WCA September 2014

www.read-wca.com

Wire & Cable ASIA – September/October 2014

Telecom

news

Leaders of the 51-member group

include Haier (Chinese), LG Electronics

(South Korean), and Panasonic and

Sharp (both Japanese). The addition

of Microsoft could ensure that future

Windows devices interact with other

connected gadgets by means of

AllSeen Alliance specifications.

“Microsoft believes that the Internet

of Things is not a futuristic notion

but is here today in the devices,

sensors and cloud infrastructure all

around us,” Kevin Dallas, the general

manager of Microsoft’s Operating

Systems Group, said in a statement.

Mr Goldstein traced the development

of the group to December 2013, and

Qualcomm’s award of the code for

its AllJoyn framework to the Linux

Foundation. In turn, Linux created the

AllSeen Alliance to use AllJoyn in the

creation of a software standard for

IoT connections. The goal is to allow

devices to discover and interact with

nearby products regardless of their

underlying proprietary technology or

communications protocols. The group

also includes automotive companies,

IoT cloud providers, enterprise

technology companies, startups,

chipset

manufacturers,

service

providers, software developers, and

retailers.

The AllSeen Alliance is not alone

in promoting standards for the

Internet of Things. The ZigBee

and Z-Wave wireless protocols

are being pushed by their

respective backers as standards

for IoT. Meanwhile, chipmakers

that compete with Qualcomm

hoped to launch a rival standards

consortium this summer, an

unnamed industry source familiar

with the plans told

Reuters

Further, AT&T, Cisco Systems,

General Electric, IBM and Intel

recently formed the all-US

Industrial Internet Consortium to

create standards.

Telefónica urges a

major role for mobile

in facilitating the full

participation of disabled

people in the connected

world

According to the World Health

Organization (WHO), a billion of

the world’s people – roughly one

in seven – have some form of

disability. Of these, 360 million

are hearing-impaired; 285 million,

vision-impaired; and 13 million,

physically impaired. For most of these

people, Guy Daniels of

TelecomTV

noted, accessing services and using

products can range from difficult to

impossible in a society increasingly

reliant on connected technologies.

Asserting a “very real danger that

we are creating a new digital divide,”

Mr Daniels reviewed an initiative

announced by Telefónica in February

at the Mobile World Congress in

Barcelona.

The

Spanish

telecom

giant

issued a call to operators, device

manufacturers, and applications

and content providers to work

together with governments, NGOs,

and communities of the disabled

to accelerate digital inclusion.

(“Telefónica Urges the ICT Sector to

Create a ‘Culture Of Accessibility,’”

May)

Spearheading the effort, Telefónica

commissioned research to investigate

issues of accessibility and analyse the

extent to which the “untapped billion”

have access to telecom technologies.

An initial report, having observed

that one billion happens to be

the estimated number of active

smartphones in use today, concluded

that accessibility to the modern

mobile world is often very restricted

for people with disabilities.

The author of the report, Chris Lewis,

told Mr Daniels: “Many of the services

that are taken for granted when

reaching for the latest mobile devices

are simply not available to people with

disabilities on account of their lack of

touch, motor skills, cognitive capacity,

hearing or sight.”

The

report

recommends

that

websites, applications and content

be so designed and labelled as

to ease navigation through the

software; also that the interlinking of

peripherals, smartphones, tablets,

laptops and televisions be made more

straightforward.

Mr Daniels of

TelecomTV

urged a

broader sphere of interest in these

special connectivity needs. Citing

the research firm Gartner as source,

he said that the disabled population

and their immediate friends and

family have an annual disposable

income of over $8 trillion. “That’s not

a market that digital companies want

to ignore,” he wrote. “So it should no

longer be regarded as ‘niche’ and the

sole preserve of specialist ‘assistive

technology’ firms.”

Lewis,

the

Telefónica

researcher, believes that an

“accessibility revolution” in the

disabled community would also

hold benefits for the other 85 per

cent of the population. Better-

annotated applications, content

and websites are easier for anyone

to navigate. With better speech

input and text-to-speech output,

drivers would be less likely to pick

up their mobiles while behind the

wheel.

He told Mr Daniels: “Innovations

from apps developers, service

providers and device manu-

facturers all play their role in

enhancing the accessible world.”

Elsewhere in telecom . . .

According to the Global Net Index

published by Ookla, in May of this

year New Zealand was first among

107 countries in mobile download

speeds; and Vodafone service was

fastest, averaging downloads of

just over 28.5 Mbps.

This means Vodafone New

Zealand customers could down-

load content more than three

times faster than the global mobile

download average of 8.0 Mbps.

Ookla (Kalispell, Montana, USA)

performs broadband testing and

web-based network diagnostics.

Its index is based on millions

of current cellular test results

collected from both iOS and

Android platforms.

The value is the rolling mean

speed in Mbps over the previous

30 days. Only tests taken within

300 miles of the server are eligible

for inclusion in the index.

Vodafone New Zealand had been

in the top position four times in

the five months prior to May. The

company brought 4G to New

Zealand and has said that its 4G

network reaches 58 per cent of the

country’s population.