Mobile Communication

Introduction

Mobile communication is progressing at a speed that is rapidly extending the range of possibilities that can be achieved through mobile technology. This is beneficial to small businesses due to the enhanced communications that mobile phones now have to offer, ranging from talk to Internet access, and soon to video.

The latest technology advances are orientated to provide business solutions, but many people are not aware of their availability and further, do not fully understand their capabilities.

Since the first mobile phone was released, about twenty years ago, all walks of life have become dependant upon them: as we know, the younger population has taken to the device with fervour.

We all need to acknowledge that mobile phones can play an integral part in business, and regard the technology as an important business tool at that.

The following article will give an insight into the more popular functions of mobile phones and will show the benefit to small businesses. Plus, what you can expect future technology to provide: we all need to understand what the technology is about and ensure that we have sufficient knowledge when technology does progresses and becomes more common in the work-place.

Mobile Communication in Small Businesses

You may not have considered the need for mobile phones in your business but have you ever needed to contact a member of staff when they are away from the premises? Have you ever needed Internet access when you do not have your desk top PC available? These are just a couple of examples but as you will find out from reading the article, mobile phones can offer you a range of solutions.

Mobile phones were introduced so we could communicate when „on the move” and the capabilities have now expanded beyond their initial function for talk: you can now use mobile phones to access/receive a range of information wherever you are.

Until recently, the use of mobile phones had been restricted to the country that your network lies in i.e. if you are registered with a UK network, say, BT Cellnet, then you could not use the phone outside of the UK. The introduction of dual-band connections has allowed phones to be used in the rest of Europe and tri-band connections has allowed usage in the US and Asia: this will be a welcome breakthrough for people that go abroad for business purposes.

PC Windows applications such as Microsoft Word and Excel are now being introduced to mobile phones allowing work to be completed when away from the business premises. To compensate, the size of the screen has been enlarged on the phones that use these applications. These phones are usually the larger of the phones available.

What are SIM Cards?

SIM (Subscriber Information Module) cards are around 1cm x 2cm in size and fit in the back of your mobile phone handset. These cards (that have a small chip) are your authorization to use the mobile network and store any information that is used on the mobile phone handset such as text messages and phone settings. The SIM card also holds your unique phone number and any security settings such as network pin numbers.

Some SIM cards can be used in other handsets and so you will take with it any information that has been stored on the card including your telephone number. If you ever decide to change handsets then you should contact your service provider (Orange, Vodafone, etc) for details on the compatibility of your SIM card with other phones: some handsets will not be compatible with certain service providers.

Some phones can hold more than one SIM card so that you can use different services (free minutes, free SMS, etc) that are provided by different service providers on the same phone. By doing so, you can switch from one SIM to another at the press of a button without having to manually change them around each time. Each SIM card will have a different telephone number and therefore each time you change your SIM card, you change with it your number.

Talk

Since the beginning, the most common function of a mobile phone is for talking: you can contact other phones (both land and mobile) by dialling the appropriate number. In addition, you can be contacted by having your own unique mobile phone number (stored on the SIM) that can be dialled from any other phone (both land and mobile).

There are certain limitations to when a call can be made or received:

You must have available credit to make a call (incoming calls are free) but this only applies if you use a pay-as-you-go service. ‘Contract’ services have unlimited credit that is paid off monthly

You must have ‘reception’ to make and receive calls: all service providers cover approximately 99 per cent of the UK but the quality of the reception will vary from place to place (even different rooms in a house can affect the reception quality!)

Short Message Service (SMS): Text Messages

SMS allows text messages to be sent and received from one mobile phone to another mobile phone. These messages could deliver information to a member of staff who is away from the premises, say, a customer address or a change in meeting time. SMS is considered as the cheaper alternative for delivering short pieces of information as it is usually cheaper than making a call. The other advantage of SMS is that messages are delivered within seconds of sending them assuming that the receiving phone:

* Is turned on

* Has reception

* Has available space in the phone memory (SIM Card) for the message to be received

The disadvantage is that the length of the message is limited to 160 characters due to technical restrictions: hence the term ‘Short Message Service’.

Text messages can be sent directly from PCs to mobile phones by using the on-line services available at many sites such as Lycos for example.

GSM (Global System for Mobile communication): The Basics

GSM is the digital mobile phone network that is used throughout Europe and in most other areas around the world. GSM can provide for voice-mail (answer phone service), faxing, SMS and high-speed data transfer (WAP) as well as for talk..

GPRS (General Packet Radio System): The Basics

GPRS is a technology that does not replace GSM, but uses the GSM network to allow data to be sent/received at higher speeds.

Further, the technology (without going into the science) allows you to pay only for the time that the information takes to send/receive. This payment method is only valid for the use of WAP (see below) and does not apply when talking.

The advantages of GPRS are further highlighted in the next section.

Wireless Application Protocol (WAP)

WAP is a technology designed to allow Internet material (web pages, e-mail, etc) to be viewed on mobile phones. WAP browsers on the phone display text-only versions of web pages as images have to be removed due to the limited bandwidth that the network currently has to offer. GSM offers speeds of around 9.6Kbps but the new GPRS has allowed speeds of around 20-24Kbps. The older WAP phones will still use the original GSM network but the new WAP phones that you see available today will use GPRS.

GSM phones have to go through the slow log-in processes when using WAP, but GPRS provides a continuous connection for the day once logged in. As said before, GPRS will allow web pages to be read without the worry of cost because the time used to download the information is the only chargeable period for using WAP (Important: talk time rates will be independently charged): GSM charges for the total time connected.

The information that can be viewed by WAP mobile phones is currently limited to news, finance, directories, travel, shopping, sport and e-mail (detailed later) but can be extremely useful. Although GPRS has expanded the capabilities of WAP such as faxing and e-mailing, the next generation technology will make a huge difference to how we will interact between mobile phones and the Internet.

3G: The Third Generation Future of Mobile Phone Technology

The first generation (1G) of mobile phones (1970s – 1980s) involved:

* Analogue transmission

* The limitation to making ‘voice’ calls

* Only being able to use the mobile phone in one country

The second generation (2G) began in the early 1990s and saw the introduction of digital transmission allowing SMS to be integrated into the service of mobile phones. The advance into new technology during the millennium, such as WAP, has been called 2.5G: this is where we are now and 3G is just around the corner.

3G is the era for the introduction of broadband so that the number of possibilities from a mobile phone could be endless such as interactive media e.g. high quality video-conferencing. Web pages will become more accessible and will be received at much higher speeds of around 2Mbps. 3G will also allow mobile phones to support Java so that interactive web pages can be downloaded.

The next generation of mobile phones will also see the introduction of MMS (Multimedia Messaging) allowing images, animations, clips and text to be sent to another MMS phone or PC. The phones that offer this capability were available to buy in the UK around May 2002 at prices averaging £150. The introduction of colour screens on mobile phones made available during the same time further enhances the MMS feature.

Built-in mobile phone cameras, made available at the same time as MMS, allows images to be displayed on mobile phone screens (just like a digital camera). Images can then be saved as JPEG’s and can be stored or sent to other MMS mobile phones and PCs.

It is predicted that 3G technology will see mobile phones (and other mobile units such as Palm-tops) being used just as much as desktop PCs once the technology has been fully integrated. As a result, it has been suggested that mobile phones are mass-produced as lap-top computers.

E-mail

With the introduction of WAP, came the availability of e-mail from mobile phones. The user must first have an on-line e-mail account: these can usually be set up directly with your mobile phone service provider by registering your details on their web site. Alternatively, the most popular independent mobile phone service can be found at www.iobox.com where an e-mail account can be created.

To send an e-mail, you would write it on your mobile phone (as you would text messages) and send it directly to the required address. The length of the e-mails is not restricted in length and so you can write messages in full. To receive an e-mail, you would download your e-mails directly to your phone by using WAP to connect to your e-mail account via the Internet. Some service providers send an indication to your phone when you have received a new e-mail usually in the form of a load „beep” or SMS.

Some of the newer phones without WAP do offer an e-mailing option but e-mails can only be sent and not received. The lengths of these e-mails are still limited to the 160-character length as for SMS.

Blue-Tooth

Blue-tooth is a technology that allows communication between digital devices such as PCs, mobile phones, lap-tops and Personal Digital Assistants (PDA). It is achieved by a short-range (around 10 metres) wireless connection that will vary in form depending on what hardware it is to be associated with:

* The back of a mobile phone will be replaced by a compatible blue-tooth battery

* PDAs/lap-tops will have a compatible blue-tooth connectivity card

* PCs will have a USB (common on PCs) blue-tooth adaptor

Not all mobile phones are compatible for blue-tooth technology but the phones that are becoming available do compensate for such use. The most common mobile phone that is compatible for the use of blue-tooth communication is the Nokia 6210e pictured on the right.

The blue-tooth technology can be used to create a three-way connection allowing three pieces of hardware to be connected together at any one time. Information can then be replicated from, say, a mobile phone to a PC by sending the data via the wireless (infra-red) blue-tooth connection. For information to be transferred, all devices must have the same software application in which the data can be replicated i.e. a mobile phone must have the application Microsoft Word for a Word document to be replicated from a PC.