All the fun of the CeBIT fair

CHRIS BARTON spots the hot property at CeBIT, a communications technology fair in Germany.

"If I see another executive in a suit going by on a scooter, I'm going to thump him," says the Australian.

I have to agree the smug look is annoying, but this is the world's largest telecommunications and computer fair, CeBIT in Hanover, Germany, and scooters are just what is needed to get around. The fair fills 26 buildings - most the size of four rugby fields - and covers an area the size of downtown Auckland. There are more than 8000 exhibitors from 62 countries.

Although shuttle buses ply a continuous path between the buildings, most of the 800,000 or so visitors walk around on aching feet.

There is almost no accommodation in Hanover, so most visitors commute by train from cities such as Hamburg. A total of 565 trains over the seven days of the show stop at the CeBIT station - an average of 81 a day.

Over two days I manage to see just a fraction of the thousands of exhibits. Perhaps the most startling impression is just how much more glamorous the telecommunications exhibits look compared with the rest. Cellphones are hot; PCs are tired and so yesterday.

But the sexy gloss of the new phones falls away a little when you face the barrage of phone acronyms.

Mobile internet is the talk of the huge temporary town - surfing the web, getting e-mail on it, and using it to buy goods and services.

Specifically, the hot topic is GPRS (general packet radio service) and the long-awaited handsets that will be much faster than existing cellphones for data transfer and web surfing. In New Zealand it will arrive on Vodafone's soon-to-be-launched GPRS network.

How fast are they? The fastest I find is 56Kbps (the same speed as a dial-up modem) for the receiving downlink and only 14.4Kbps for the sending uplink.

I ask many times why this is nowhere near the theoretical speed of 114Kbps. Is it because the phones are early models? Does it have anything to do with radiation emission problems when using too many of the eight 14.4Kbps channels, or "time slots"? Or is it just the difference between theory and practice?

Strangely, in this mass gathering of tech-heads, no one seems to know.

I'm told the real convenience of GPRS - which is somewhere between today's second-generation (2G) and tomorrow's third-generation (3G) networks - is its "always-on" nature. Simply put, it's like radio. Turn on the phone and it's there. All you have to do is tune in the website or service.

What a 2.5G GPRS network - similar to its incompatible cousin cdmaOne (code division multiple access), now being built by Telecom - can do is make it much easier to turn the phone into a m(obile)-commerce device.

That gets easier still when you combine GPRS with another wireless technology - also hot at CeBIT - Bluetooth. The technology aims to replace the short cables that connect a variety of devices with a universal wireless link - a little like infrared, but more robust and useable at distances of up to 100m.

The standard has been available for about 18 months, but it is only now that Bluetooth-enabled devices are being seen in quantity. At CeBIT, Bluetooth-enabled phones are everywhere, along with wireless headsets and PC cards that make PCs and handheld computers transfer data in short hops through the air from phone to computer and vice versa.

With it and the new faster cellphone networks comes applications of convenience such as paying for your parking space without getting out of the car, buying a can of Coke with your phone from a vending machine or buying movie tickets that are stored on your phone for transfer when you get to the cinema.

Equipment manufacturer Ericsson demonstrates another application of Bluetooth with its Blips system where information can be downloaded for future reference.

There is also the briefcase trick. Having picked up your e-mail on your mobile, you then pop it in your briefcase as you head to your next meeting. Your notebook is also inside - in suspend mode. Bluetooth then goes to work - waking up your computer to synchronise phone and PC by updating e-mail and appointments.

But the killer application, says Kajsa Arvidsson, a sales director with Ericsson, is games. She wasn't much of a games person before GPRS, but with the new Telia GPRS service in Sweden she was pleasantly surprised.

While waiting at an airport, she decided to have a look at Paintball. Now she is hooked, blasting away by phone at online opponents whenever she has a spare moment.

Like many manufacturers at CeBIT, Ericsson uses the show to launch new models. Star performer is the T68 - a new GPRS mobile with a colour screen, Bluetooth and a joystick-like control.

Ericsson vice-president Torbjan Nilsson is mobbed by photographers when he proudly holds it up.

Several of the new phones employ enhanced messaging service (ems), which lets users send preloaded pictures and sounds to other phones, and group sms (short message service), allowing users to text-message in chat groups.

The overriding theme of the new products is a frenzy of cellphone innovations - for just about anything but voice. So far, the mobile internet revolution has got off to a shaky start. Wap - released 18 months ago - was overhyped. Only about 5 per cent of today's phones are Wap-capable.

Bluetooth takeup is also struggling. Ericsson has sold only 50,000 Bluetooth headsets, suggesting that the total market for Bluetooth devices might reach a few million by the end of the year - a far cry from the 100 million predicted.

The GPRS advance has been slowed by a lack of handsets. And much to the consternation of the telecommunications manufacturers, demand for cellphones in general has also slowed.

Ericsson is scaling back its forecast for the number of phone sold this year to 450-525 million from an earlier 500-540 million. Apparently, despite new designs and features, users are not replacing their old mobiles at the expected rate.

And while all manner of data services are being promoted, voice is still the killer application for cellphones and the big earner for telcos.

Like Wap, Bluetooth, GPRS and mobile internet may also be overhyped. And just when the much-touted 3G mobile networks come onstream in 2002-3, it will be a capacity demand for voice - and possibly the long-awaited voice with video rather than internet - that drives uptake.

But there are about 700 million cellphone subscribers worldwide. By this time next year there are likely to be nearly a billion.

Sometime this year the number of cellphone subscribers worldwide will overtake fixed-line users.

By late 2003, mobile internet users are predicted to outnumber fixed-line PC users. Despite the hype, the cellphone internet revolution seems to be on its way.

Links

CeBit

Phone acronyms

Bluetooth

Ericsson Blips system

Telia