Ex OpenMoko Lead System Architect takes on Android's lack of openness

Two days ago I centered my frustration about the lack of openness in mobile handsets with Google's new operating system, like the T-Mobile G1, in the headline "WARNING: Android devices are NOT open". But now open source wizzard Harald Welte, former Lead System Architect for OpenMoko, explains Android's shortcomings much better in his latest blog post:

To me, those things are not a big surprise. As soon as you try to get in bed with the big operators, they will require this level of control. Android is not set out to be a truly open source mobile phone platform, but it's set out to be a sandbox environment for applications.

And even with all the android code out there, I bet almost (if not all) actual devices shipping with Android and manufactured by the big handset makers will have some kind of DRM scheme for the actual code: A bootloader that verifies that you did not modify the kernel, a kernel that ensures you do not run your own native applications.

He sees Android as little more than some sandbox virtual machine environment where people can write UI apps for. Nothing that gets him excited. "I want a openness where I can touch and twist the bootloader, kernel, drivers, system-level software - and among other things, UI applications", he says. And I want that too.

To Harald most Linux handsets don't deserve their name because all the freedoms of Linux software are stripped. Linux on cell phones is "definitely not to any benefit of the user" - but only to handset maker, who can skip a pretty expensive Windows Mobile licensing fee. That brave new world makes him sick.

I guess only on Nokia Internet Tablets the Android can be as open as we whish. It's time that someone takes the source code an ports Android for them, preferably without Google spyware, as we know it from Iron, the googlefree fork version of the Chrome browser. Until now Android only runs in a virtual machine on Nokia Internet Tablets.

WARNING: Android devices are NOT open

The world is excited about Google's new operating system for mobile phones. But I am not such a big fan anymore since I talked to Rich Miner, Head of Mobile Platforms at Google. We met yesterday in Munich at the Communication World 2008 where he presented the Android. The system is not as open as I hoped. People will need to jailbreak and unlock their Android smartphones, like iPhones, if they want true freedom and make the most of them.

Of course the Android source code is free and you can develop everything based on it. But then? You don't get your new OS on that Android phone!

If you want, you can redesign the entire Android operating system and eliminate every Google function, even the kill switch for unwanted software. Our German readers at Areamobile.de are worried about their privacy, many refuse to connect to Google's servers with their location aware Android phones. But the first device on the market, T-Mobile G1, does only work with a Google account. "You must sign in to your existing GMail account before you can do ANYTHING with the phone", writes jkOnTheRun. Big brother could be watching you! Therefore it would be preferable to have the choice to get an Android phone that's free of Google. I want my own GPhone, not a Googlephone but a Goebelphone!

Rich Miner shows his T-Mobile G1 at Communication World 2008 in Munich

"That's perfectly possible", Rich Miner told me. You can do whatever you want with the source code. "But will I be able to install my own Android version on a T-Mobile G1?", I asked. "No that's not possible", he answered. "You would have to change the ROM." People cannot change the Linux kernels of the Android devices which went on sale today. They can install every additional program, but Google controls the core system on the ROM. That's against the Linux philosophy and a big difference to the other open Linux device, Openmoko. As a Linux user I am used to bake my own kernels. I remove kernel functions that I don't need to make my computer faster. Or I add new features, such as virtualization, to the kernel.

With Android devices that's not possible. Only a handful of developer devices can do that, but they are not for sale to end users. So if you want to run your own fork of the Android operating system on a cell phone, you have to get a rare developer device or become a handset producer like Motorola or HTC. That sucks! Also: The marvellous G1 is locked to T-Mobile's network in the US and doesn't work with German SIM cards.

My take: It won't take long until we see a flourishing jailbreak and unlock scene, as we already know it from the iPhone. The Android system is not really open before I can bake my own kernel for the device and use it on every network. I asked Rich Miner what Google thinks about jailbreaking the G1 and he just returned: "Why would you want to do that if you can install every software?" Unfortunately I didn't find a good answer in this moment. But I should have said something like: Because it's human to reshape devices for unintended use. It's part of our DNA since the first monkey realized that fruits are not only food, but can make a good booze if you let them mature a little longer.

Mike Jennings presents the Android SDK at OSiM World in Berlin

Maybe Google doesn't even know what's coming their way, sometimes they are surprised at what people do with Android. That's what I learnt from my interview with Mike Jennings, Google's Android Developer Advocate, on September 17th at OSiM World in Berlin. He was astonished when I told him that I was running Android on my Nokia Internet Tablet since Juli. "That's not possible because the source code is still not free", he said. But yet there was an idiot-proof installer available on the internet.

Craving for Android

Some say that Google's Android is losing its mojo after it turned out this week that only the contest winners of Google's Developer Challenge get the latest SDK, while all the others have to use an outdated version from February. I hope that this is no real issue but just Google holding back its latest version until they iron out the worst errors. If not, they would get the same error reports from the developer community over and over again.

I really believe in Android since I installed it on my Nokia N810 on July 8, 2008. It looks much better than the original Maemo Linux and the browser is a dream compared to the device's original MicroB. Although Android runs only virtualized inside of Maemo, its browser is faster than Maemo's and versatile. It fills the entire screen and gives some kind of smooth iPhone feeling to the often stubborn Linux device. Here you can see a screenshot we made for AreaMobile.de:

Website of AreaMobile.de on Android browser

In the German language article I explain how to get Android running. Kudos to a user of the Internet Tablet Talk forum who goes by the name of QWERTY12! He made it all possible, you can find his installation instructions here. Although there isn't even a dedicated device on the market and the numerical keys don't work on the N810, I love to surf the web with Android. It's a wonderful preview of things to come. Some geeks even posted a video on Youtube about how to run Android on a Nokia N95, but I am not sure if it's a fake.

What I am sure about is that Android could get the best out of my Nokia N810. I use it nearly exclusively for websurfing and some casual emails, that's where the device has its flaws. Mozilla's Fennec browser could give some hope but usually it crashes in less than a minute on my N810. That's why in most cases I use a Symbian based Nokia E61i for websurfing and emailing to go. That's even more ugly but at least it works.

Bhaskar Roy: Qik should be a part of Nokia's Ovi

Qik is one of the greatest mobile internet applications I know. You just start the software on a Nokia N95, and yet you are broadcasting live video to everyone over the internet. Have a look at my company's Qik stream at Mogulus if you want to see the next transmission.



I immediately thought that this kind of live video broadcast is the last feature that's missing on Nokia's social platform Ovi. There you can already share photos, videos, comments and blog entries in more than 100 file formats. "We support nearly every existing file format”, said Serena Glover, Director Service Operations, Connect New Experiences at Nokia and ex CEO of Twango in an interview with me at the Mobile World Congress 2008 in Barcelona. But Ovi always keeps you waiting for your friends to upload a new video. You can't just tune when it's still being filmed. It feels more like Blockbuster video than real television. Unlike Qik, which lets you broadcast and see events while they are still happening.

"Absolutely! Qik should be a part of Ovi", therefore said Qik's VP Marketing and co-founder Bhaskar Roy when we talked in Barcelona. He also related how venture capitalists are competing to do his company's second round of funding. Our chat was very interesting and insightful. Who had thought that this Silicon Valley company is mostly based in Russia? While India born Bhaskar and his friend Ramu Sunkara run Qik together with some other Stanford graduates from the Californian city of Santa Clara, most of their employees live and work in Moscow. Nilolay Abkairov, who was a former speech codec developer for Skype mobile, and his team are busily porting Qik to all smartphone platforms.

His friend Alexi handles the video streaming issues, which make use of quite nifty technologies: The handset shoots the video as MPEG4 and immediately streams it as H.263 over a 3G or Wifi connection to Qik's server. There it's being transcoded into Flash for Qik's website or into a Realvideo stream for mobile handsets. "Qik is developing a new live streaming to other mobile handsets”, says Bhaskar. "You won't even need a browser to watch a livestream. We send a Realvideo stream directly to your friends' cell phones."

So soon the cell phone will not only be a camera but also a tv set. Everyone is a sender and a receiver at the same time – if he has the right handset. "Qik works on all S60 platforms and a version for UIQ is in development”, says Bhaskar. "A version for Windows Mobile will be launched soon.” Their aim is to make Qik work on every possible camera phone. That's why the team in Santa Clara is also developing a Java client for cheaper handsets. They even tested Qik successfully on phones with just 100 Megahertz CPU and only an EDGE connection to the mobile internet. "Qik consist of a layer that's different for every platform and a platform independent layer”, explains Bhaskar. "That's why it takes only some weeks to port Qik to a new platform."

So while the future looks technologically bright for Qik, I asked Bhaskar how his company wants to earn money. Until now the service is free and Nokia hasn't made an offer yet. "In this year we will only concentrate on consumer acquisition”, is his answer. Advertising on Qik's website would be easy to implement, like Google does it on Youtube. Also companies could sponsor certain channels on the website. "We could also offer value added services for very cheap prices like $1 per month", says Bhaskar. As an example for a premium service he mentions privacy. Until now every video appears directly on Qik's starting page as soon as you activate the camera. Every stranger can see it until you switch off or hit the "0” key.

OpenMoko urges Android to release everything as source code

While I was in Barcelona at the Mobile World Congress 2008, I received a message from Sean Moss-Pultz, CEO of OpenMoko, producer of the world's most open mobile phones. Their Freerunner, Neo 1973 and Dash Express devices use the open source operating system Linux and people can install every software they want on it with just an apt-get. Where other companies have a Linux kernel with a locked proprietary stack on top of it, the OpenMoko phones are open from top to bottom. You can use your own tools, compile your own kernel. Everything barring a few small drivers is open source under GNU General Public License (GPL).

In Barcelona I talked to a representative of the LiMo foundation who doesn't want to be quoted with his name. He revealed that LiMo Linux is in fact a closed shop. The only aim of the LiMo companies is to produce cheap handsets with a versatile operating system that doesn't cost them a dime. Most end users won't even notice that it's Linux because they are not allowed to install any software for „security reasons“. More open is Android of Google's Open Handset Alliance, he said, but the most open system is OpenMoko.

Read what their CEO Sean Moss-Pultz thinks about the Android and other actual developments! He has answered my interview questions by email.


What's the actual status of Openmoko?

We limited our production of handsets for developers. Our goal was to sell a small number to an enthusiastic crowd. When we sold out in 3 days, we realized that we need to build another batch of phones. From our standpoint the developers are engineers in our company. We don't have more than 10,000, currently. As the project became more noticeable we got inquiries from many different directions. So, for the next release of FreeRunner we will plan for more at the start and get ready for ramp up of consumer oriented products. The coolest thing about a Neo is what it doesn't do. It doesn't lock you out. It's a GNU/Linux computer. It does what you want.

What is the most difficult thing about building a GSM phone from scratch with Linux?

OpenMoko started as a project inside FIC (Taiwan) and has recently been turned into it's own company. So, we've had to build a open software stack, build a team, build a product, plan a future, and build a company, while everyone gets to watch.

Most of the challenges, I would say, are philosophical in nature. Not technical.

In an closed company you go through various stages of hardware development. These stages are hidden from the general public. Prototype hardware is built and passed out to a few select internal developers. Later, more hardware is built. In a pilot run. This is distributed internally to more engineers in the company. Finally, it's presented to the public like it just came out of the oven.

OpenMoko is inside out. Our prototype are shared with developers around the world. Why? because our engineers are outside the company as well as inside.

In some ways we are like a reality TV show. Showing how one builds a gadget of the future. It's like a cross of Survivor, Dirty jobs, and ice road truckers.

What can your handset do, the Neo1973? Give us some specs and tell what is so great about it, compared to normal mobile phones!

The hardware specs for the phone are on openmoko.org, but in short its a GSM phone, with GPS, WiFi, Bluetooth, 3D graphics acceleration and accelerometers. But this is not a spec war and this is not a beauty contest. Neo branded phones unlock the hardware and unlock the software. The software on the phone, the applications you use are totally open. If you program you can change them. If you don't program you will download popular programs that others have built.

Which people do already have such a handset, the Neo1973? Can people buy it somewhere? Is it planned to be sold to the general public some day?

Our Neo 1973 has been onsale since July of 2007. We're totally sold out now and won't make anymore. Our next produce Neo FreeRunner is coming soon.

I think we primarily appeal to technologists now and will stay this way for the some time to come. But this is not at all limiting. What I find most appealing about OpenMoko is that we just have to provide the right framework for change to happen. Our community is the one that pushes the revolution. The more people that develop for this platform, the larger the target market becomes.

We've found a strong and influential niche. In the age where mass market TV advertising is dead, this is crucial. Marketing a product initially to the masses is impossible, I would argue. People have too many choices and not enough time.

OpenMoko stands out because we are different. We speak directly to the needs of an extremely creative group. Our goal is to provide them tools and inspiration so they can realize the have power to revolutionize the world. OpenMoko is a company from their community. We will amplify their voice.

How did the OpenMoko project start? Whose idea was it and who pushed it forward?

About a year and a half ago I was a product manager at First International Computer (FIC) -- a large Taiwanese OEM, charged with Defining the product roadmap for our division. I was quite limited, unfortunately, by having to create only Windows Mobile devices.

I quickly realized that it didn't need to be like this. I could step outside the box any time I liked.

The phone that I really wanted to create was the modern equivalent of the programmable calculator. A device that is simple to use, but almost infinitely extensible by the end user.

The main idea was that the driving force behind the Internet is Free and Open Software (FOSS). It's the superconductive medium that powers the Internet. Without FOSS the Internet would be trapped in 1995.

In a nutshell, OpenMoko is about spreading this technology to mobile devices. Letting people everywhere "Free your phone." It's the birth of a new Internet. Not merely a revision, not simply 2.0, but rather a connected, interconnected experience wherever you wander.
Without FOSS the mobile phone still lives in 1973.

Our first open mobile device is called the "Neo 1973". It's internet connected, location aware, and completely FOSS. In a way, I see the mobile industry as a matrix. The industry is hindered by proprietary systems and Neo is trying to tear down the walls unplug humans from the matrix and give them back their power.

I took this idea and pitched it to our senior management team with the help of Timothy Chen -- a very smart businessman. Without him, this whole project would only be another unfulfilled entry in my sketchbook.

How is Openmoko organized today? How do you include all those Linux developers worldwide? Is there a boss or a structure?

We are a fully independent company now:

http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/080102/20080102005213.html?.v=1

Lots of people trying to make great open mobile devices.

What is your opinion about Android?

We support FOSS endeavors. In our philosophy, a software platform needs to be free from the iron to the eyeballs. That means FOSS code from the lowest levels that talk to hardware to the highest levels that present images to users. We hope Android moves in this direction. We encourage them to.

Is Openmoko involved with Android?

Yes. We lobby them to join the FOSS movement and release everything as source code, all the way down to the drivers like we do.

Has Openmoko been contacted by Android?

Yes.

Is Openmoko source code involved in Android?

Our source code is freely available GPL.

Maybe Android source code is involved in Openmoko?

If they posted GPL code and our community found that it was good and useful it would get used. That's what FOSS is all about. This is how FOSS gets stronger for everyone.

How does the launch of Android affect the Openmoko project?

It's rather humbling. We never expected a company like Google to endorse our concept of freeing the phone. It's also exciting because we realize that with their support of developers many new open applications will come to the FOSS platform.

Why did Harald Welte leave? He was Openmoko's "Senior Software Archtitect System Level" and we were very proud that he was from our city, Berlin.

Berlin should be proud. Harald is a great programmer and was key to getting The first phone, Neo 1973, shipped. He did a huge amount of work and is still a part of every Neo that ships.

What does this change?
(http://gnumonks.org/~laforge/weblog/2007/11/16/#20071116-leaving_openmoko)

We have our goals which Harald helped create, and we are meeting those goals and going beyond them. We are prepared because of his diligence.

How do you see mobile communications in ten years? Everything seems to "open" now. Verizon and AT&T open their network, Google bids for an open spectrum at 700 Mhz, Mobile Wimax promises more open mobile communications...

You could say there were two theories. In one theory the user pays for bandwidth (time on line) and the device (phone, set top box etc) is free. In the reverse world, bandwidth is free (like free WiFi) and people buy great devices.

In one world you pay premiums for bandwith, in the other you pay premiums for devices.

Opening the network...levels the playing field and gives people more choices. This is what Openmoko is all about.

How much does Google pay the operators for the My Location info on Google Maps?

Google has launched a location service for Google Mobile Maps that doesn't rely on the Global Positioning System (GPS). The My Location feature locates users who don't have GPS-enabled phones based on their location to nearby cell towers. The result isn't as accurate as GPS, but it works pretty good in cities. Om Malik got located just half a block away from his real location when he checked out the service yesterday.

I wonder how much Google has to pay for that location info, because it's not free. In Germany the mobile operators charge €0.10 from third parties for every localization, and Google's new service works also here.

The disclaimer on the mobile phone explains pretty good the functionality of My Location for Google Maps:

With the My Location (beta) feature, just press [0] to move the map to your approximate location. [...] Your approximate location will appear as a flashing blue dot. If you have a GPS-enabled device, this blue dot correspondents to your GPS location. At times, and if you don't have GPS on your phone, you may see the dot surrounded by a light blue circle to indicate uncertainty about your location.

Why the uncertainty? The My Location service takes information broadcasted from nearby mobile towers to approximate your current location on the map - it's not GPS, but it comes pretty close. [...]

As part ot the My Location (beta) feature, Google Maps sends anonymous radio information back to Google servers to improve the service. You can disable / enable this and all location features by selecting from the options below.

In Germany we have a company called Qiro which does quite the same, but they are more advanced with their service. I visited them in July 2007. You can locate yourself and your buddies on a map. Qiro shows nearby movie theaters with their current program, ATM machines, Burger King restaurants, train stations, travel agencies and many more things.

Unlike Google Maps, Qiro is already based on localized online advertising. The prices for advertisers are similar to the banner ads on your web browser. This means it's cheap, between €3 and €150 for 1.000 ads. Qiro needs a razor sharp calculation to earn the money back for the localization and still make a margin.

How does Google do it?

Do they get better prices? Or do they just don't care because they are drowning in money? I guess we have to read their next stock report and look for an item called "locator info".

Next monday is the real Google Phone day

I am really looking forward to next Monday when the software development kit (SDK) for Android, the new operating system from Google for mobile handsets, comes out. Hopefully that brings answers.

When they launched the Android last Monday there was very much buzz but few to be seen. Valleywag pretends to have screenshots of the first Googlephone app, but that's not very much of an information.

On tuesday I interviewed Florian Seiche, Vice President Europe of HTC, the most important smart phone producer in Google's Open Handset Alliance. But whenever I digged deeper he said that we have to "wait till monday when the SDK comes out".

At least he could tell me that Android has nothing to do with Openmoko or other Linux versions for smartphones. No Openmoko developers worked for the Android, no code sharing or whatever. Before I had the suspicion that Google's new mobile OS was in fact powered by the community solution Openmoko.

But that's not the case. Even Sean Moss-Pultz, initiator of Openmoko and responsible hardware product manager at First International Computer (FIC), doesn't have much knowledge about the Android, he told me in an email. He doesn't know the code yet and is waiting for something to compare.

So let's wait for Monday, November 12, 2007! That`s the real Google Phone day.

I think Google's Mobile Phone Platform Android will be great

So the Google Phone is out and the first reactions are not too good. At least at GigaOM there is more criticism than kudos. Nobody wants to hype the new product, nearly everyone is nagging. Since Google's shares are worth more than 700 dollars it's not cool anymore to be a Google fanboy.

I got an invitation to the same press call like Om, but unfortunately it started when my workday ended. May other journalist cover the story. Also it seems that the press call was not very much of a pleasure. "They completely dodged my question about how does it reconcile with other mobile linux efforts which are backed by none other than partners like Motorola", writes Om Malik.

Personally I like very much what he tells about Android, Google's new mobile phone plattform:

What is Android? A fully integrated mobile “software stack” that consists of an operating system, middleware, user-friendly interface and applications. It will be made available under one of the most progressive, developer-friendly open-source licenses, which gives mobile operators and device manufacturers significant freedom and flexibility to design products. Next week, the Alliance will release an early access software development kit to provide developers with the tools necessary to create innovative and compelling applications for the platform.

Does anybody know if this has something to do with OpenMOKO, the other open Linux cell phone platform? Maybe Android is just the same?

How open is Android compared to OpenMOKO?

The latter let's you manipulate everything to the very core of the mobile phone functions. Yet now there are thousands of great free Linux programs running on the OpenMOKO devices. I would love to see this kind of openness backed by heavy weights like Google and the other mentioned companies.

I hope that Android is as open as the Open Handset Alliance's website says:

Android was built from the ground-up to enable developers to create compelling mobile applications that take full advantage of all a handset has to offer. It is built to be truly open. For example, an application could call upon any of the phone's core functionality such as making calls, sending text messages, or using the camera, allowing developers to create richer and more cohesive experiences for users. Android is built on the open Linux Kernel. Furthermore, it utilizes a custom virtual machine that has been designed to optimize memory and hardware resources in a mobile environment. Android will be open source; it can be liberally extended to incorporate new cutting edge technologies as they emerge. The platform will continue to evolve as the developer community works together to build innovative mobile applications.

All applications are created equal

Android does not differentiate between the phone's core applications and third-party applications. They can all be built to have equal access to a phone's capabilities providing users with a broad spectrum of applications and services. With devices built on the Android Platform, users will be able to fully tailor the phone to their interests. They can swap out the phone's homescreen, the style of the dialer, or any of the applications. They can even instruct their phones to use their favorite photo viewing application to handle the viewing of all photos.

I think GigaOM's reader rohit understands it right:

i think this is a much bigger potential play at replacing the whole mobile phone software stack and aimed at making it truly an information appliance. think of it as an IP-services led “phone” design, not a telco-call based device.

It's a Linux for phones! You can do everything with it, if it's really open. I already wonder how it cooperates with Google's Ubiquisys femtocells. It annoys very much that my cell phone is not as open and flexible as my PC. Give me a command line to my cell phone and I will be happy!

Or, as commentator David Jacobs puts it:

Being an open system, hackers will have a field day with this and it could get some serious traction among the geek community who are so frustrated with the iPhone limitations.

Here you can get more quotes from Android's developers:

"Even A teenager in the basement and a senior designer in a big company - they have the same chance", says the film. That would be great because I don’t want just a Google Phone. I want many different of them for different purposes. That’s why I think the OS approach is great. The iPhone just isn’t enough anymore. It’s so 2007.

I got the offer to do interviews to John Wang, Chief Marketing Officer of Google's hardware producer HTC, and Florian Seiche, Vice President Europe of HTC, tomorrow. Let's see if that will answer my open questions.

Who wants and invitation to GrandCentral?

Since Luca says that a similar offer turned out to be one of his most popular blog posts ever, I will also give it a try: Who wants an invitation to Google's GrandCentral? I still have some to give.

The proceeding is the same that we followed with the invitations to Joost: The person who wants a GrandCentral invitation from me should just ask in the comment section of this blog and tell me why I should choose especially him or her.

Or maybe Apple is the real telco disruptor?

Do you remember my post "Google is the real telco disruptor" from july?

Well, it seems that the story could become even more interesting with another player entering the 700 MHz wireless spectrum auction that many didn't have on their list: Apple might also bid for that "bech front property" spectrum, suggests a BusinessWeek article called "Apple Eyes the Wireless Auction".

Taking into account this possible development many pieces of the puzzle would fall into their place. Why is the iPod touch such a cool device, an iPhone without phone? Why did Apple cut the price for the iPhone so soon and drastically?

In Germany the association eco, alliance of 330 big internet companies, hailed already last week the new device by saying "Wifi iPod makes mobile internet a mass market" in a press release. They are fed up with the slow acceptation of mobile internet service on Germany because the incumbent mobile operators keep 3G data prices high and accept only walled gardens on their devices.

"T Zones, Web-n-walk und Vodafone Live all try to keep away the user from the free and open internet", says eco director Harald A. Summa. "Exactly this policy of closed networks has so far prevented the breaktrough of the mobile internet to a mass market. The success of iTunes and Youtube shows that the users know much better than the operators what they really want." The new iPod touch offers direct Wifi access to iTunes and Youtube, circumventing the closed networks of the mobile operators.

So, let's just imagine that the iPhone never planned to sell millions. Maybe it's real purpose is just to create buzz for the new iPods? The iPod touch has every feature that you like from the iPhone. It only misses the annoying part of the phone: A 60 dollar per month cell phone contract. New iPods could work without that contract, using the 700 MHz spectrum, suggests the article in BusinessWeek:

Signals at the 700Mhz spectrum, for example, could provide far faster Internet access than today's cellular or even Wi-Fi networks, and the signals can easily pass through buildings and work glitch-free, even in lousy weather.

Still, even the possibility of an Apple bid is intriguing. For starters, it would mean Apple would no longer need to rely on a phone company to deliver songs, TV shows, and other digital fare purchased at its iTunes Music Store. As it is, the major complaint of iPhone shoppers isn't with the phone, but with the pokey Net access from Apple's exclusive U.S. partner, AT&T (T).

If it owned its own spectrum, Apple could provide the network service itself, possibly for far less than the $1,440 iPhone owners must now fork out over the course of the cheapest two-year contract. For example, Apple could hold down costs by letting users choose a Net telephony program such as Skype rather than develop its own voice software, say analysts.

Apple might even be able to give away network service for free, and make its money off services such as iTunes and possibly by selling subscribers advertising space.

Indeed, cutting out the carrier would probably be in sync with Steve Jobs' view of the world. Before striking the iPhone deal with AT&T, he publicly dissed phone companies as little more than "orifices"—good only for providing dumb pipes to deliver more innovative companies' more innovative services.

"Apple is the most anti-carrier company there is," says the former Apple executive. "They're probably already frustrated with AT&T. If they put a few billion behind this, they could build a kick-ass network." Indeed, on Sept. 5, Apple announced a new iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store so consumers can buy songs at wireless hotspots, something they can't do on AT&T's network. And Jobs made a point of noting Wi-Fi is faster not only than the so-called 2.5G EDGE network, but also than 3G cellular networks.

A very convincing argumentation that matches perfectly with what eco said. That's also the reason why I had to copy such a long passage of the original article. (Sorry for that!) Hopefully it's not only intentionally leaked hot air to lift Apple's stock price.

Finally Google Reader adds search

Techcrunch reports that Google adds search to Google Reader. Now that's a news that I have been waiting for. Far too long! It's so great to finally have it. You can find the official announcement here.

I already had missed this feature so urgently that I had to install a hack which made use of Google's customized search. It searches through the websites whose feeds I am using. This trick I found via this excellent post "Saving Time for Productivity with Google Reader" from Web Worker Daily. But the disadvantage were too many and too old search results.

Instead the new Reader search ransacks only actual blog posts and presents them in chunks of 40 results.

Google is the real telco disruptor

Now that Google goes "All In" and really takes up the fight for the 700 MHz wireless spectrum in the US we all wonder what are the plans of the search engine company. I found two pieces of well founded speculations that I like most. Both get to the point that Google is planning the total disruption of mobile and fixed line telephony by offering free calls, sponsored by advertising.

"GoogleTel" is arising out of the search engine's last moves and acquisitions. Thomas F. Anglero, one of my favourite VoIP bloggers but not the most frequent writer, puts it in the form of a equation:

GoogleTel = Ubiquisys (Femtocells)+ Bandwidth (Dark Fiber and 700MHz Spectrum) + Grand Central (One Number ID)
Sunday, July 22, 2007

It seems very obvious at this moment what Google is doing. They are building a US nationwide Telecom operator but without the Telecom legacy.

And Don Reisinger at CNet asks:

Could Google kill the cell phone industry?
July 20, 2007 11:08 AM PDT

Once the company announces the wireless broadband to the nation, it will immediately announce that Google Phone everyone has been talking about. The Google Phone will work specifically with the Google system (kind of like Skype) and will be free of charge. The only fee to the consumer is the cost of buying the phone [...] As soon as the phone is released, people will be tossing their iPhones, Razrs and every other cell phone into the nearest river. Why pay all that money for a phone when you can have the same kind of service for free?

Maybe Reisinger should have omitted the interrogation mark in his title? The two articles are highly convincing and should make traditional telcos shiver. Have fun reading and think twice before you sign your next long term contract!

Why did Roam4Free meet with Google's GrandCentral?

What's going on between the international MVNO Roam4Free and Google's new acquisition Grandcentral?

Roam4Free's CEO Pat Phelan tells in his blog that he and Chief Commercial Officer Sean O’Mahony, recently hired from Jajah, met with Grandcentral's Craig Walker and the Google voice team at Google headquarters London.

Pat isn't allow to tell more because he is "under electronic NDA". Just two fotos and the sentence "What were we doing at the Googleplex, oh thats a secret".

This gives pretty much room for speculation. I guess they are planning to bring GrandCentral to other countries than the US and make it mobile. This is very necessary for GrandCentral and would match well with Roam4Free's latest strategy to give fixed line numbers from 28 countries to their users.

I like GrandCentral’s services but it sucks to have only a US number. So I have to make a call forward from a German number to my GrandCentral number. Therefore I loose GrandCentral’s call screening options and get a bad delay, since the call forward goes twice around the world.

That problem could be solved easily with some SIP configurations. If Roam4Free connected its SIP servers, Grand Central could directly offer local fixed line numbers from 28 countries. Also Roam4Free could help Grand Central users to make their cell phones ring at low cost in 115 countries, without high roaming charges.

Maybe Roam4Free is Google’s next acquisition. I don’t have any facts to sustain that, but wouldn't be surprised.

GrandCentral gives you "one inbox" for life, where all voice messages can be stored for ever. With Google's voice search capabilities these messages can soon be searchable in seconds, like the millions of emails that people have in their GMail accounts. It's even possible to merge GMail and GrandCentral into "one inbox for life for voice and emails". Given the fact that Google is a large international company with worldwide dark fiber capacities you would just have to add Roam4Free to make that work as a great international phone service in over 115 countries.

But they are not alone. Remember the last news "Skype Founding Investor invests in United Mobile to "deliver a combination of Truphone, Jajah and Skype". This can result in something quite similar, based on another international MVNO, United Mobile, and Skype's founding investor Morten Lund.

Google's GrandCentral now also in Germany

Google's GrandCentral ("One Number...for LifeTM - a number that's not tied to a phone or a location - but tied to you") now works also in Germany, with German numbers - if you can accept some shortcomings. I just checked it out.

Two days ago I got this email:

Good news! We are excited to announce that we are opening the GrandCentral private beta to some additional users and would like to extend you an invitation to sign up. To get started, just click on the invitation link below and register for your free GrandCentral phone number. Once you create an account, you will be able to invite up to 10 friends to also join our private beta and they will be able to sign up immediately.

http://www.grandcentral.com/home/invite/.........

Since the GrandCentral beta is still closed to the general public, you will need to click on this link to sign up. If you already have a GrandCentral account or you no longer wish to sign up, you can forward the link to a friend.

Thanks again for your interest in GrandCentral and enjoy the service!

Sincerely,
Craig Walker & Vincent Paque

Maybe that's because I applied some weeks ago. When first I entered my data on GrandCentral's website they wouldn't let me sign up. The process always sent me back to the first screen. But after some tweaking with proxies I finally got my own GrandCentral account as you can see here:

Just type in your US number an let my phone ring! You are welcome.

The next thing to do was to forward a local German VoIP number to my US GrandCentral number, which is located in Albany, NY. With this call forward I can do nearly everything that US GrandCentral users can do. And of course this call forward is free, because I use Voipcheap which provides free calls to the US.

When someone calls me, a computer voice asks me to choose from four options:

• "1" to accept the call,
• "2" to send it to voice mail
• "3" to send it to voice mail and ListenIn. That's great to filter callers. If the message is intesting then I still pick up the phone and start a conversation.
• "4" to accept the call and record it directly in GrandCentral. That's a great feature for me as a journalist who sometimes likes to have recordings of his interviews.

There are far more features, as you can see here, but I did not try them out yet.

The one thing that's obviously missing is to screen the callers and to filter spam calls by caller ID. Normally GrandCentral asks every caller to tell his name before it connects the call. But my forwarded calls have all the same caller ID from the number in Berlin. To GrandCentral it always seems to be the same caller and the computer voice always tells me that "Markus" is calling. That's a little bit annoying since I am the "Markus" who is alledgedly calling. Only people who call directly to my US GrandCentral number can be callscreened correctly.

One feature I really love is the free call forward from GrandCentral to Gizmo Project numbers, although I have critized it some months ago. It's a great and necessary feature since GrandCentral doesn't give SIP login data to its customers. Now I just forward for free from GrandCentral to a Gizmo number that's installed in my Fritz!Box ATA.

I even managed to forward GrandCentral calls for free over a GSM gateway to my cell phone. But that's crap. The computer voice asks me to type 1,2,3 or 4. But whatever I do it doesn't accept it. I suppose that GrandCentral relies only on DTMF touch tones and cannot understand my cell phones instructions. But why does it work with mobile phones in the US? Do they have touch tones?

I hope to learn more about GrandCentral in the next days and let it work like a virtual secretary who manages my phone calls. On Asterisk it would be possible to transmit the original caller ID over the call forward to GrandCentral, so that I could use also the call screening.

But then: Who needs GrandCentral if he or she has an own Asterisk server?

Google doesn't take over Jajah, yet

There where rumours that Google would take over Jajah because last week "three Google airplanes" had landed in the Austrian city of Salzburg.

One small detail escaped the rumourers: There is no Jajah in Salzburg. Most of their people are still working in Vienna and in Israel. On the other hand the new Jajah office in Mountain View (California) is, as far as I know, barely staffed. So Google would probably have to travel to Austria for a takeover. But nothing of that is true, as we learn now from the local Newspaper Salzburger Nachrichten.

It was just Google's CEO Eric Schmidt meeting with his old friends from university. A high profile Princeton alumni meeting, hosted by Austrian industrialist Gerhard Andlinger, attended also by Forbes' publisher Steve Forbes and Germany's ex foreign secretary Joschka Fischer. Names like Newton and Guggenheim were also mentioned.

But still the question remains: Why would Schmidt travel in three airplaines? But maybe this was just a gross exaggeration.

Will Sprint's Wimax finally bring the Open Mobile Economy?

Jan Michael Hess from Berlin, Germany, is preaching the "Open Mobile Economy", yet for quite a long time: Open mobile networks, open services and open devices. This means basically that mobile network providers, like Vodafone, provide their mobile internet bandwith for reasonable flatrate prices and their costumers can do with it whatever they want. No closed portal sites on mobile phones, no VoIP blocking and no exorbitant data prices for SMS, because people write mobile e-mails. Just plain internet access everywhere and using Flickr, Google, Skype and Youtube like you do at home.

A nice dream so far. Others are even dream of a "wireless net neutrality".

But Hess knows that it could be possible. It seems to be an open secret that mobile 3G networks have about 90 per cent unused data capacity. People shy away from using them because of the high data prices. So it is a good move that the German MVNO Simyo recently cut his data prices by 97 per Cent. The mobile Megabyte now costs only 24 Euro Cent. But this is still no "Open Mobile Economy" since it is no flatrate and the service works only on a GPRS network and not in 3G. Most mobile network operators still prefer unused business opportunities instead of giving mobile internet access for a low price. That's because they paid billions for their 3G frecuencies, rollout and hardware subsidies.

But maybe a new technology, Wimax, will bring the story to a good end and the "Open Mobile Economy" will finally arrive? An article by Michael Mace tells a things about the US mobile network operator Sprint that are nearly unbelievable:

Yes, I know Sprint's serious about WiMax -- it's spending more than $2.5 billion to build out a mobile WiMax network across the US. That's old news. The surprise to me is the business model Sprint says it'll deploy on that network. That hasn't gotten much coverage at all, but I think it's critically important. If you believe what Sprint says, its WiMax network will be totally open: any device, any application, without any contract required.

As you probably know Wimax is something like Wifi but faster and with much broader coverage. While Wifi cells cover only some meters of area Wimax cells can be some kilometers wide. The bandwith can compete with fixed broadband access and is much faster than nowadays 3G. The first Wimax equipped laptops, PDAs and mobile phones are being presented in these days at the 3GSM World Congress 2007 in Barcelona. Wimax is like DSL but without wires. That's why it's often used to bring Broadband to rural areas. Sprint has already announced to build out a nationwide WiMax network across the US.

Michael Mace is an industry insider and principal at Rubicon Consulting. He summed up some information he got from companies, news and an interesting panel discussion:

Okay, so let's add this up: an open, broadly-deployed, high-speed wireless network that welcomes any device, open APIs that allow any application, and no contract required. This is everything that the computer and Internet industries have been asking of the operators, and Sprint is apparently saying yes to all of it. The audience at the Churchill Club should have given this plan a standing ovation, but the information came out in dribs and drabs during a 90-minute panel, and it was very hard to assemble all the pieces.

The killer app is open access to the Internet.

That seems to be the "Open Mobile Economy" that Jan Michael Hess and others have prayed for so long. Will it finally arrive, bypassing the mobile phone companies? Wimax works in other frecuencies that were much cheaper than those for 3G. Other, smaller companies have got them.

Maybe we finally get our open mobile broadband for reasonable prices?

It would be very funny to also use it for phone calls.