name you’d like to give this service on your iPhone.

Tap Done or Next.

Mostly likely you will see a message asking you to accept the certificate. Tap Accept.

Almost done. You will now need to tell the iPhone the name of our Exchange server. Enter exchange.washington.edu in the Server field.

Finally choose which services you want to automatically sync with Exchange. You can always changes these choices later by visiting the Mail, Contacts, Calendar preferences in the Settings area.

I hope this helps get you going. Please let me know if you have any corrections or suggestions.

They wait for many is over. Apple has officially released iTunes 7.7. This update includes access to the App (application) store to browse new iPhone apps.

I’ll post more on it later, but you can snag it at the Apple iTunes web site.

To get the new applications (along with Microsoft Exchange support and other new features), you need to upgrade your iPhone to version 2.0 software. At the time of this writing, Apple has NOT officially released this software. Several web sites (Lifehacker, MacRumors and others) are listing links to an Apple web page to download an early version. Reports from users are that this version does seem to work, but it is NOT official and it could cause problems with your phone, so proceed at your own risk.

I’ve posted the updated mobile usage statics from the University of Washington Wi-Fi network. We gather these stats by looking at the information that the web browser presents when accessing the UW Wi-Fi network.

This month we’ve seen increases in all mobile platforms. As you can see from the chart the right, the iPhone and iPod Touch make up around 69% of mobile (non-laptop) devices using our Wi-Fi network.

Overall mobile platforms make up nearly 9% of all Wi-Fi devices on the network with the iPhone accounting for nearly 6% of the total.

Overall Mobile Usage on the Rise

Wi-Fi usage (including laptops) was up overall for the month. We’ve seen total of nearly 5,000 new devices on the Wi-Fi network since the end of May. This represents a 6.5% increase over last month and accounts for over 75,000 unique Wi-Fi devices on the network since we began tracking usage in October 07.

Windows devices still have make up a majority and account for 64% of all Wi-Fi devices on the network. Mac OS follows strongly with a 24% share with the Apple mobile platforms next at 6%. Combining desktop and mobile platforms (and interesting but potentially pointless exercise) finds Windows/Windows Mobile (all versions including) making up 2/3s of all Wi-Fi devices and Apple (OS X, iPhone and iPod Touch) with a 30% share.

Feel free to check out more graphs at the UW mobile stats page.

Apple just announced the details of the 3G iPhone at the World Wide Developer’s Conference (WWDC). This new phone is just a bit thicker (.02 inches to be exact), but sports many new features ranging from the obligatory 3G high speed connections to GPS support to a ton of new features in the 2.0 software release.

Starting at $199 for the 8GB version and $299 for the 16GB, the 3G iPhone is around half the cost as the old version.

What they didn’t say…

While these updates are truly amazing (many of the new software features will be available free to existing iPhone users*), it was interesting what they left out. For example, there was no mention of AT&T nor whether they will be charging more for the high speed data connections.

Current iPhone users pay a $20 premium for unlimited data. When I visited Apple and AT&T after the announcement, the links to the existing plans were gone. I suspect that we will see the cost increase to around $35-$45/mo for the new, fast data access.

I have a call into AT&T to find out the scoop. In the mean time, what do you think?

[UPDATE 3:30 PST] AT&T’s iPhone web site still shows the old, 2G iPhone and related plans. But if you dig further into their press pages you find two press releases here and here. The first release contains this nugget:

• With a two-year contract, the price of an 8GB iPhone 3G will be $199; the 16GB model will be priced at $299.
• Unlimited iPhone 3G data plans for consumers will be available for $30 a month, in addition to voice plans starting at $39.99 a month.
• Unlimited 3G data plans for business users will be available for $45 a month, in addition to a voice plan.

New Data Rates and Voice Plans

While still lacking details, it is clear the faster data will cost at least $10/mo more. It also seems that they have added new voice plans so light phone users may be able to trim their bill.

What’s interesting is the chasm between the consumer and business data rates. Consumers pay $30/mo while enterprises will pay $45/mo. It will be good to hear what business users get for that extra $15/mo.

An exciting feature of the Surface is the ability to manipulate information thru human interaction such as the use of hand movements to share and update information. The phone is portable and digital but it lacks a large sized display for viewing and allow for a large range of human touch and movement. That’s where the Surface comes in and can be seen as a natural extension to the cell phone with a better and larger HCI and can serve as a physical hub for other cell phones (or really our mini-computers) to connect and share among other things.

Currently, most of the focus with social software applications has been on internet sites, such Facebook and Twitter, which require users to enter in information about himself or herself on a regular basis thru a keyboard or mouse. This is usually done during social site registration and/or updating information about themselves whether that is presence, location or profile info. This is fine but its probably one of the pain points with social software in general which is the required explicit action usually in the form of typing. This means that when push comes to shove folks don’t have time to twitter.

So what makes the mobile device so special is its ability to know about you all the time and can transmit this information in a wireless fashion. The phone is able to bring to socialization a new context related to location awareness. In most cases you already have lots of personally stored information on your phone, which you just entered once. Coupled with location awareness and wireless capabilities, the phone can now update, receive and send profile and presence information implicitly without having you do a thing.

If you are waiting for a plane at an airport your real time presence information can be advertised to a feed that your friends subscribe to so they know where you are. The airport might know when you have arrived and can transmit flight and departure information to your phone vs having to find and look it up on digital board. Your phone might also detect fellow colleagues who are also at the airport so that you can meet up with them while waiting for your flight. All this data being passed and without specific action taken from the individual.

Sure the scenarios here might scare a bunch of folks, including me, but if we work thru the issues like we have done with all other new ideas in the past then I think the possibilities of what you and your phone can achieve for the future is very much wide open.
So lets figure out ways to capitalize on these capabilities sooner rather than later.

The answers to these and other questions can be very simple or deeply complex. Google or Yahoo! may help some, but I’ve found it difficult to find a good primer on cellular technology.

Enter Mobility 101

To help answer some of these questions, I’ve started a section on FreshlyMobile.com called Mobility 101.

Mobility 101 articles will eventually cover a wide range of topics designed to provide some perspective on the technology and business of mobile communication, to explain common terms or to generally help take the mystery in how things work.

As with many things in life, all things mobile can involve some very complex concepts and technology. In Mobility 101, (and indeed much of FreshlyMobile) we will often tend towards easier to understand generalizations rather than the often impenetrable (but technically accurate) technical minutia. If we miss the mark, miss the point or are just plain mistaken, please let us know.

Cellular Tech 101

Today I would like to introduce the first in a four-part series that will take a brief look at the history, terminology, technology, and the general anatomy of cellular networks, which I call Cellular Tech 101.

You can download the slides for part one here.

Ever wonder 1G, 2G or 3G means? Well, the “G” in 1G, 2G, 3G, etc refers to a generation of technology in the cellular industry. The first mobile phones (you remember or have seen pictures of the big brick phone or a phone in a bag) are now generally called 1G phones. Service in this period was limited and very expensive. While few people had these phones, the technology was changing rapidly and in the 1990’s we began to move into the 2nd Generation or 2G era.

With 2G, the phones moved from analog to digital. This allowed quality and capacity to improve, eventually driving down prices (most phones used in the US today are 2G phones). With the move to digital and 2G, we found cellular companies divided into two technology camps, CDMA and GSM. We will look at these camps a bit more closely next time. In practical terms it meant that phones would not interoperate across networks with a different type of technology.

Here in the US, we have been slowly moving towards the 3rd Generation technologies. With 3G comes faster speeds for data. It makes browsing the Internet or watching videos much easier. Three of the 4 major carriers in the US (AT&T, Sprint and Verizon) have been operating 3G networks for some time. T-Mobile is currently in the process of upgrading their network to 3G and is currently offering something that is often called 2.5G.

2.5G is a marketing term and it is an interim step between the 2G and 3G worlds. All the carriers took this 2.5G step as it offered faster data service than 2G, without the pain and expense of upgrading the network to support 3G. Speaking of 2.5G and 3G, you may have heard some people say that the Apple iPhone only supports EDGE and not 3G (yet). EDGE is considered a 2.5G technology and is widely deployed by AT&T and T-Mobile in the US.

Please feel free to download the slides to see a bit more about what distinguishes the various generations of cellular technology. Also let me know if you have any questions, comments or corrections by leaving a comment or sending me an email.

Until next time….

Just Before CTIA Wireless Show

I assume that AT&T engineers had been hard at work to tune the network just prior to this year’s CTIA show as my speeds were the fastest I’ve tested.

Download speeds clocked in at just under 2 mbps while uploads were a very strong 1.4 mbps.

Near the Apple Campus

While Las Vegas was very strong Cupertino, CA wasn’t too shabby either. The results below were taken near Apple HQ.

Again a strong showing with 1.9 mbps down and 1.4 mbps up.

Home again

I re-ran the tests in my office at the University of Washington in Seattle. These are pretty typical of the rates I have seen in other parts of the country.

Looks like my HSUPA train ride is over, but things are still a very usable 1.5 mbps down and .5 mbps up.

Nick Jones (Distinguished Gartner Analyst) helped set the stage in his keynote by stating that the next 3-5 years are the “most interesting since the mobile started”. If you’ve read my first post to this site, you know that I’ve feel this way too.

There is little doubt that content, uses (applications) and consumer technology are king. Every presentation to date has at least touched on or more of these themes. Look to more indepth thoughts about some of these issues in articles to come.

LTE vs WiMax

Nick predicts that LTE will begin to dominate the 4G landscape in the near term and that WiMax numbers and usage (in the enterprise) will remain relatively flat for the next few years. He cites lack of ubiquity in terms of networks, devices and mobility as factors that will limit WiMax in the near term. While Intel and some of my friends at ClearWire and in Africa might disagree, I too think that LTE will gain a lot of grown before WiMax will take root in a big way. I’d be happy to be proven wrong, but that is the way things look today.

A couple of other interesting predictions from Nick:

• 802.11n shipments won’t overtake 802.11 a/g in the enterprise until 2010
• Limits in back haul represent a challenge to ubiquitous, high-speed mobile networks.
• Bluetooth still has legs with Ultra Low Power (ULP) and BT with wifi making major inroads.
• 75% of handsets in Western Europe will be smartphones by 2011
• HD video will appear in handsets by later this year or early next.

What do you think about Nick’s predictions?