New Weather Channel App Notifies You When Cell Networks Are Down

New Weather App Can Spread Urgent Alerts Even When Cell Networks Are Down. 

The Weather Company’s new Android app uses mesh networking to spread data between phones over Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. IBM, The Weather Company launch mesh-powered app for internet-poor regions.

Having a wealth of up-to-the-minute climate data at our fingertips is something most of us take for granted. Thanks to a reliable cell connection, our smartphones, and the work of hundreds of meteorologists and climatologists around the globe, keeping abreast of an incoming storm isn’t so much a matter of how, but how quickly. Unfortunately, though, that isn’t the case for everyone.

In developing countries, cellular connectivity is congested, intermittent, and in the worst cases inaccessible. That’s why IBM, in collaboration with developers at The Weather Company, introduced Mesh Network Alerts, a new technology that provides a peer-to-peer means of facilitating communications between residents of underserved nations.

Mesh Network Alerts work by linking mobile devices directly to one another, daisy-chaining handsets in a sort of node network. Using a combination of Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, each connected smartphone stores and propagates messages to devices within a 300- to 500-foot radius, creating a mesh that can effectively reach more devices. Read more

How Do Public Utilities Deal With Mobile Dead Zones?

What Does A Public Works & Utility Service Vehicles Deal With Mobile Dead Zones? 

Gas, phone, water, road & electric utility companies are more dependent than ever on mobile communications with their home office.  From scheduling appointments to ordering equipment to emergency services.  Communication is critical to solving problems quickly.  

What does a public utility truck do when they don't have service?  Can they prepare ahead of time to know if a particular service area is not going to have good cell phone service?  

It has been suggested by a public utility in California that there is a need to help their service people prepare before going into the field.  All public utility vehicles take work into the field and are heavily reliant on mobile platforms to perform that work.  Everyone knows of the dead spots so why not prepare by sharing these locations with us on a map.  Currently, most utility workers rely on local knowledge and don't have a map system for this knowledge.  

We are willing to share this information back with you for your mapping GIS solutions.  Send us your notorious dead zones and we will post the data directly to the map.  Most the public utility agencies use ESRI and our data can fit right into these mapping systems.  

Australia's Mobile Black Spot Program Has Located 6,000 Dead Zones

The Mobile Black Spot Programme is an Australian Government initiative to extend mobile phone coverage and competition in regional Australia. The programme will invest in telecommunications network infrastructure to improve coverage of high quality mobile voice and wireless broadband services and competition in the provision of these services. The Government has committed $100 million (GST exclusive) over four years to the delivery of the Mobile Black Spot Programme. The program will improve coverage along major transport routes, in small communities and in locations prone to experiencing natural disasters, as well as addressing unique mobile coverage problems.

Nominations of mobile black spot locations. From 16 December 2013 to 1 August 2014, the Department of Communications received reports of approximately 6,000 locations with poor or no mobile coverage. These locations have been included in a database which is now available as an interactive map. The database will be shared with mobile network operators and infrastructure providers to assist them in preparing funding proposals for the Mobile Black Spot Programme. The database of mobile black spot locations closed on 1 August 2014.

Some 6,000 mobile black spots (dead zones) exist across Australia, according to a recent database released by the government and compiled after submissions from the public. Victoria was the state reported to have the most nominations – 2,029 – for mobile black spots, followed by New South Wales, which had 1,780, while Queensland and Western Australia had 897 and 523, respectively. However, according to The Australian, the AUD100 million (USD92 million) set aside for its Mobile Black Spot Programme is only expected to be able to pay for the construction of between 250 and 300 new base stations. Despite this, Paul Fletcher, parliamentary secretary to the communications minister, was cited as saying that these new towers should help fill coverage gaps in multiple areas, saying: ‘It is important to understand that, although 6,000 locations have been nominated, this does not mean that there are 6,000 locations where a new base station is required.’

With mobile operators such as Telstra, Optus and Vodafone Australia expected to tap the AUD100 million government fund, the process is also reportedly expected to generate at least another AUD100 million investment from bidding parties, state governments and local councils. In terms of which locations will benefit from funding, this will be determined by a competitive selection process, with Mr Fletcher noting: ‘The final determination of the locations to receive funding will come through the competitive selection process, which is designed to allocate the funding to locations which will deliver the greatest benefit in terms of new coverage, for the public funding provided.’ This tender process will reportedly get underway this month, with a decision on successful bids expected by April 2015, ahead of new towers being rolled out in the second half of 2015.

Tell Us Where Vodafone, O2, Three, T-Mobile UK Black Spots Are

UK Black Spots Map Survey

Endemol TV producition is looking for mobile phone users in the UK who experience blackspots and deadzones.  They would like to interview people in the UK suffering from poor reception who use Vodafone, Three, O2 or T-Mobile.  Deadzones.co.uk only has about 100 poor reception areas in the map currently and could use a few more contributors.  Please add pins to the map or email us or comment below if you can help contribute to the story that Endemol is doing.  Are UK mobile phone consumers able to get out of their contracts if they experience poor reception or bad patches in areas where the mobile phone companny promises coverage?

Related Articles:
UK Black Spots
UK Black Spots Map

Why a Vodafone & Verizon Merger Would Be Great for Customers

Reports indicated the two companies were holding informal talks about the future of their joint venture, Verizon Wireless, in which Verizon holds a 55 percent stake and Vodafone has the remaining 45 percent. A Bloomberg report, which cited unnamed sources familiar with the matter, said the companies were mulling multiple options including combining the two companies, having one company sell its stake in Verizon Wireless to the other, or paying out a dividend to investors.  Verizon Communications CEO Ivan Seidenberg seemed to scotch the idea of a merger with Vodafone, noting he sees little compelling reason for such a move.   Ivan's translation - "I would like to keep my job." 

My speculation is that Vodafone management doesn't agree with Verizon's perceived cozy position in the US market which I think is 5 years behind the technology curve from the rest of the world.  Also, the US business has reached the end of the customer acquisition growth cycle and the FCC is under a new regime.  I think Vodafone would clearly like to see a management shakeup and see a realignment of some priorities.  US Verizon customers want iPhones and femtocells embedded in their FIOS and management has failed to deliver in the last few years.  A combination of the two could certainly help provide some worldwide leverage that Verizon needs with Apple.

Vodafone also has a much more customer-centric focus in Europe where ironically coverage is actually much better than Verizon in the US.  See our post about Vodafone will start advertising Femtocells.  Verizon's management is drinking their own coverage map BS cool-aid and is resistant to femtocells in the US for fear of admission of guilt.  Change is good in telecom and would like to see a shakeup at AT&T next.

Verizon CEO down on Vodafone merger, but open to iPhone - FierceWireless

Femtocells & Wifi - Can't They Just Get Along?

Femtocells and WiFi: Why can't they just get on?

It's probably because the two represent radically different business models - rather than just being different technologies - which gives the rivalry added oomph. In the end, though, femto and Wi-Fi will probably both be options on the same hub. Ian Scales reports

Femtos have really arrived: especially in the US and in Japan. According to its supporters there is now an accelerating commitment path, with the number of operators committing to a femto strategy having risen by a full 50 per cent just since November 2009. Vodafone UK, Optimus in Portugal and SFR in France have all come forward with offerings. And there are over 60 operator trials in progress around the world today.

So femtos, just ever-so-slightly delayed by the recession (thought its boosters dispute even this, saying the last year saw the industry involved in a sort of last-minute sanity check, hence the slight pause) are now ready for prime-time.

Femocells are the small and (relatively) cheap micro mobile base stations users are supposed to attach to the end of their broadband connections to relieve the radio network from the worst of their 3G data traffic, and to provide indoor voice coverage where this is a bit shakey (with 3G, for instance). To rework a well-known beer ad, femtos are supposed to reach the parts (and carry the load) that the public network can't.

 

But despite all the cheering, the femto approach has its detractors. These observers usually point out that while femto is a great idea for providing voice coverage where it's weak, it's not a great solution for data offload... at all. They usually think Wi-Fi is the way forward for the following reasons:

Wi-Fi is cheap to deploy in both client and base stations. While femtos look like remaining in the £100 plus camp for the time being at least, Wi-Fi already costs just pennies to deploy in gadgets like smartphones, laptops, games machines and even television sets.

Wi-fi is already pervasive: because it's cheap it's everywhere and because it's everywhere it's cheap. It's already on laptops, it's on half of all smartphones and that proportion is rising. And it's available in hotels, cafes, hotspots and homes. And it's increasing its grip.

And when it comes to data offload (not voice coverage) Wi-Fi wins because most (like about 99 per cent) of the data it offloads goes straight to the Internet, not into the network provider's core as the femto is engineered to support. Yes femtos can do data 'breakout' to the Internet, but as the whole conception is about supporting the core operator network it's a less than optimum arrangement if it just uses breakout nearly all the time.

We recently ran two panel sessions at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. One on femtos and one on WiFi and we were left with the abiding regret that it might have been more illuminating to have run a joint panel. That way we could have thrashed out some of the 'pro' and 'con' issues.

However, you can view both of them now and make up your own minds.

Video: Getting it Right for the End-User 

Video: Why WiFi? What's in it for Operators?

Video: Femtocells: are they critical for network offload?

In the panel on Wi-Fi it's pointed out that Wi-Fi is for the semi-stable world, when people are not actually on the move. They move and then they stop and do some data downloads from a sedentary postion. I called this nomadic rather than mobile. Our panelists had other definitions

Ubiquity in its Wifi sense is that it's every where you need it to be, rather than simply everywhere. So it is (or soon will be) in all coffee shops, airports, hotels, railway stations, in addition to it being both at home and at work.

We learned that BT has a million hotspots that can be accessed under its BT OpenZone brand and it intends to keep on growing that number towards almost total ubiquity.

In regards to mobile network offload engineered by the network operator in the interests of reducing the strain on the mobile data network, a BT representative said the company was already involved with three operators in the UK to provide a WiFi service for their iPhone customers.

On the femto side, the big conundrum is about how you shape an offer so that people are prepared to buy into the concept - what sort of incentives can be made available? What marketing messages might work?

One approach that appears to be working well, say some of our panelists, is the idea that the addition of a femto marks its user out as a serious mobilist. That way it's not so much a remedy for the inadequacies of the network, it's a personal cell for those who can appreciate it.

That might work. But it seems to me that the job of blending a Femto plus various incentives into a compelling offer needs some work yet.

There are many participants in the value chain, from software providers to the device manufacturers themselves, but what are each of them bringing to the table to enhance the user-experience? As they transform their strategies to accommodate ever-changing user demands, what future challenges are they preparing to face? How is the focus on the end-user changing the industry?

Mobile Blackspots Map for the UK

We are huge fans of the fact that Vodafone will start advertising femtocells.  It's impressive to see Vodafone stepping up and taking the industry lead educating consumers about the new products to consumers in the UK using the brand Sure Signal.  Vodafone's Sure Signal guarantees you a great 3G signal at home, no matter where you live, and promotes the fact it might be an emergency risk if you are living in a coverage hole.  This is something the U.S. carriers have tried their hardest to ignore.  See their promotions and website above and watch the stories of people from around the UK who have been rescued from their mobile signal problems.  I am quite proud of a carrier finally admitting that they have coverage holes and giving consumers the ability to do something about it.  Kudos to Vodafone UK!

It will remain to be seen if the U.S. carriers still want to "blow smoke" up our asses with their ridiculous commercials touting their great coverage.  AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint & T-Mobile have been dragging their feet for years "testing" femtocells in the U.S. and not educating their customers that they actually exist.  It also amazes me that Vodafone owns 45% of Verizon in the US yet it seems so against Verizon's arrogant culture to admit they actually have coverage problems with their network.  Do you think Verizon's marketing executives who came up with their moronic coverage map promotion commercials are going to be able to keep their jobs or are they going to have to do an "About-Face" (look in opposite direction) if they start selling femtocells in the U.S.?  Hmmm . . . we shall see.

As a result of Vodafone's leadership, Deadzones.co.uk has launched a new "Consumer Generated Mobile Blackspots Map" asking where mobile customers don't have problem areas indoors and outdoors.   Even if Sure Signal can solve the problem indoors at your home or office there are still many bad patch locations around the UK.  We ask for users to contribute pins in our map for 3, O2, Orange, T-Mobile, and Vodafone. Please also see this UK Blackspots Facebook discussion board we started under Vodafone's profile. 

Find this map at Deadzones.co.uk & Deadcellzones.com/uk.html

Femtocells + Google Location Based Advertising

Google femtocells could reach more than 50% of the U.S. population.

Femtocells are emerging as the primary technology that will link the indoor and outdoor cellular networks. These devices improve the quality of service of 3G, 2G and 2.5 networks indoors. Mobile users can enjoy voice and data services from home without having to stand near the window or outdoors. Femtocells are particularly attractive to mobile carriers in the US and even Google we think. Femtocells are emerging as the standard technology that lets wireless phone use in homes and offices become a viable alternative to landline telephones. The ability to leverage the Internet for back-haul makes femtocells an economic force in the marketplace; it brings the industry changes in the way voice is delivered.  US carriers have struggled for years claiming the cost of the femtocells being too high around $100 and keep playing the "waiting game" in order to drive costs lower and see "who jumps first". Some have considered renting out femtocells to users for a long contract period for $2-14 per month, rather than allowing them to buy it outright for $100+.

One perceived barrier to rollout is the need to reduce the cost per unit of the hardware or subsidize it.  We think its simply an excuse because they don't want to open up a "can of worms" admitting to their coverage deficiencies in the US.  Initially it may be that operators provide femtocells to customers as part of a service plan but Google may plans to give it away for free and monetize it through location based advertising.  The US carriers are truly still dumb pipes and are clueless about location based adverting.  This would significantly threaten their paid femtocell business model and it would force AT&T and Verizon into advertising acquisitions in order to catch up.

Ubiquisys, the Google-funded company is providing femtocells to O2 (UK carrier), along with many other trials around the world. It has technology that listens in to the existing GSM and 3G network signals to establish if the licensee is allowed to transmit here. This provides the advantage of allowing network operators to lock the femtocell to one physical location or more, for a small fee.  Google could use femtocell technology to quickly roll out wireless services in the U.S. By deploying a femtocell-like system, in a matter of a year they might be able to reach more than 50% of the U.S. population. Google can deploy femtocells at malls, on city streets (by mounting femtocells on street lamps), and along major highways. Then it might strike roaming agreements with other carriers to offer users wireless service outside the home while it builds out its wireless towers similar to Cox and Comcast. If Google set up the wireless telephone business, they could offer communications free, basing the revenue model on location based advertising. If calls go out to the Internet through the femtocell, they could be handled in the same way that Google Talk works not, and there would be no need for a wireless services provider.

Vodafone Will Start Advertising Femtocells

Vodafone and others soon start advertising these devices

We really thought there would be a lot more femtocells on the market here in the US by 2010 considering all of the dead zones in the US and black spots or bad patches in the UK.. There are some femtocells on the market today, but for the most part, carriers are still in "trials" and have not educated the consumer about the product.  We are pleased to see the Vodafone UK has started marketing femtocells and educating consumers and maybe even acknowledging a UK blackspots map for UK. 

It’s pretty common for mobile phone customers in Europe to get better deals than we get here in the U.S. Such is the case with a new femtocell from Vodafone called the Sure Signal pictured above. The device does what you expect a femtocell to do by routing wireless calls over your broadband connection for better signal strength.  The big difference is that Vodafone made the femtocell an attractive device by offering it to customers for a one-time fee. Vodafone users who spend £25 monthly or more on their rate plan can get the device for £120. Those who spend more can get the Sure Signal for as low as £50. No ongoing monthly fees are required and it supports up to four users at once.

Femtocells are expected to rise substantially over the coming years as a growing number of operators start deploying the devices to increase capacity and coverage in their networks, industry organization Femto Forum said Tuesday. At a briefing at the ongoing World Mobile Congress in Barcelona, the non-profit organization's chairman Simon Saunders said increased mobile spectrum and new efficient network standards like Long Term Evolution will not in themselves be enough to meet the explosion in mobile data generated by smartphones and laptops. Femtocells, essentially minimal base stations about the size of a small shoebox that cover an area of some 10,000 square feet, will increasingly be deployed in homes, offices and busy city environments to help offload the networks, Saunders said.

According to projections from analysis firm Informa, some 49 million femtocells will be deployed by 2014, he added. A few big operators including Vodafone Group Plc (VOD) and AT&T Inc (T) have recently started deploying femtocells, according to Sanjeev Verma, founder of U.S.-based femtocell maker Airvana Inc. (AIRV). There are a few hundred thousand femtocells in use worldwide, he said in an interview Tuesday but added that the number should rise sharply as Vodafone and others soon start advertising the devices.

Operators are interested in femtocells because they improve coverage in indoor environments and boost network capacity, said Verma. He said they also allow some applications for home environments, like synchronizing electronic devices over the network. A typical femtocell costs around $100-$200, Verma said, but added that operators will probably offer them to consumers at a subsidized price, much like they currently do with mobile phones.

In a separate keynote speech Tuesday, Guo Ping, Chief Science Officer at Chinese network equipment vendor Huawei Technologies Co, said limited bandwidth is an important challenge for the telecom industry. Telecom firms can meet capacity demands by rolling out faster technology standards like Long Term Evolution, gaining access to more spectrum, and building solutions for increased coverage in hot spots, he said.

UK Bad Mobile Patch Map

Vodafone’s decision to back-peddle on its promotion of 3G is timely acceptance by the world’s biggest mobile operator that the technology and its services are not compelling enough for subscribers to pay the premium prices that mobile carriers are charging. The re-evaluation might have a domino effect throughout the industry and it is expected that other operators will follow suit and change their marketing tack. Vodafone is now to concentrate on pushing the excellence of 3G voice similar to Verizon in the U.S. This is a signal that operators are now focusing on their customer's real needs and will be competing more directly on the quality of the basic services they offer. The difficulty with this approach though is that individual subscribers have no independent way of assessing which mobile carrier actually offers the best quality. The parameters that determine “quality” vary so much between carriers and in subscriber perceptions that www.deadzones.co.uk was started as an open forum where mobile phone users can share service coverage complaints with fellow subscribers and with the operators themselves.