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October 27, 2011

The Coalition to Save Our GPS held a conference call today to underscore its year-old argument against LightSquared’s proposed rollout of a terrestrial broadband network, bringing the issue down to the costs associated with any disruption in GPS systems.

Over the last eights months, Wireless Industry News has extensively covered the events surrounding LightSquared's many GPS interference issues caused by its equipment. And you can read many of them here:

1) LightSquared admits its network places GPS nav systems at risk

2) LightSquared is grilled by Congress over GPS interference issues

3) LightSquared says it has a solution to its GPS interference issues?

4) LightSquared steps up its offensive against the GPS industry

5) Sprint and LightSquared make a deal, share network spectrum

6) LightSquared has found another solution to its ill-designed network?

7) LightSquared becomes a MVNE, doesn't care about the interference it causes to GPS

8) Is FCC's Chairman Julius Genachowski in bed with LightSquared?

Those news stories will help you better comprehend the scope of the whole issue, and how critical it is to the public's overall safety.

Jim Kirkland, vice president and general counsel for Trimble, argued that LightSquared has consistently mischaracterized long-standing FCC rules regarding the use of its wireless spectrum holdings.

LightSquared has argued that the FCC first approved rules allowing terrestrial operations in the Lo-band in 2003 and that it received its authorization to conduct terrestrial operations in 2004.

Kirkland said that’s twisting the FCC’s words, to say the least. He argues that the FCC had actually set aside LightSquared’s spectrum for use to fill any small gaps in terrestrial broadband service, not as a stand-alone national network.

Kirkland went on to say that the FCC has stated that if that spectrum, which is valued at $12 billion, were to be used for a stand-alone wireless network, it would have to be auctioned off to the highest bidder.

LightSquared told investors that it had acquired the spectrum outright for $2 billion. “The idea that a New York hedge fund should get a $10 billion windfall at the expense of the taxpayer is just unacceptable,” Kirkland said.

The Coalition also argues that various expenses incurred by the private sector industry to deploy untested technological solutions suggested by LightSquared would run in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

Additionally, Kirkland said aggregate costs to the government could be in the range of $245 billion over the next few years. LightSquared could not be immediately reached for comment, which is usually the case, especially when it concerns itself.

In other mobile news

The 10-inch screen on Apple's upcoming iPad 3 tablet will be one of its most remarkable and probably most appreciated features. But getting to the much higher screen resolutions is a big leap, and certainly presents some challenges for the manufacturers.

As usual, Apple is aiming high, very high in fact. The goal is to have a Retina Display-like resolution on the iPad 3. Apple defines a Retina Display as having "pixel density so high your eye is unable to distinguish individual pixels."

For the iPhone 4S that means a 960×640, 3.5-inch display that packs in 326 pixels per inch (PPI). At about 12 inches from the eye, this is the most amount of detail the human retina can see, according to Apple.

The resolution is so dense that you won't see that level of density on an iPad 3 with a Retina Display. Nor is it even necessary because typically the iPad's screen isn't held that close to the face anyway.

For now, the closest that iPad display manufacturers like LG or Samsung can get is about 2048 x 1536. That's a PPI of 264, twice the 132 PPI on the iPad 2.

But whether manufacturers can make them in volumes that Apple demands is the big question for now. "They have production plans for 2,048 x 1,536 displays starting in November. But those are only plans at this point," said a source familiar and close to LG and Samsung.

"And it's not a question of making just one. The challenge is making lots of them," the source said. "This is a quantum leap in pixel density. This hasn't been done before."

If manufacturers are not able to make the volumes necessary for the higher resolution, there is an interim option of 1,600 x 1,200, according to the source. But that probably won't please a discriminating customer such as Apple.

Nevertheless, the display is also expected to have a brightness of 550 nits. That's pretty bright, as the typical laptop display panel tops out at about 350 nits.

Samsung this week is showing off a new 2,560 x 1,600-pixel 10.1-inch LCD Panel for tablets that could potentially appear in future Samsung products.

In other mobile news

Nokia will be testing one of its new NFC (near field communications) handsets capable of paying for such things as subway tickets in New York City. The testing will be done before the end of this year, the company said earlier this morning.

Nokia is embracing Microsoft which will also be working with the New York Metropolitan Transport Authority to make available a mobile handset capable of hosting subway tickets in trials by the end of this year.

But we still don't know which handset the company will be using for the trials, though the recently launched Symbian OS-based model 603 would seem most likely. None of those announced at Nokia World has a NFC chip in it, despite NFC being a feature of Nokia's last smartphone, the N900.

Microsoft has stated that APIs for NFC will be embedded into Windows Phone some time next year, so one might hope that the Lumia 800 and perhaps the 710 will feature NFC hardware inside, but the company isn't saying that for now.

What Nokia did say though was that yesterday was "all about Windows Phone", which explains the company's reluctance to talk about features from its aging Symbian portfolio.

There is also the C7, branded Astound in the United States, but that lacks an embedded secure element, and even appears to lack support for the Single Wire Protocol which would allow the use of a secure element held on the SIM.

The New York subway already uses proximity-based tickets, but has expressed a desire to move towards directly charging journeys to credit cards to avoid paying an intermediary.

London's Oyster would like to do that too, but demands a 300 ms transaction time, which credit card clearance can't yet achieve. New York's subway is simpler in that all trips cost the same amount, so credit card payments are easier to process.

MasterCard has already approved the Samsung Tocco, and Google Nexus, for hosting instances of its PayWave card embedded in the operator's SIM or manufacturer's secure element.

It has also now approved the BlackBerry for a SIM-based instance, so getting approval for a Nokia handset shouldn't be too hard.

That immediately opens up the possibility of using the Nokia 603 with Orange QuickTap, which is also SIM-based but currently limited to the Samsung Tocco NFC phone.

But Nokia isn't talking about that, which makes more sense when one realizes that the only proximity payment system deployed on a phone in the U.S. is Google Wallet, something Microsoft would never allow being embedded in a device from its flagship partner.

Nokia said earlier this month that it has launched a new website promoting NFC Near Field Communications but without any mention of the pay-by-wave systems that have got everyone else so excited in recent months.

The new site lists all the elements one might want to do with an NFC handset, such as sharing pictures, pairing devices and reading passive tags to get local information, but nowhere is there any mention of the proximity-payment systems which are becoming synonymous with the contact-less technology.

One reason this may be happening is that Nokia's current NFC phones can't do proximity payments. This could explain the company's reluctance to push that particular application, and NFC does have a host of other useful capabilities, but the lack of some obvious revenue streams has pushed them into the background.

It's worth remembering that Bluetooth didn't take off until wireless operators realized that the profit margin on a Bluetooth headset was better than on a mobile phone, and as wireless operators in Europe own stores, they mandated Bluetooth in handsets, something that never really happened in the U.S.

Being able to swap business cards with a tap of the phone is fun, but it isn't making money for anyone. Despite Nokia's reluctance to promote payments though NFC, it's still presenting a public discussion on the subject next week, with the London School of Economics.

The subject is how security fears are preventing wireless payments from going maintream, though we're not convinced they are considering how quickly companies are pushing ahead, with the exception of Nokia, of course.

For instance, next year's London Olympics will be very busy with all kinds of wireless payment systems, with Coca-Cola apparently considering NFC vending machines within the site and Visa ensuring that the venue is a showcase for its PayWave technology and that its competitor's PayPass platform isn't in evidence.

Nokia keeps trying to remind us that NFC isn't just about payments, which is true, but the mobile handset maker still is going to have to support those payment systems eventually if it isn't going to be left behind entirely.

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Source: The Coalition to Save Our GPS.

    This article was featured on Business 5.0 and on Tech Blog.