jump to navigation

Mobile Connectivity

April 15, 2005

Now if there is one thing that scares me, it is loss of connectivity for any period of time. Whether via my notebook or my PDA - if I am not connected, I feel lost.

I need not have worried.

Sitting in the train, I was able to stay online for almost the entire trip, without having to pay a single penny more than I normally would. In fact, even when I reached Calicut, and there were issues with the campus WiFi (I could connect in the corridor, but not in the room), I had connectivity whenever I needed it.

On the way back, Yahoo’s Shanker “Shanu” Balan shut his notebook down halfway back to Bangalore, after spending most of the time downloading some stuff at 128 kbps. Connectivity issues? “Nope”. Then? “Notebook battery exhausted”.

Kalyan Varma, a security expert gone naturalist, has another tale to tell. He is currently deep in the jungles of South India, has access to electricity once a day for a couple of hours, and the people there haven’t even heard of the Internet. He tells me all this over Instant Messenger chat, while browsing the web, sitting under a tree somewhere in the middle of a lush green forest. And sends me a picture of a tiger that he photographed just minutes earlier.

And Dataquest’s Prasanto Kumar Roy emails me from his car, half way between Delhi and Gurgaon. And he assures me that someone else is doing the driving while he is typing - though I don’t quite believe him.

So what was this magic that Shanu, Kalyan, PKR and I were working with? How could we remain connected and online in the middle of nowhere?

Has wireless networking (WiFi) really spread so far and wide? Have the commercial connectivity vendors managed to do in India what is still a dream in the USA or Europe – country-wide availability of 802.11b/g connectivity — not just in cities and hotspots, but everywhere?

No, it hasn’t, and they haven’t.

Like so many people across India, we use wireless connectivity provided by our cellphone operators — GSM (GPRS) and CDMA based Internet connectivity, not WiFi.

“Sufficient” Connectivity

Many of us use our corporate LANs to connect to file servers to access files, databases, printers and other LAN services. These activities typically require quite a lot of bandwidth – in fact, many people complain about the “slow” speed of their switched 100 mbps LANs, and are already eying gigabit networks.

However, the need for speed notwithstanding, wireless LANs, using 802.11b (11 mbps shared) and 802.11g (54 mbps shared) are becoming very popular, especially among people for whom connectivity essentially means three things – email, web browsing, and possibly instant messaging. And all three use a common carrier – the Internet.

Unlike corporate LANs, Internet connectivity tends to be far slower – speeds as low as 28.8 kbps to a max of about 2 mbps are common, with consumer broadband services providing speeds of 28.8-512 kbps to homes (I will address consumer broadband services in a future article). While no one would mind faster speeds, it is a fact that even at 28.8. kbps over dialup, most people can get a lot of work done. I would term this “sufficient connectivity”.

“Perpetual” connectivity

The world has been holding its breath ever since wireless networks have started appearing at airports, coffee shops and of course corporate and education campuses. Everyone has been looking forward to being connected all the time, everywhere. Switch on your device (laptop or PDA), and you are connected to the Internet. Perpetual Connectivity.

To many, WiFi has been the most promising of technologies, and people have been looking forward to the time when WiFi services will become available everywhere.

Sadly, this has not happened and for a number of reasons, ranging from government regulations to commercial issues.

Filling the void

Cellular phone service companies provide data (and hence Internet) services via their phones, treating the phone handset as a “modem”. While GSM data services had been around for as long as cellular networks themselves, the extremely expensive, unreliable and slow (9.6 kbps) connection speeds, plus the fact that you still needed an account with an Internet service provider, made this pretty unpopular.

Sometime in 2003, things began to change. Cellphone operators in India began providing connectivity via their phones – GSM providers like Airtel used GPRS (General Packet Radio Services) as a medium to give speeds approximately equal to that experiences with a 54 kbps dialup connection, while CDMA providers like Reliance raised the bar considerably by providing speeds as high as 128 kbps.

The downer in all cases was the cost of connecting – with per kilobyte and per minute charges that quickly inflating the monthly phone bill to frightening levels. It was hardly surprising that consumers didn’t exactly take to these services like fish to water.

All this changed when the providers realised that in a volumes game, you need to make things attractive enough for the consumer, before you get to see large numbers of subscribers. And so, in late 2004, almost all cellular phone service providers introduced “flat rate” tariffs – you pay a flat amount, no matter how long you are connected, or how much data you transfer. And example of this is Airtel’s immensely popular GPRS-600 service – you pay Rs.600 per month for unlimited connectivity. Reliance recently introduced a similar plan for Rs.650 a month. Both providers saw a massive surge in people subscribing to these connectivity services, typically at the cost of networks that were still charging by the time or volume, who quickly began to look very unattractive.

Connectivity everywhere

By early 2005, it became common for many people to simply use their mobile phones as their primary Internet connectivity, especially users of mobile devices. Even when WiFi is available at, say, a conference or meeting, users find it more convenient to use their already configured GPRS or CDMA services via their phones, rather than struggle with configuring for the local WiFi network.

The first magic word – convenience.

Add to this that unlike WiFi services, cellular data services are available almost anywhere that cellular phone services are available. In a country like India, where mobile phones are quickly overtaking fixed-line phone connections, this means that you can stay connected just about anywhere that you can make a mobile phone call – i.e. everywhere.

The second magic word – anywhere.

And if you use a service from a company with a sane tariff plan (i.e. a “flat rate” plan), you end up paying exactly the same amount every month, no matter how much (and where) you use the services (provided you roam within the provider’s network, of course).

The third magic word – affordability.

And just to complete the picture, add predictability.

Workarounds

Sure, there are still hiccups involved, but these are usually one time, right at the beginning, when you first subscribe to the service. Once you have everything configured, you will find that you can go anywhere you want, switch on your notebook or PDA, and connect without having to think where you are.

Sometimes, however, you need to get a little bit creative.

Remember my talking about Kalyan in the jungle? Well, he had a problem – the place where he currently works (the Biligiri Rangana Temple Wildlife Sanctuary) does have faint signals from various providers, but the strongest one is by a provider who does not offer GPRS services. Kalyan is a geek first, and a naturalist next, and not being connected to the net is as painful to him as it is to me.

His solution?

He climbs a tree, and fastens his mobile phone to a branch at the top, so that he can get a stronger signal from his primary provider (Airtel). Then he climbs back down, sits with his back against the trunk of the tree, and connects, using his notebook or PDA, via his phone some 30 feet above his head, without using any wires.

How does he do that?

Using Bluetooth wireless connectivity.

But that is the topic for another article.

Comments»

no comments yet - be the first?