Mobile device batteries, for so long now one of the most constraining features of mobile terminals, could be set for a radical change, according to Jane Dennis of Casio. She said, “Within a year or two battery technology will be capable of re-fuelling.” Following much the same principle as is used with cigarette lighters, (although different fuel) users will be able to re-fuel the battery cells of their mobile phones on the fly, therefore minimising the risk or being left with a useless phone.

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The growth of the public wireless local area networking (P-WLAN) market is set to continue in both the USA and Western Europe, driven by business travellers’ appetite for cheap and fast remote access to the Internet, according to a new report published this week by Analysys.

The report, Public WLAN Access in Western Europe and the USA: market analysis and forecasts, anticipates that revenue will grow from USD10.9million (â‚-9.99m) in Western Europe to USD2.64billion (â‚-2.42bn) in Western Europe by 2007.
Hotspots, which are currently being installed in airports, hotels, conference facilities, cafés, restaurants and rail stations, are estimated to grow from Western Europe’s curent 1400 to 30,000, over the same time period.
“Whilst take-up of public WLAN services has been slower than we anticipated, it still represents a significant opportunity for operators and other service providers,” said Maja Kecman, main author of the report. “In both Europe and the USA, telecomms operators have shown interest in the WLAN market as a complement to their existing networks, but have been cautious about investing in an uncertain market where there are still technological and regulatory issues to be resolved,” Kecman explained.
Market uncertainty is compounded by the fact that no single business model has yet emerged, said the authors. The report outlines five main business models, the most common of which involves the hotspot site owner and operator (or wireless Internet service provider) acting as the main players in the P-WLAN value chain.
“We expect the dominant business models to evolve significantly in the next three or four years,” said the report’s co-author, Monica Paolini. “By 2007, the US market will be characterised by a non-integrated value chain, with retail service providers not having exclusive control of the network infrastructure. In Europe, we expect fixed and mobile operators to prevail as they are able to leverage their existing customer base and backhaul agreements more effectively.”

Basing future fraud prevention on Call Detail Records (CDRs) could leave systems seriously short of the mark, according to Neural Networks.

“The traditional approach to fraud detection has been based on CDRs but with the introduction of data services these are not the only source of communication informa-tion and they also mean that action is always reactive,” said Jason Lane-Sellers, senior fraud consultant at Neural Technologies.
He further stated that as most systems work by setting rules and thresholds that are designed to trigger alarms, the sheer amount of data being passed to fraud analysts makes their jobs impossible from the start. “It is not unusual for 1500–2000 alarms to be  triggered every four hours. A fraud analyst can process a maximum of 17 of these a day.”
What Neural Technologies has produced is a fraud management system that combats both these issues head on. It takes data from a range of sources, including the data-specific elements in the application layer and authentication server, as well as CDRs. It then runs that information through a two-tier automated analysis process. This brings into the process a high level of behaviour modelling and individual profiling which constantly learns from activity on the network and enables the system to deliver a dramatically reduced number of potential fraud alarms to analysts. “60-80% of the alarms which run through the second stage are fraud. With other, single tier systems, this figure is less than 1%.”
He further suggested that this was not only soul-destroying for those faced with analysing the reports but it also affected customers as they could find their accounts stopped by systems unable to identify whether they were perpetrating fraud or not. This is particularly important as, he suggested, “The best fraudsters also look like your best customers.”
A worst case scenario would therefore be an international traveller who consistently found his account blocked when abroad because the system identified him as making ‘unusual behaviour.’ If the system is incapable of learning and inaccurate actions are repeated then the likely outcome is churn.
So confident is the company in its system, that Neural is now offering it to operators on a performance basis. This means that operators will only pay if savings are made. Neural is willing to offer this as a stand-alone option or in conjunction with more traditional payment methods. Sprint, for example, is paying for its system by a combination of licence fee and a capped performance payment.
However Lane-Sellers, himself a former fraud manager at Vodafone UK, had another word of caution for operators, “80% of fraud can be sourced back to the subscription process. It can be hidden as bad debt and then identified as complicated types of fraud but it all comes from that starting point. Operators need to address this and prevent it happening.”

Additional funding for research into base stations has been announced by the UK Home Office. In one of the world’s first studies, the Mobile Telecommunications and Health Research Programme will look at the prevalence of childhood leukaemias and cancers near base stations.

Another MTHR project will consider whether exposure to RF signals is linked to symptoms reported by mobile phone users. The funding will also benefit an existing pilot study of brain cancers and neurodegenerative diseases in users, and research into TETRA radio. An international committee of experts, chaired by Prof. Lawrie Challis, manages the programme and allocates funding. He noted the “public concern” about exposure to handsets, phone masts and RF emissions and called for further “research to investigate whether they could cause health effects or not.” 

Samsung has again demonstrated a willingness to support multiple operating systems with the creation of the SGH-D700, its first smartphone to be based on Nokia’s Symbian-based Series 60 platform.

The phone, which also includes a swivel screen and a digital camera,  joins previously announced Samsung smartphones such as the Palm OS-based SPH-i500 and SGH-i500, and the soon-to-be-released SPH-i600, which uses Microsoft’s Smartphone 2002.
Slated for availability in Europe during the third quarter of 2003, the clamshell SGH-D700 is tri-band, with an integrated digital camera and the first swivel screen seen on a smartphone.
With the 16-bit rotating TFT display comes a camcorder application to make use of its integrated VGA resolution digital camera. Its video messaging features will link with Nokia’s own 3650 and enables users to exchange video clips through MMS and e-mail. It will also be possible to play back streaming audio and video courtesy of a pre-installed RealOne player.
Software-wise, the SGH-D700 shares a number of applications with Nokia’s 7650 and 3650 models, but also offers more functionality in some areas. Full MMS and POP3/IMAP4/SMTP e-mail support are on the list, as is a voice memo function; voice recognition for dialing names and carrying out certain commands; SyncML support (vCard, vCalendar); support for both MIDI and WAV files being used as ringtones; a WAP 2.0 browser; and vibration alert.
Another trait shared with the Nokia 3650 is the SGH-D700’s MMC Card expansion slot which enables storage expansion. Users can transfer and play back MP3 files from both internal memory and an MMC storage card. (See p23-24 for more information on data storage options). However, Samsung did not disclose whether a dedicated player is being used to play back audio or whether that functionality is provided by the RealOne player.
The SGH-D700 will be equipped with 4MB of internal, non-volatile memory, and will come bundled with a handsfree set. Users will be able to synchronize information with Microsoft Outlook, but Samsung did not comment on     whether this — as with Nokia’s 7650 and 3650 models — will be limited to calendar and contacts information. The SGH-D700 does sport one improvement in the area of synchronization, however, as it supports USB connectivity.

In a move designed to provide applications developers with easy and consistent access to its products, Orange has created a global developer site. This will detail how a developer can purchase, unlock and configure an SPV for development purposes, digitally sign their applications and publish applications on the Orange download site.

Orange, which has faced criticism from developers in the past about its failure to provide access to its network and products, now has country-specific developer teams in place, such as the UK’s Orange Developers Forum (www.developers.orange. co.uk) and OrangeLab (www.orangelab.biz) in France.
This new group site compliments those functions, and directs developers to the correct areas within the Orange Group. Commenting Nick Balderson, vice president of Product Infrastructure Development for OrangeWorld, said, “Orange is looking at ways of making it even easier to develop for Orange signature devices and is committed to working with third party developers. We believe that developers and their applications will be essential to the success of the SPV and future Orange phones. Compelling applications provide our customers with more ways to play, work and share.”
To give impetus to the initiative, Orange is offering 100 free application signings to developers with new and unsigned applications for the SPV. Developers can submit their application for selection by emailing orange@handango.com.Â
The 100 successful developers will receive an electronic voucher, which can be redeemed to get their application signed and published on the Orange store, which is supported by Handango.

Content rights issues are set to delay the large-scale rollout of multiple data services unless they are addressed properly. And, according to Core Media’s UK Manager Val Karruck, the way to do this is through an integrated platform and using standards created by the Open Mobile Alliance.

He said, “Integration to the network is what is difficult. So, if operators can do this once and based on standards, then they can change their business models in the future if they want to.”
Core Media’s new solution comes on the back of 18 months research and is the first to be based on OMA standards, according to the company. It comprises a number of different elements including an ingest portal and content server, Digital Rights Management (DRM) functions and the integration of these with all the necessary network elements such as billing, service delivery platform SMSCs/MMSCs etc. (The structure of the solution will be examined in more detail in a content management feature in the May issue of Mobile Europe).
At the heart of the offering is a belief that it must be easy for content developers to deliver their content and for marketing professional within operators to create new service offerings quickly and effectively. This, Karruck said, becomes possible because the system creates a catalogue of rights objects. From this the marketeers can put together new offerings, basically using drag and drop tools, and are therefore working with real content and not guessing what will and won’t be available.
As far as Core Media is concerned this is an end-to-end solution which begins with easing the access route for content developers, a group which Core Media has great experience of as the largest content vendor in Europe. As Karruck explained, “Content people are not generally into technology and therefore we have to keep it simple.”
This is achieved via the content server which can take content in native form and add encryption, all the necessary meta data (pricing/ownership etc) and manage the relevant workflow issues such as providing the right formats for the different end user devices.
Core Media is currently running controlled user trials in three countries and is expecting a full rollout by September. As for the ROI, Karruck explained, “In many ways it’s a no brainer. This has to be done. The only choice for an operator is whether to take a proprietary route or follow the OMA…If this even half works, then it will make operators a pile of money.”

Leading wireless vendors have combined forces with the aim of introducing wireless broadband coverage across metropolitan areas Richard Thurston reports.

Intel, Nokia, Proxim and Alvarion, amongst others, have formed an alliance, known as WiMAX, which will promote and certify industry equipment to support wireless metropolitan area networks.
The technology has been dubbed Wireless MAN, as the equipment used will be technically similar to that used in wireless LANs.
If the model proves successful, it would offer services to rival last mile technologies including DSL, and perhaps even 3G.
Whilst several companies have tried — and often failed — to run broadband wireless services, this is the first alliance which has been formed to address the key issues of cost and interoperability between vendors’ equipment.
“Wireless LANs have been working wonders, and the IEEE [the international standards body] is saying this is complementary to Wireless LAN. In a few years, this could be the technology for truly mobile wireless broadband,” said Richard Dineen, research director of wireless at Ovum, the analyst group.
Based around the 802.16a standard from the IEEE, wireless MAN would allow networks of up to 30 miles in radius using either licensed or unlicensed spectrum.
Using unlicensed spectrum would mean operators would get to market far quicker than present wireless service providers, which may have to apply to their goverments for licences.