Is it too soon to sound the LTE trumpet?
How time flies as we're officially into the second quarter of 2011. But while it may seem fast to us, three months is anything but in the world of technology.
Latest from Edwin Yapp
The SMB age to move up the value chain
For the past 10 years since I began covering the local tech scene, I've observed that pundits, analysts and vendors normally look into their crystal ball around this time of the year, aiming to predict what's going to happen in the tech landscape in the coming year.This year is no different, as I've received various prediction pieces in the last two months issued by notable industry analysts as well as multinational vendors.
Does M'sia need nine broadband licensees?
A couple of weeks ago, the local press reported that the government was about to allocate blocks of 20Mhz spectrum each in the 2.6GHz band to nine players in the country for the development of fourth generation wireless system, or better known as 4G or Long Term Evolution (LTE).
Should smaller towns be marginalized?
Last month, my missus and I took a vacation in Kuantan, a coastal town about 350 kilometers east of Kuala Lumpur.Kuantan, a typical sea town, boasts of some of the best beaches in the east coast and is famed for white sandy beaches along an area known as Cherating.
Telco market gets crowded
The Malaysian telco scene--with three incumbents--is suddenly getting crowded with two new upstarts.Tune Talk, a Mobile Virtual Network Operator, has just announced that it has a new CEO--Jason Lo, a famous local musician.
New form of mobile advertising coming soon
To date, the only kind of mobile advertising you'll find in Malaysia is the intrusive type which involves SMS and MMS.The more advanced form, mobile display ads, doesn't work here simply because there are so incredibly few mobile (WAP) sites.
Maxis tests out MediaFLO
Malaysia's leading telco, Maxis, is trying out the MediaFLO technology for mobile TV.Maxis had also tried out DVB-H, a rival technology, earlier in the year.
There's more to mobile than ringtones
MDeC (Multimedia Development Corporation), the agency tasked with promoting the Multimedia Super Corridor, recently announced the launch of a new mobile content transcoding facility in Cyberjaya that will help to reduce the cost of developing mobile content.The services offered at the facility will be subsidized by MDeC to encourage the growth of mobile content such as ringtones, wallpapers and screensavers.
MiTV goes for DVB-H
Last year when the 3G licences were announced, I predicted that one of the license winners, MiTV, might opt to offer digital video broadcasting-handheld (DVB-H).DVB-H is a technical specification for broadcast services that adapts the technology for digital terrestrial television to the specific requirements of handheld, battery-powered devices.
The problem with mobile
In my capacity as a mobile researcher (yes, that's my day job), I have found that creating services for the mobile sector is far more complicated than it is for the Internet sector. Jeff Hawkins, the founder of the Palm Pilot, which just introduced the Foleo, illustrates exactly how complicated it is in the mobile industry when he comments about phone design:Palm Foleo (right), with the TreoHawkins says: "You want to make this thing (the Treo) smaller.