Category: Networked Society

Networks Need New Nuances

Peter Linder1 Comment

The enormous advancements in ICT, coupled with device innovation and mobile broadband, mean that everyone wants their industry to be networked. Broadband networks are making this possible, putting the “smart” in smart grid, smart transport, smart healthcare and so on.

Important considerations when connecting industries often have little to do with bandwidth, bits and bytes and more to do with attributes such as latency (delay), security, availability or upstream bandwidth.

Some networked industries are enabled by low latency and/or latency variation – for example, networked gaming. This involves playing games on tablets and smartphones over a mobile connection in addition to consoles and PCs with a fixed broadband connection. Another example is networked vehicles and applications that enable cars to communicate with each other in real time.

Other networked industries, such as those relating to national security and public safety, are enabled by very high network reliability and availability. Devices such as tablets and smartphones also require very high network reliability, as they are the primary tools of networked professionals who are expected to be connected at all times and locations throughout the working day.

Security or integrity is another attribute that is critical to many networked industries. It is particularly important in finance, in remote healthcare, and for sensitive government applications.

Finally, extended mobile broadband coverage is an enabler for most networked industries. Networked vehicles require 3G and 4G coverage over a broader geographical area than was previously anticipated. Meanwhile, expectations for improved indoor coverage in offices, campuses and so on are also higher than ever before.

Network evolution is necessary to support these new attributes, so they become evident to the user and form a new billing base.

My predictions for the future are:

  • As nuances of networking capability become more important, they will determine which industries can become fully networked – and the way in which this development occurs
  • A new element – positive service enhancement – will be added to today’s mainstream mobile-data connectivity options
  • The primary application for QoS mechanisms and policy-management capabilities will shift toward enhancements of premium apps.

The broadband freeway is here – but broadband speed bumps are required to manage traffic peaks. The next topic up for debate is broadband tolls. They will definitely be necessary, but how and where can we build them? A premium can be charged for valuable networked-industry applications if the network has the right attributes or capabilities.

Baby Boomers Barely Build Brand

Peter Linder1 Comment

Baby boomers are digital immigrants

Social media – how can baby boomers use it professionally?

On May 18, the IPO of Facebook came at a valuation of $108B. If you’re a babyboomer like me, you might wonder how this event will impact your future career. Until about six months ago, I represented most baby boomers– I was using one social-media tool for friends and family life and keeping the content private, and one tool to boost my professional appearance by pushing my contact list above the magic 500-contact borderline.

As baby boomers, we are digital immigrants. We have embraced digital devices like mobile phones and tablets. But we  still text using one finger and struggle to keep up with the abbreviations our kids use, such as “KWIM?” (“know what I mean?”) We tend to want to separate our social-media interactions into a professional and a private sphere. Few of us have started to explore the use of social media to extend our sphere of professional influence beyond just the people we have met in person at least once. And when we have met them once, we tend to stay in touch by e-mail rather than through the use of social media. Most of us are now comfortable communicating with the 160-character SMS/TXT format, but we struggle with, for example, the 140-character format used on Twitter, where posts always begin with the # symbol.

Finding out your personal impact score in any of the major social-media impact tools is a good way to get an idea of where you stand. It’s normally enough of a motivator to be a call for action. You can start by just reading posts on Twitter to get a feeling for what’s going on. And don’t forget to learn from your screen-agers (teenagers). They know what makes an impact and what does not– and you have an edge when it comes to understanding what it all means from a business perspective.

My predictions for baby boomers are:

  • Learning social-media skills for professional purposes will be vital to ensure that we will still be attractive on the labor market in five years’ time.
  • Having a decent social-media impact score is already a must for people who are being hired for marketing positions, but the trend is likely to expand to to all customer facing roles and management positions within 3-5 years..
  • We will have to let go of our ambition of perfection. We will inevitably make mistakes on the path to establishing our digital personalities, and these mistakes are part of our individual journeys.

Petabytes Placement Power Plant

Peter LinderLeave a comment

Heterogeneous networks deployment needs the new 4Ps

The 4Ps – Product, Place, Price and Promotion – are widely used as a marketing baseline. When it comes to planning heterogeneous networks, it would be great to see Petabytes, Placement, Power and Plant gain similar industry mindshare.

Heterogeneous networks use a mix of large and small radio cells to provide optimal coverage and performance. They bring a lot of benefits, but also a few challenges. That’s where the new 4 Ps come in.

With PETABYTES, it’s all about understanding the traffic patterns. The expected evolution over time, and the price/performance considerations between available access technologies, are all factors to consider. This becomes increasingly delicate as device and service types grow exponentially. In addition, there is a lack of correlation between traffic volumes and revenues in the future.

The physical PLACEMENT of a cell is critical. A small cell has one optimal location from a performance perspective, and the shorter radio reach limits the ability to deviate from that optimal location. Indoor and outdoor placements impose different constraints on the deployment of small cells.

The POWER challenge is twofold, involving both primary and secondary (back-up) power. There are different options for a primary power source, AC or DC. If there is no existing power supply, one has to be designed and deployed. Back-up power could be more complex, with restrictions, for example, on how and where batteries can be placed.

The existing PLANT – such as fiber, copper and coax wires – determines the backhaul options. The simplest scenario is to reuse the existing wiring. A radio scenario is attractive when no wiring exists and can’t be installed easily. Extending fiber, and power, to optimal cell locations can make business sense for specific applications.

I predict that we will see four trends emerge as heterogeneous networks become more popular:

  • Deployment strategies will be built on a clear view of the Petabytes, Placement, Power and Plant scenario for each specific site and situation
  • Many operators will want to get their cells into the same optimal locations, and may have to share cells in order to avoid inferior placements
  • Property owners are interested in preparing their buildings with power and backhaul wiring suitable for optimal small-cell deployment locations, to make them attractive for potential tenants
  • There will be many urban deployment use cases developed, with very different traffic scenarios during the time of the year (temporary needs) and day (permanent needs)

Nascar nights – Not Normal Network Needs

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Major sports events are being networked to an ever greater extent. The National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing (NASCAR), for example, provides several tools for fans watching a live event.

Radios, called race scanners, are available so fans can follow the communication between drivers and their crews during a race. The leaderboard is available in your smartphone, so you can stay up-to-date on the drivers’ positions. And recently, Brad Keselowski made history by becoming the first driver to tweet while racing (during a stoppage).

At each race, mobile-network coverage is needed for up to 192,000 fans as well as the teams of the 100 participating cars. In addition to having coverage inside the venue, parking-lot coverage for pre-race tailgating is vital. The network demand at such events is far from normal and requires temporary reinforcement. This requires and add-on network, which is designed as a complement to the existing network.

Ericsson supports race sponsor and US operator Sprint with a managed-network solution for such events.Two teams and two complete equipment setups cover the 38 yearly events on a rotating scheme. For a venue like the Texas Motor Speedway, five Cells on Wheels (COW) are deployed. COWs are mobile cell sites containing antenna towers and electronic radio transceiver equipment on trucks or trailers. The temporary addition is designed with two COW inside the venue with six antenna elements and three outside with three antenna elements each.

I was given the opportunity to visit the Ericsson support team during the race in Texas on April 14, and I was truly amazed by several things:

  • It takes just three days to assemble the temporary network
  • More than 50 transmission links need to be connected
  • The mix of 3G, 4G and Wi-Fi represents a very “dirty” radio environment, calling for careful network design and optimization
  • The data capacity is three-and-a-half times larger than the current data capacity for voice
  • NASCAR does not allow teams to collect any telemetry data beyond fuel injection mapping, and the collected data is published for all to see.

The debate has begun on the role of networks in enhancing the fan experience in sport, and some feel that tweeting is distracting the drivers or athletes. But having gained more than 100,000 new Twitter followers in one day, @keselowski is clearly breaking new ground.

My predictions for the future of networked sports are that:

  1. All major sports arenas will upgrade mobile-data access within three years for capabilities to deliver seamless 3G/4G/Wi-Fi access to the devices of fans and the staff supporting the sport
  2. Online experience at the venue will be an integrated part of live events
  3. Innovations around social media, TV and mobile devices are key in attracting new generations of fans
  4. Spectators will use smartphones and soon bring tablets for replays and special statistics at the venue, as a complement to the jumbo TV screens already in place 

Pitching & Putting – Powerful Personal Production

Peter LinderLeave a comment

 

© Peter Linder 2012 – All Rights Reserved
© Peter Linder 2012 – All Rights Reserved

 

It is rare that a Masters Golf Tournament features so many Swedes in contention for the final round. And this year there were four: Peter Hanson, Henrik Stenson, Fredrik Jacobson and Bubba Watson. But is this what I enjoyed most about watching this year’s Masters – or was it that I was able to create a truly unique, personalized viewer experience for myself?

This year, for the first time, I was able to view four different channels at once: two featured player groups and two featured parts of the course. I could then choose which screen I wanted to follow, or watch all four screens simultaneously.

Being able to get specific statistics from the dedicated Masters app made the experience complete. Not only did I get access to information about the primary leaderboard, I was also able to receive updates on the progress of the other players I chose to follow. And to me that was really important.

To improve my viewing experience even further, next year I would like to watch the tournament with a more extensive offering of camera angles. This should be possible, given that consumers continue to embrace the shift toward multi-screen and multi-network TV services.

For more than 30 years, innovation has been a part of the production of sports TV. Most significantly, we’ve seen the overlaying of graphics on a live TV signal and the transition to HDTV cameras. And with more and more advanced TVs, tablets and phones, producers will continue to find new ways to hold viewers’ attention – 3DTV, five-channel audio and a range of camera-angle selections are just a few examples.

The multi-platform, multi-screen future is changing the way we interact with our content. Here are some of my predictions about the future of viewing live sports TV:

  1. Users will be given a choice between the main production and the editor’s choice version, while following the game through multiple cameras
  2. Viewers will be able to access additional statistics about the game through a companion screen rather than the main screen
  3. Users will control what appears on the main screen through a tablet that acts as a remote control
  4. The viewing experience will be a blend of the broadcast on the main screen and interactive features on a companion screen
  5. In a few years’ time, golf players will be allowed to have their phones on during tournaments to interact with fans through social media
  6. New business models and advertising options will evolve for the TV experience that we produce ourselves.

 

Powerful Personal Pitching & Putting Production

Peter LinderLeave a comment
© Peter Linder 2012 – All Rights Reserved
© Peter Linder 2012 – All Rights Reserved

It is rare that a Masters Golf Tournament features so many Swedes in contention for the final round. And this year there were four: Peter Hanson, Henrik Stenson, Fredrik Jacobson and Bubba Watson. But is this what I enjoyed most about watching this year’s Masters – or was it that I was able to create a truly unique, personalized viewer experience for myself?

This year, for the first time, I was able to view four different channels at once: two featured player groups and two featured parts of the course. I could then choose which screen I wanted to follow, or watch all four screens simultaneously.

Being able to get specific statistics from the dedicated Masters app made the experience complete. Not only did I get access to information about the primary leaderboard, I was also able to receive updates on the progress of the other players I chose to follow. And to me that was really important.

To improve my viewing experience even further, next year I would like to watch the tournament with a more extensive offering of camera angles. This should be possible, given that consumers continue to embrace the shift toward multi-screen and multi-network TV services.

For more than 30 years, innovation has been a part of the production of sports TV. Most significantly, we’ve seen the overlaying of graphics on a live TV signal and the transition to HDTV cameras. And with more and more advanced TVs, tablets and phones, producers will continue to find new ways to hold viewers’ attention – 3DTV, five-channel audio and a range of camera-angle selections are just a few examples.

The multi-platform, multi-screen future is changing the way we interact with our content. Here are some of my predictions about the future of viewing live sports TV:

  1. Users will be given a choice between the main production and the editor’s choice version, while following the game through multiple cameras
  2. Viewers will be able to access additional statistics about the game through a companion screen rather than the main screen
  3. Users will control what appears on the main screen through a tablet that acts as a remote control
  4. The viewing experience will be a blend of the broadcast on the main screen and interactive features on a companion screen
  5. In a few years’ time, golf players will be allowed to have their phones on during tournaments to interact with fans through social media
  6. New business models and advertising options will evolve for the TV experience that we produce ourselves.