T-Mobile Launches Motorola Cliq 2 with Wi-Fi Calling

Somehow I manged to squeeze in to the Motorola stand at CES last week.

The stand was jam packed with people there to see the new Motorola tablet, zoom.

But equaly popular were Motorola's lineup of Android phones, including the Cliq2.

The phone I found shows T-Mobile's Wi-Fi Calling app pre-loaded on the desktop.

Great news for T-Mobile and Wi-Fi Calling enthusiasts.

Battery Life - Keeps getting better

Engadget editor Chris Ziegler recently reviewed Motorola's new Defy.  In case you forgot, this is Motorola's new 'party phone', water resistant, scratch-proof screen, something about rolling around in the sand (watch the commercial...).  This is also the Oprah phone... the phone given to the audience members of Oprah's first show of her last season.

But I don't want to talk about all that.  The Defy comes with Wi-Fi Calling.  Some industry commentators continue to propagate the rumor that excessive Wi-Fi use drains a smartphone's battery.  That may be the case, unless that phone has Smart Wi-Fi technology.

In Chris' review, he actually credits Wi-Fi, and Wi-Fi Calling (aka Smart Wi-Fi), as the reason why the battery performance was "stellar."

"In our experience, the Defy seems to have stellar battery life, which is relatively hard to come by among Android phones. Not only we were able to consistently make it comfortably through an entire day on a charge, but we were surprised to find that after putting the phone away with about 75 percent charge, it was still on with 21 percent remaining two days later. Granted, it spent most of that time in WiFi calling range (which disables the cellular radio), but many smartphones give up the ghost from 100 percent charge in less time, so we were pleased to see that." 

Smart Wi-Fi... actually making Wi-Fi on Smartphones 'smarter'.

Wi-Fi Calling Comes to T-Mobile Android

Today's the day...T-Mobile is now selling four phones with Wi-Fi Calling. Finally.

With today's big push is around '4G', it turns out that T-Mobile's two flagship 4G phones both support Wi-Fi Calling.

The MyTouch 4G comes with Wi-Fi Calling pre-loaded on the handset.

The G2, the other phone in the '4G' launch, gets Wi-Fi Calling added as an 'over the air' update occuring over the next week.

In addition, two of T-Mobile's entry level Android phones are available with Wi-Fi Calling.

The LG Optimus (free with 2 year contract) and the Motorola Defy ($99 with 2 year contract) are both available with Wi-Fi Calling.

Today's the day - taking Wi-Fi and Android to the next level.

Uncovering the Motorola Morrison

You’ve just got to love the mobile handset diehards who dig through FCC filings to see what the next big thing is going to be. The team over at Cell Phone Signal uncovered the scoop on the Motorola Morrisson, the first Android phone from Motorola. It has both 3G and WiFi, and is expected to be UMA ready for T-Mobile US' @Home service.
Per Cell Phone Signal, here are some specs:
* Tri band WCDMA/ HSDPA/ HSUPA 900/1700/2100
* Quad band GSM/EDGE 850/900/1800/1900
* Wi-Fi
* HandsFree Speaker
* Photo and Video Camera
* Video Player
* Stereo Bluetooth
* Music Player
* HTML Browser
* Android OS

A Home Zone is a Home Zone

This week ABI Research released the results of a survey conducted on behalf of Motorola. The article states that while “…the majority of consumers have never heard of femtocells…”, “…more than 40% of European mobile and internet users plan to purchase femtocells in the next 12 months.”

It’s easy to conclude then, that the questions focused not on the wireless technology to be used in the home (e.g. a ‘femtocell’), but on the benefits of having a “Home Zone” service, where the key factors were better in-home mobile coverage and lower costs.

Demand was highest in Poland, Spain and Italy, with moderate demand in France and the UK. Germany had the lowest demand of the six countries surveyed.

We at UMA Today thought this sounded a bit familiar. Through the magic of the web, we were able to recall a similar announcement from Motorola in August, 2005. Three years ago, Motorola announced the results of a survey of 1,000 consumers in six countries on the demand for a dual-mode handset service. This time the countries were France, Germany, Spain, Sweden, Italy and the UK.

And the results??? About the same.

Demand was highest in Sweden, Spain and Italy, moderate demand in France, lower demand in the UK and Germany.

I think there are some very interesting data-points from both surveys:

• Clearly there is continued demand for home zone services, regardless of the technology.
• I find it ironic that Italy continues to show strong demand, showing me that Telecom Italia Mobile’s Unica service was a victim of regulatory roadblocks rather than consumer interest.
• Orange’s plans for its Unik/Unique service are in UK, Spain, and Poland, three countries with strong demand for Home Zone services.

UMA Today continues to be a strong supporter of Home Zone services, and this is simply confirms that there is market demand from consumers for a thoughtful, value-oriented service offer.

Fido fetches a DMH service with UMA

Information has been leaked about Fido, a mobile brand in for Rogers in Canada, regarding an upcoming dual-mode handset service based on UMA.

According to the post, the service, called UNO, will have two pricing options and feature the sleek Nokia 6301 and the brand new Motorola Z6w. The rumor is of a soft-launch on April 2.

As show, the Nokia 6301 retails for 50 CAD with three year commitment.

For those of you who continue to think "UMA phones are expensive", the 6300, the non-UMA version, is the same price. Eventually the market will realize there's really no premium to Wi-Fi in handsets.

Four Out of Five Agree: UMA for Femtocells

Before MWC, I wrote about the incredible amount of UMA-based femtocell news, calling it a ‘femto frenzy’ of activity.

Within the world of femtocells, there are a chosen few committed to the existing 3GPP UMA/GAN standard. All of the other systems/solutions are proprietary. The “UMA-enabled Femtocell” world consists of many key players:

- Solution provider NEC
- Solution provider Motorola
- Femtocell provider Ubiquisys
- Femtocell provider Motorola
- Femtocell provider Netgear

So, let’s count the number of announced operator femtocell trials and see where UMA is involved:

1. During MWC, pan-European mobile operator O2 announced they were conducting a femtocell trial with NEC.

2. Also during MWC, Scandinavian provider Telia announced a femtocell trial based with Motorola.

3. Then just this week, an article from Fierce Wireless editor Brian Dolan suggests that T-Mobile International will be trialing Ubiquisys femtocells with NEC.

4. Softbank in Japan has announced trials with nearly every supplier on the market, including Ubiquisys, NEC and Motorola.

5. The only other announced trial I’m aware of is Vodafone Group’s announcement to trial Alcatel/Lucent and Huawei, clearly not a UMA-based trial.

Unless I’m mistaken (which I’m sure you’ll to tell me if I am):

Four out of five femtocell trials include a UMA-based system.

This reminds me of the old Trident gum ad where “four out of five dentists agree…”

I attribute this to a couple of reasons:

- It works. Novel but true. UMA has been commercially deployed for more than two years.

- Operators actually want a standard interface. As much as Alcatel/Lucent, Huawei, and even Nokia/Siemens are trying to push their own proprietary approaches, the operators have had enough. They want an open, public standard interface for femtocells.

- UMA does more than one thing. After deploying a femtocell service, a mobile operator may want to add a fixed line VoIP service (like T-Mobile US). The same UMA infrastructure supports that, or dual-mode phones, or softmobiles.

Next, let's see if we can get to 9 out of ten...

[UPDATE MARCH 20] Good posted on ThinkFemto about a similar topic. I have a bit more detail. For some reason, ThinkFemto decided to throw in a bunch of picocell wins that ip.Access got, but they aren't femtocells.

Motorola #2

The rumored Motorola ‘Marco’ handset has come to life! Now known as the Z6w, this is the second UMA-enabled Motorola handset. No word yet on which operator will be the first to put it into commercial deployment, but T-Mobile is a good guess.

This is a welcome development for UMA. Motorola has been languishing in the dual-mode/UMA market and this is a stylish offering. With any luck, there's more where this came from.

Femto's frenzy

In the drive up to Mobile World Congress, there has been ‘femto frenzy’ of press releases. A large chunk of the news has been from UMA-based femtocell players.

Sensing an opportunity to play a significant roll in the market, UMA-based femtocell manufacturers have been aggressive about making the case for UMA as the ‘most viable’ path to standardization of a RAN Gateway/ ‘Iu-over-IP’ architecture.

There are rumors that there may be some operator announcements at MWC regarding UMA-based femtocell trial activities. We’ll be sure to update the site as the news comes in.

1. NEC and Kineto propose approach for rapid femtocell standardization
2. Motorola announces a family of femtocell solutions
3. NEC and NETGEAR team to develop an integrated 3G access point for femtocell solution
4. Kineto ready to support commercial femtocell rollouts
5. NETGEAR and Kineto to showcase 3G femto home access solution at MWC
6. NEC announces trial of femtocell solution with mobile operators
7. Kineto and Ubiquisys announce successful interoperability testing between Zonegate and UNC
8. Femto Forum steps up drive for harmonized network integration

As one insider told me that only "...relentless evidence of practical deployments and practical challenges overcome" will convince the market that UMA is the most viable technology for a femtocell /network integration standard. This looks like the start of some relentless-ness.

Bluetooth over Wi-Fi?

In a little noticed announcement last week, the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) has agreed to develop a fast version of Bluetooth running over Wi-Fi. As reported by Peter Judge at TechWorld, the article talks about the SIG’s disappointment in the delivery of Ultra-Wide Band (UWB) support in handsets.

John Barr, chairman of the Bluetooth SIG and director of standards realization at Motorola commented: “Delays in ultra-wide band have caused Motorolato switch its focus. There is an increasing demand for Wi-Fi in mobile devices.” There was no comment on Motorola’s plans for UMA-enabled handsets.

This might put the problem of side-by-side Bluetooth and Wi-Fi support in phones to rest. Wi-Fi can do it all.

UMA device rumor: Motorola Marco

It appears that we here at UMA Today have missed a rumored new device. Back in July, The Boy Genius Reports revealed a new device code named “Marco” which is apparently includes Wi-Fi and UMA.

We have heard internal rumors of such a device as well, but did not realize it had been outed through the blogsphere.

Will Marco make its commercial launch? Or is it destines to the same fate as the A910? Samsung and Nokia and many others continue to roll out new UMA devices, while Motorola is conspicuously absent from the party. Marco would definitely capture attention with operators like T-Mobile, Orange and Telia.

I guess we’ll all just have to wait and see.

Linksys joins in UMA-enabled ATA market

As reported on-line by Engadget through FCC filing, Linksys has developed an analog terminal adaptor (ATA) based on UMA technology for T-Mobile US.

UMA is fundamentally about FMS and enabling the mobile operator to deliver services over the public internet. With this new Linksys product, T-Mobile is now able to offer a fixed line VoIP service in the home similar to what Vonage and others deliver.

Why would T-Mobile do this when they have a perfectly good dual-mode handset service already available? It’s one more tool to accelerate FMS. In our household, my wife doesn’t particularly like walking around with her mobile phone stuck to her ear. It puts a kink in her neck.

However, our larger Panasonic cordless/DECT phone, connected to the incumbent fixed line provider, is more ergonomically pleasing. The idea is that we would port our fixed line number to T-Mobile who would provide us the ATA, and our fixed services would come from T-Mobile over our existing broadband network. Now T-Mobile can capture our entire in home voice usage, from both mobiles as well as the fixed line, through this terminal adaptor.

This let's mobile operators offer a Vonage-like service.

Note that this joins the already available Motorola RSG-3500 available from the Connected Homes Group.

We’ve said it before, we’ll say it again: UMA is really a ‘universal’ access technology for delivering any and all mobile services over IP; dual-mode phones, femtocells, terminal adaptors,... UMA let’s mobile operators harness the cost and performance advantages of IP to accelerate FMS.

The Femtocell Conference

Avren, a boutique conference firm, hit a home run July 3-5 with the industry’s first femtocell event. Adding to the allure was the inaugural meeting of the new Femto Forum which resulted in a staggering 240 attendees all crammed into a hotel ball room at Heathrow to hear about femtocells.

I wanted to offer a couple of thoughts that we picked up from the event:

- The operators have consolidated around a 'RAN gateway' approach.

Early on there was talk of potentially using Iu-b or even SIP, but those have been largely dismissed by the operators. All major operators and vendors (NSN, Alcalu, Motorola, NEC, Ericsson) have proposed a RAN gateway (like a UNC) solution that provides an Iu connection to the mobile core.

This approach is low impact to the core and ensures full service transparency (all GSM/3G services are delivered over the femtocell), the same reasons why UMA defined a RAN gateway approach 2+ years ago. What's interesting is that rather than rallying around UMA, vendors are each defining their own proprietary approaches. Motorola and NEC are following the UMA path.

- Operators are *insisting* on an open interface

This makes sense. They want a robust, competitive market for femtocells, with many suppliers delivering products that meet a single, standardized interface. This achieves the economies of scale for femto manufacturers to drive costs down. Of course, UMA is already an open/published specification. NSN took the unusual step of stating they will publish their ‘vendor specific’ protocol for other femto vendors to build too. I’m sure the other vendors (ip.Access, Ericsson, Alcalu, NEC, Motorola, ...) can’t wait to build a femto that conforms to the Nokia/Siemens specification (or vice versa).

- The hype is high, but reality is starting to set in.

It was clear from the tone of the operators that femtocells are an exciting opportunity. But all realize there is a LOT of work to be done before the promise/hype meets up with the shelves of consumer electronics stores.

- A word on UMA

In all of this, UMA continues to be the only published, industry recognized standard for femtocell backhaul. The minor work to extend the current UMA specification to support Iu was kicked off in Oct 06 at the 3GPP.

Through its work with Dual-Mode Handsets, UMA already has the ability to integrate millions of devices into the mobile core, has the access control mechanisms to support consumer grade products, and a robust handover procedure. These capabilities are yet to be defined by the vendors scrambling to come up with their own RAN gateway protocols. UMA is the standardized RAN gateway approach.

Two other things UMA has going for it versus these ‘vendor specific’ approaches. One is that UMA supports dual-mode handset services as well as femtocells. While an operator may not be interested in a DMH service today, the future protection offered by a UMA infrastructure, with no price premium (UNCs are already deployed in volume around the world for DMH), is very compelling.

Second is that UMA supports 2G femtocells as well as 3G femtocells. If an operator is going to deploy a ‘combo’ AP, or is interested in 2G femtos, UMA is the only choice.

All in all, UMA is really proving why it is known as ‘GAN’, it is a generic access network technology, easily adaptable to new applications.

UMA-enabled Femtocells?

A common question I get is “when femtocells arrive, won’t they displace UMA?” First off, what is generally meant by this is not ‘...displace UMA’ but more accurately ‘...displace dual-mode handset services.’ UMA, as we all know, is a generic IP access technology that can be used to implement a dual-mode handset (DMH) service with cellular/Wi-Fi phones but it’s not actually tied specifically to Wi-Fi.

However, as a generic IP access technology for mobile services, UMA actually plays a key role in a mass-market femtocell solution.

As the operators begin to plan for a robust deployment with hundreds of thousands of femtocell access points into the network, some stringent requirements have emerged:

- An industry recognized, well defined standard such than any femto AP can be interoperable with any core network controller

- “Internet grade” security to run over the public broadband network

- A high-capacity, scalable controller to support thousands of concurrent connections

- The ability to support “consumer” behaviors of unplugging access points, moving access points, plugging in access points where they don’t belong (different countries)

- A protocol which supports a retail femtocell distribution model such that each AP is “standard” out of the box and can self-configure/attach to the network

- And it goes without saying: cost-effective core network controller solution that will not throw the business case out of whack.

Initially, many suppliers jumped to the conclusion that the existing protocol (known as “Iu-B”) which runs between the radios (or “node-b”) and the controller (or RNC) in a macro UMTS network would be sufficient.

But after digging in a bit, it’s pretty well understood that Iu-b was designed to meet a different set of deployment requirements. Iu-b was architected to support a handful of extremely high capacity radio connected over private, secure, managed links.

This is nearly the exact opposite of a femtocell deployment, with many thousands of low capacity (in terms of concurrent calls) radios, all connected over un-managed and un-secured IP networks.

UMA however, was designed for just such a deployment scenario. UMA offers a well defined, robust protocol with a secure connection to the mobile core. In a DMH deployment, UMA supports hundreds of thousands of devices with relatively low concurrent capacity, quite similar to the femtocell usage model. As a well defined standard, femtocell technology suppliers such as UbiquiSys and others can develop UMA-enabled products which interoperate with UMA controllers from Motorola, Nokia, Ericsson and Alcatel.

As operators begin to leverage the public internet and broadband IP to deliver mobile services, UMA will be used for more applications beyond DHM and femtocells. UMA is truly becoming the ‘Universal’ Mobile Access protocol.