WCA September 2014

Telecom news

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.” Ø Mr 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 . . . Ø 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.

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,’” 30 th 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

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. Ø 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

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Wire & Cable ASIA – September/October 2014