Infrastructure IV - Mobile Solutions

Ubiquitous Computing, I have mentioned previously in this blog. Very often, my friends ask me advices for purchasing computers. I would normally recommend them to buy notebook computers even though the mobility of the machines is not their major concern. Why? First of all, computers are the necessities and are no longer luxury to most of the households in Hong Kong. Take my family as an example, I have two notebook computers at home, one for me and the other for my wife and my son. Definitely, all of us need the Internet access. The best and simplest solution is to set up a wireless router at home so that we all can share the access. Not many people would cable their houses for this. Normally, apartments are relatively small in Hong Kong. Therefore, a wireless router 802.11g should provide powerful coverage for an apartment or even two. (I am actually still using 802.11b model at home.)

Secondly, Hong Kong government has started providing Wi-Fi facilities at government premises (GovHK 2007). Besides, over 2,300 wireless access spots are established in Hong Kong by the registered licensees including Airport Authority. Apart from that, 3G has been available locally for a few years and the major mobile carriers are licensees. Nevertheless, the 3G access is quite costly at this stage. As a result, notebook computer becomes a powerful ubiquitous device as it can be very tiny now.

Without a good infrastructure, there is no point to have the best mobile devices. We have to closely monitor the IT market and always give the best solution to our users. For example, we have mobile devices such as blackberries available for loans, and now upgrading them from GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) to 3G which has been implemented very well in some Asian countries including South Korea and Japan. The throughput rates of GPRS and 3G are up to 40 kbs and 384 kbs respectively according to GSM Association (2007). The following graph illustrates the development of mobile technologies.

sourced from GSM World

Certainly, from 2G to 3G is a big jump in terms of the data rate. Probably, we will be seeing the bigger jumps in nearly future. NTT DoCoMo, which is Japan's largest cellular carrier, has been working on Super 3G for some time and anticipates introducing the technology in Japan sometime around 2009 as a stepping stone between current so-called 3.5G technology and future 4G systems, has also been aggressively pursuing 4G system development. In experiments conducted in late December last year the carrier came close to hitting a 5G bps data transmission speed from an experimental 4G system to a receiver moving at 10 kilometers per hour (Williams 2007). 4G and 5G are on the way…

To be continued

References

GovHK 2007, ‘Public IT Facilities’, Hong Kong Government, <http://www.gov.hk/en/residents/communication/publicit/itfacilities/wifi/index.htm>.

GSM Association 2007, ‘GSM World’, viewed 1 September 2007, <http://www.gsmworld.com/technology/gprs/index.shtml>.

Williams, M 2007, 'NTT DoCoMo targets 300M bps in Super 3G experiment', Computerworld Hong Kong Daily, posted 13 July 2007, Tokyo, viewed 18 August 2007, <http://www.cw.com.hk/computerworldhk/article/articleDetail.jsp?id=441398>.