I need to revive this blog. I have always not found time to do so. However, I do have to find the time as many things are going on in my head 😊
Category Archives: English
Articles in English.
Let’s go for a real free internet
Looking at the penetration of the large web services in the developed countries, you see that the markets are saturated. The only way for the beasts to further expand is to gain presence in the developing countries. That is the only way the have to guarantee a sustained growth.
Large web services are nowadays seeking ways to make their way into the “next billion” internet users. Unfortunately, they are not playing by the rules they had when they just started. This is going to create an unbalanced equilibrium for the potential web services in those markets.
They are extending by providing “free internet” to users who otherwise will not be able to access. The problem is that the “free internet” corresponds to a quite limited number of services. The giants pay to the providers of the internet services for the use of that bandwidth. If these users want to cross the border by browsing others services not included in the package, they must pay.
The sad side are the premises being used go like “these people can’t enjoy the same opportunities many of us take for granted, and the entire world is robbed of their ideas and creativity”. The problem is that this is half true.
I wish those people soon realize the trap they are getting into and get the right legislation in place to avoid this. Net neutrality and commitment from their government for a real free internet must be ensured.
Links:
- Facebook’s march to global domination is trampling over net neutrality
- Google’s Next Bid to Lower Mobile Data Costs: Zero Rating
A move in the good direction is what was done in Chile: guarantee net neutrality. Chile, BTW, was the first country in the world to enforce net neutrality by law.
Whatsapp’s web interface
Finally! The long awaited web interface for Whatapp is here! But wait a minute. It is not all that wonderful as you expected. The new web interface for Whastapp simply creates a bridge between a web browser and your phone which is ultimately sending your messages.
The good thing is that Whatsapp can claim that the messages sent this way are secure. This argument is fair enough, although it could have been avoided.
Let’s now start enumerating the bad things.
- Only works with Google Chrome. Yes, the web interface only works if you use Chrome. Forget it if you want or prefer to use other browsers.
- Only works with the app on Android, Windows Phone and Blackberry. Do you have another mobile OS? You cannot use this feature.
- Your phone needs to be connected. If you paired your phone but you lost connection or your battery died, that’s it: no more Whatsapp for you. The D-tour that the messages have to do is just, sigh, idiotic.
Sure, it is better than nothing. Still not good enough to make it my preferred messaging application.
Whatsapp is just retrograde
Here is the thing: I’m nicely sitting on my cough browsing the web with my tablet. Suddenly, I get a Whatsapp message. I’m giving no other option than grabbing my phone and attend the received message.
Same situation at work: I sit at my desk, receive a Whatsapp message and even when I have two monitors and a full-fledged keyboard, Whatsapp forces me to tap the tiny screen of my phone.
Why the heck does not Whatsapp provide multi-device support? This is not rocket science, any other basic messaging platform gives this facility.
Honestly, I haven’t given up on Whatsapp yet because of its popularity. I tried to convince some of my contacts to ditch it, but not everyone really seems to have the issues I have with it. Here is a summary with the pros and cons of this retrograde service. Sure, moving people to yet another platform is simply cumbersome.
A web interface for Whatsapp is being rumored for quite a while. But until that happens I will still be swearing Whatsapp and its users for this.
Waze
At a first glance, Waze looks like a traditional GPS navigation app. Once you start using it you can start seeing some interesting functionality. I will describe some of this functionality in this post.
Social
The first difference with any traditional navigation software is that you can have friends, and share with them your rides, chat with them, etc. Also, you can interact with other users of the service by reporting traffic issues along your way. This crowdsourcing of the traffic information allows all the users of the service to know what the traffic conditions are and use that info to, for instance, optimize their route. Another useful feature is that users can report the gasoline prices on the way.
Fun
As an incentive to use the service as much as possible, you may be involved in some competitions. For instance you can team up with fellow wazers to collect points. These points are collected by means of amulets you find on your way. Sure, it is far from being functional to the use that a standard user of a GPS navigation app will expect, but it keeps you busy and entertained while using Waze.
Collaborative
Waze provides some basic mapping infrastructure. So the maps still may suffer from defects such as incomplete or incorrect information. Users can then report problems with the maps so that Waze can take care of fixing it. The interesting thing is that these backend fixing actions can also be done by regular users. They can fix issues by themselves thereby helping all the other users in a more effective manner. This is particularly useful for far away places where mapping is not profitable for the state of art companies providing mapping solutions.
Some caveats
The usage of this app has some disadvantages for standard users. Here are a few are listed.
- You need a working data connection. The app cannot do offline routing. However, it is not a data hog once is setup. For a 300km ride it will use about 10MB of data. Not bad at all but it may be deterring you from using the app, especially if you need to pay roaming fees for that data traffic.
- Your device needs to be running. A car charger is a must if you want to use it for long rides. Dimming the screen (or even turning it off) can be measures that can help to keep your juice from draining.
- The app needs to be started every time you hop on your car. Yes, if you want to take advantage of the service you need to start the app. That means taking your device, fixing it to a holder, connecting the charger and start the app. This can be time-consuming and too cumbersome to do every time you start driving your car.
- GPS navigation experience is not that great. The app does its thing as a navigation system. However, if you ever used other services you will miss some important features. An example is lane guidance. The map graphics also leave a lot to be desired.
Download
The app is available for free from the app stores of the most popular mobile OSes (iOS, Android, Windows). If you are a passionate driver, willing to help your fellow drivers, you will most likely enjoy using the service. Head on to Waze website to start having fun.
Frequency band explosion amid LTE
For mobile telephones there have been traditionally 4 frequency bands for GSM. These are known as 850, 900, 1800 and 1900. These numbers represent the frequency range (in MHz) that the band uses. As a rule of thumb, the Americas (except Brazil) use the 850 and 1900 bands, while the rest of the world use the 900 and 1800 bands. A comprehensive explanation is available in this wiki-page.
For WCDMA networks (aka 3G), Europe introduced the 2100 band, while in USA the so-called AWS band was created (that uses some spectrum in the 1700MHz and 2100MHz ranges) for T-Mobile to deploy its 3G network. As GSM networks age, GSM bands are used for WCDMA networks. A more detailed description of 3G bands is available here.
Due to the ubiquitous use of mobile services, the spectrum in the 6 above-mentioned bands is expected to be insufficient. This is especially true since 2G and 3G services will become legacy. That’s why that in the wake of LTE (aka 4G) more bands to accommodate the expected growth of mobile communications are being created. This was also possible due to the liberation of the spectrum used by analog services (analog TV mainly). Note that basically each country has the power to decide how to assign the freed spectrum. Due to this anarchy, as many as 34 new bands were created to date. See LTE bands.
The exponential growth in the number of bands is making it hard to manufacture radio hardware that can support all these bands. In fact, this was an issue even to give support to the 4 GSM bands: only high-end handsets will give you the luxury of the quad-band support, while feature phones will be market-specific. This was also due to certification issues: for example, to release a device that has to operate in the American market bands, it will certainly need an FCC stamp before it can be shipped.
As for LTE global devices, we can list the iPhone. Although it is not that obvious to final consumer, there are three variants of the iPhone to be able to cover all the LTE bands in use to date. Also, some countries are being quite deliberate to when it comes to decide what bands will be licensed for LTE use. An exception is Europe: all countries have already decided what bands will be used within the block, while in Asia and the Americas each country is going its own way, creating a lot of fragmentation on the bands to use. This will have a strong effect once roaming from one country to the other once LTE becomes state-of-the-art.
We have to trust you
Many times I read articles where high executives of companies swear that the information that passes through cloud services is never handed out to governmental agencies. They use technical terms as end-to-end encryption or whatever mechanism with a fancy name we come with.
The thing is that as long as information travels through one of their servers, using the provided clients on your side, anything could happen: they could read it, store it or do whatever they want with it. There is no way that we can verify that they effectively use end-to-end encryption, or check that the client on our devices works as it is claimed. Think that the client could keep a record of your communication and transfer it at some time using some clever techniques to not raise any suspicions on the activity.
I know it sounds like science fiction, but it is feasible. This is independently of whether the software is open source or not. Even when you use open source software, there is no way to guarantee that the software you are running matches the source code you see posted publicly. You would have to at least compile everything from scratch and deploy it to your environment. This is something that very rarely happens. Most of the time, especially with smartphones, you will have to install proprietary software (so-called blobs) to make your device run.
The message I want to bring is that you should not buy any claims of ‘we don’t read your messages’ coming from a recognised CEO. What it should be clear in your mind is that we have no other choice than to trust in the claims of the guy. Whether he is being honest or not, we would probably never know.
Some articles about what I mean:
Whatsapp: annoyingly limited
Whatsapp is a really limited messaging platform. It is a plain extension of the combo SMS/MMS that runs on the internet connection on your smartphone. Here is a list of annoying features of the service:
- You user ID is your phone number. Just as with SMS or MMS, someone can only address you if that someone has your number and it is a Whatsapp user.
- The service can only run on any internet-enabled phone. This is probably the most clear advantage over competitor services: it can handle almost any recent and modern mobile OS. However, it misses key devices such a phone without a phone subscription, tablets (even the ones running the supported OSes) and a classic PC.
- Single association device-user ID. A user ID can only be available on a single device and that device can only handle a single user ID. Related to the previous bullet, one would like to take a lengthy chat to a more comfortable typing device such as a PC.
- Messages lost at a device swap. Although it is possible to backup your message history and put it into a new device, the procedure certainly requires some technical skills, and may not be always possible (forget it if you go from Android to iOS).
- No major differences to legacy messaging services. The service allows sending text, pictures, audio and video clips, your location and a contact card. It supports group messaging, just as MMS. And that’s it. It certainly misses some key services such as voice or video calls. Any decent messaging service nowadays does this by default.
- Does not synchronises your contact information. It’s a terrible failure of the service in my opinion. Especially when you get into a group conversation for which you do not have some of the phone numbers of the participants. You will have to engage in a awkward name request.
Popularity is certainly due to the platform ubiquity: almost anyone with a decent phone can enjoy the service. This is crucial factor especially in developing countries were feature phones are the most common ones.
You may think that mobile operators will be against a competitor of the (sometimes unexplainably expensive) SMS or MMS. However, given the fact that the service can only run on internet-enabled phones, mobile carriers have a nice handle to lure you into data subscriptions. Otherwise, you will only use the service when you are on a Wi-Fi which may be frustrating for you and your contacts.
I personally prefer cloud-based messengers which keep the whole messaging history in the cloud to access it whenever you like. Not only that, you can roam through all the devices you have and move on with the conversation.
The time will tell how the service will evolve under Facebook’s umbrella.
Tele2 NL while roaming
Tele2 NL has a particular system to handle domestic and roaming reception. It’s all in the SIM card: the SIM card can be configured in two modes: domestic or abroad. While in domestic mode, it will only catch an available connection at home, i.e., The Netherlands. When the abroad mode is set, the device will be able to pick up reception from all providers except the Dutch ones.
Fortunately, this is transparent to the user: the configuration is done automatically by the SIM card: if you don’t have reception it will keep switching modes (domestic or abroad) until the phone registers to a network. Of course, if you are in bordering areas this may become tricky because you may get registered in a foreign network thereby being invoiced as being abroad. For this purpose, you can manually set the mode to avoid any unexpected charges and such.
I have been playing with this thing on my phone. Interestingly, whenever the phone switches from one mode to the other, it thinks that a another SIM card is introduced. It’s like two SIM cards built into one. The distinction can be seen when seeing the access point settings. When in domestic mode, the phone will show me that my access point is internet.tele2.nl while in abroad mode the access point is 4g.tele.se. It’s like my SIM card is a Tele2 SE one.
I guess this makes commercial sense for Tele2: they just make the roaming agreements once and re-use them for the other Tele2 subsidiaries in other countries.
However, the mobile phones seem to get confused by artificial SIM card swap. I have experienced no data connection while I was roaming through Europe. I came up with a solution that worked to me: add another access point when the phone is in Swedish mode with the same access point details as when it is in Dutch mode. That is, add an access point with the APN set to internet.tele2.nl. Voilà you get internet connection right away (provided that data while roaming is allowed in your device settings).
Cheaper but more fragmented communication
There are a few standard ways of communication that established for quite some time. The most popular are: telephone, SMS and e-mail. Common to these three examples is that they are quite universal in the sense that almost everyone in the world has access to one of this and that they offer you a good reachability. Another trend is that the costs to use them are just plummeting on a day-to-day basis. From a historical perspective these have been conceived more than 40 years ago at least. It is quite remarkable that we still use them.
With the rise of the Internet and the ubiquity of it, many modern ways to communicate have emerged. Think of the social networking platform of your choice which can get you in touch with almost everyone you have ever meet in person in this planet. Even those people that you barely remember. Today, it is quite feasible to make a multi-video conference from practically any point in the planet with state of art infrastructure as a pre-requisite.
The point I want to make here is the ‘of your choice’ that I put in the previous paragraph. Unfortunately the people who want to connect with each other have to explicitly agree on the social network system that they will use to carry out the interaction.
This is the main issue: these modern systems do not talk to each other. If you have a friend using system X and you use system Y, there is no way that you can talk, unless you both are on the same system. This is like if you would have a mobile phone of brand Z, you would not able to communicate with others not owning a mobile phone of the same brand. The analogy is quite blunt but illustrates clearly what is happening with the social network systems today.
The result is that everyone has to register to many services to keep in touch with people they have contact with. It is just amazing that the big titans of the Internet cannot sit down and agree on a unique platform that allows everyone to be touch with each other while having all the benefits of the now state of art communication tools.
That is why I have to use Facebook, Whatsapp, Hangouts, Viber, Google+, Skype; although I’m not fond of all of these…