Home> About Us> Press Room> The New Frontier

The New Frontier
Technology is leading the way for cell phones
-- By Karuna Sawlani

Gulf News Dubai, 19 March, 2002:
You hold the future in your hand. Mobile phones are rapidly becoming the wireless link to the world around us. With technology today, your hand-held cell phone is capable of much more than just talking to each other. You can check for cinema showings, read the preview, select your movie, buy the ticket and enjoy an evening out, all with a single portable handset. And this is only the tip of the iceberg.

With the introduction of WAP (Wireless Application Protocol), GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) and Bluetooth applications, the mobile phone serves as a wireless gateway to the web. Connecting to the Internet and accessing cyberspace information on its small screen has been a liberation from its desktop usage. Banking and finance, portfolio management, advertising, retail shopping, paying bills, news services and text messages are already being carried out while "on the move". What can we expect next?

"The present technology, technically considered 2.5G (such as GPRS) is moving towards 3G (Third Generation). With 3G the whole scenario is deemed to change with the introduction of multimedia and high speed broadband access," says Ivan Fernandes, managing director and CEO, Ducont.

"The future could be a stage where you can imagine getting yourself photographed using your 3G phone, while on tour to a country, attaching a voice note to the picture and sending it to your wife immediately. All this in a matter of seconds," he explains.

Offering solutions to facilitate mobile commerce in the Middle East, Ducont is the first company to provide mobile Internet applications in Arabic. Their clients include Etisalat, Dubai Municipality and Dubai Police.

"Recently, Ducont built solutions on the GPRS networks involving Smartphones [Personal Digital Assistants (PDA) and phone combo] for the local stock markets and Dubai Police. The Police can use a camera-integrated PDA on the GPRS network, capture an accident and relay it back to the central server in the operations room. The officer on the move can download the entire history with pictures, audio and video files of a suspect from the central server on to his PDA using GPRS," adds Fernandes.

But what will drive the usage of 3G among the masses is the availability of the handsets. CeBit 2002, the world's largest electronics show taking place in Hannover, Germany, this week, will serve as a launch pad for many phone manufacturers to unveil their latest devices.

"Siemens' future vision will be on display at CeBit 2002. Radical miniaturisation, integrated display/loudspeakers, mobile phone-beamers and applications that learn your taste are part of what's to come," says Asim Sukhera, area manager, Siemens Information and Communication Mobile.

The prototypes to be exhibited there include a feather-light quad-band 'pendant phone' worn around the neck that allows the user to take photos and instantly send them to a friend via GPRS. A 'mobile beamer' will allow business users to carry the smallest projector in the world within their cell phone. Another device for busy people, 'Jukebots' will apply GPRS and Java technology to teach applications to your phone on your preferences, such as in musical taste. "Miniaturisation and mobility will be the key concepts behind future mobile technology," says Sukhera. Another source of excitement at CeBit 2002 is the European debut of i-mode, NTT DoCoMo's popular interactive mobile service originating in Japan.

Full-colour and animated images coupled with large amounts of text makes the i-mode handset the most user-friendly example of cordless communications technology today. The i-mode is "evernet", or "packet-switched", which means the portable device is always connected to the Internet. Technically, i-mode uses cHTML (compact Hypertext Markup Language) which is easier for website developers to learn, and it allows access to i-mode Web pages with ordinary Netscape or Internet Explorer browsers. Yet, the next forecast in the wireless generation will be extending the usage of 3G handsets.