FOMA network speed boost: How much further can cellphones usefully evolve?
DoCoMo is planning an upgrade of FOMA to 14.4-megabit speeds, with trials set to begin next autumn. This beats the cutting edge of ADSL (12Mbps), but the question being floated on Slashdot J and elsewhere on the Japanese Web is, unsurprisingly, whether this impressive Rolls-Royce of a network isn't going to become irrelevant given the number of low-cost HotSpots that are springing up and the IP cellphones that are on the horizon. It strengthens the impression of the current service as an incredible pipe with nothing at either end--the handsets are still not up to scratch and there isn't any discernably 3G content around.
The only thing anyone seems to be able to think of to use 3G for is streaming things and videoconferencing, but with packet charges as they are the former is way too expensive. If I could download a song in 30 seconds for 200 yen including the packet fees and listen to it in decent quality, I might, but I'm not that bothered. Videoconferencing for business would be accomplished better and more cheaply with a laptop and a webcam, surely. Videophones in everyday life seem pretty much useless.
What I'm getting at, I suppose, is that I can't see how much more functionality it is worthwhile to put into a cellphone handset (not including PDA/handset hybrids such as the FOMA SH2101V). Camera phones are riding on the edge of usefulness for the average person with a boring existence--how many times in a day do you see something that is interesting enough to photograph and email to someone? How much can you leave your 40-note polyphonic ring tone unmuted without annoying everyone around you? And what could you conceivably want a videophone for?
More importantly, what can you conceivably use a videophone for at the moment? Well, you can call someone else with a cell or fixed-line videophone. You can have a four-way videoconference (but what's the point on a cellphone screen?). If you're a TV station, you can give reporters videophones and presto, you have a one-person camera crew. But you can't set up a one-person TV station.
You could, however, if there were a HotSpot nearby. Hook up a video camera to a laptop and you could broadcast live. Just one example, of course, but it illustrates the point that cellphones in general are closed-off, exclusive, whereas HotSpots and the IP cellphones and related technologies that they will inevitably lead to are open-ended and make it easy to do pretty much whatever you feel like for not much outlay. Cellphones could be set ultimately to go the way of fixed-line phones once IP takes over properly as the means for transmitting everything, whether it be voice or data.
Two more Japanese references for the FOMA story:
Sankei Shimbun
ZDNet Japan
Coincidentally, the Saturday 21st edition of Wireless Watch Japan's mail magazine has a lot to say about videoconferencing on FOMA. It seems to bear out my comments that no-one really has any sense of what they're supposed to do with videophones as yet; as WWJ says, it may take a generation of kids growing up with videophones before using them really becomes commonplace. One developer and writer has a site where he invites people with videophones and no-one to conference with to videophone him, illustrating how low the penetration is so far. Where camera phones have taken off because of the universal rush to adopt them, meaning that there's a good chance of being able to send photos to people you know, videophones still have a long way to go.
I was wrong about not being able to run a streaming broadcast from a FOMA phone, incidentally; there is a service, DoCoV.net, that will do it for a fairly reasonable price (still in the JPY50-100,000 range, though). They also have a BBS that will allow you to dial in and broadcast three minutes of footage live, though it looks like the broadcasts aren't being stored for on-demand viewing later. Interesting idea if they could set it up on a different site and store at least the best of the broadcasts. May drop them a mail to suggest they do just that.
Posted by: aragoto on December 25, 2002 02:32 PMAn FT article on the UK's attitude to camera phones...
"Moving images might do the trick, but I am dubious about stills, particularly as the quality of the images is not particularly good. The most obvious problem, at this stage, is that very few people have photo phones. I know no one who does, so have no one to message. And even if I did, I am not sure I would have much worth sending them, once the first week's novelty had worn off.
For apart from a few weeks' holiday, most of us lead lives of dull and predictable routine: home-travel-work-lunch-work-pub-travel-home-zzzzz. Not much that's photogenic there."
Posted by: aragoto on December 27, 2002 09:40 AM