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October 12-18
Geneva, Switzerland

TU Telecom World is different. Literally every country in the world is here. Many of the major booths were 3 stories tall. There were many futures projects and many more examples of possible near term products that use communications. We struggle with a way to characterize this and the best, is the mixing bowl of telecom + computing + Internet + United Nations. Here are our Highlights.

Sharp

Seen for the first time was the Galileo Personal Server, HG-01S. This includes a 120GB hard drive, it provides streaming video for PCs, it can be used to publish digital albums on the Internet and it uses 802.11b.

In the booth was also the 15” portable TV seen at CEATEC, model LC-15L1, also based on 802.11b.

Mitsubishi Electric

Shown in glass towers were Mobil Phone Devices targeted for 2008 to 2010 that look like illuminated glass where the patterns are the characteristics of the device. One of the most interesting was a phone and display that could be folded into a wrist band or just used flat as a phone.

Panasonic

Tucked in a corner of the booth was RoverCam. This is a robotic wirelessly controlled video camera for the home. The application is for home monitoring over the Internet or home network. The demonstration was described as a product concept but not a product. The device sets on wheels that operate only on a flat surface. This can be moved remotely and the RoverCam will stop before hitting obstacles. The camera has complete freedom of imaging direction.

Panasonic was showing an interesting application of WiFi for moving trains. On the poles along the train tracks would be access points that are controlled by a Mobil Access Controller. This controller would enable fast handoff switching between access points. On the train would be access points in each car. These would link to the pole access points and to the client Mobil devices that included PCs and other 802.11 equipped clients that the riders are using in the trains.

Panasonic was also showing future devices. One was called a “Winged Image Grabber” which had a built in camera in a cell phone. Another was in the shape of sunglasses. It was called a Sunglasses Terminal and would have the capability to show digital television broadcasts. One of these devices was a RFID and lipstick camera. The last device looked like both a cell phone and headset. This was a dual mode device that supported WLAN and cellular.

Toshiba

Toshiba was showing 100Mbps wireless LAN technology. It is being done by Toshiba’s Telecommunications Research Laboratory and uses 802.11a. The gain comes from the use of MIMO antennas and the booth had examples of two such antennas as a part of the demo. The handout had an illustration of a home with this technology deployed and it included: camcorder, speakers, server and large screen television.

Cisco/Linksys

In the 3 story Cisco booth there is a small presentation theater with shows running every 30 minutes. One of the presentations is about the consumer which is really about the integration of Linksys into Cisco. The presentation was directed to broadband service providers stating that Linksys products will soon be available worldwide and that Cisco is prepared to support cable, DSL or fiber broadband operators. Service opportunities include Digital media, Consumer Electronics and On-Line Games.

Sony

At the center of the product line in a section of the booth is the PCS-1 which is a combined video camera and microphone. The video camera is on a 2DoF platform. Up to five participants PCS-1’s can make up a conference. Yet, according to Sony there is only one PCS-1 per site. This can be backed up by an EVI-D70 communications color camera within one site.

New is the CTE-600 Communications Transducer. This is the conference audio microphone and speaker. When in use the directional microphone, which is a part of the PCS-1, is turned off.

KT

The KT booth certainly reflects the directions that KT is moving. Consistent with the many statements that broadband is a lifestyle issue KT was showing in the booth a U-Home which included:

Home viewer
A free service to view one’s home as seen by a camera in the home

Visitor Identification and Door Control
The ability to see individuals at the door and for them to leave a video message when no one is home

Control of Home Appliances
Control of devices from any device including a cell phone

Health Care
Instrument exercise devices and the linkage of ones efforts on these to health care providers.

Does WiMAX Have Legs? - Alvarion

The broadband fixed wireless space has been brutal. The elusive potential for last mile broadband wireless has dramatically changed, maybe, with the 802.16a efforts and WiMAX. One of the few remaining leaders in this space is Alvarion, an Israeli company. We sought an update and engaged in booth discussion. Summary of the key points is as follows.

Alvarion, a leader in this space, supports WiMAX because it will create a bigger market and the chances of the company are better in a bigger market than in a small one.OFDM relies on multi-path and even in dense trees there is enough multi-path that it will work, how ever in the desert it might not work as well.

Tandberg

Tandberg gave a keynote type presentation. The presentation was given by Andy Miller the CEO. Key points include:

We are unusual in that our gross margins are 67% - 68% for hardware; these margins are more typical of the software industry.

The company has dual headquarters: New York and Oslo and there are 550 employees.

VTC is making an important transition now – out of the board room to vertical markets. In the past, many of the justifications for VTC products were done by the CEO to support board level meetings. This is changing as vertical markets are beginning to use the technology. We call this video communications. Tandberg has had the most success in the following verticals:
Education – specifically distance learning;
Health Care;
Security and Federal Government
This is where Tandberg is focusing its efforts and this is our growth engine today.

Wave Comments

Though it is the major worldwide telecom event every 4 years, but companies like Alcatel, Lucent, Siemens, Nokia and Ericsson did not show up. If this is the case, is it really a telecommunications event?

However, this is a question from the past and that no longer exists in the business. The turning event was the collapse in capital spending. There is no longer a justification for major systems upgrades. At the same time, when Yahoo BB is able to build an infrastructure and turn cash positive in 3 years it is very hard to justify the major fiber build being suggested as the payback by the ILECs for the FCC Triennial Review and many other major spending initiatives.

In short, telecommunications remains in chaos and when there is such uncertainty the players that remain go conservative. New entrants, such Huawei, go big time because this is their chance go for market share. We were impressed.

The mystery of this event was – why did all the Japanese CE companies show up? Certainly they have cell phones to sell but these mostly go to the Japanese market. Rather than seek an answer to that question we only reveled in the neat new stuff we saw.

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Page updated 1/24/07
Copyright 4th Wave Inc, 2007