JP/Y/ZATNI1

JP/Y/ZATNI1

IT in 2005: From the tsunami to germ-free handsets

Zatni Arbi
Contributor/Jakarta

We did not start 2005 on a high note.

The tsunami that hit several Asian coastal areas including
Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam left us in deep mourning. For many
months, we were wondering what Mother Nature was telling us
through this disaster.

Sadly, however, as we have been witnessing throughout the
year, fund misappropriations, structured extortion and political
power struggles have dominated the headlines of our newspapers.

Lack of morality, sensitivity and compassion aside, it was the
time when we were once again made to recognize the power of
information and communications technology. During the first 24
hours after the disaster not much news trickled in from the
affected areas. For most of us, news arrived from global TV
networks such as CNN and the BBC.

The impact of nonexistent digital data and its offsite backup
should have been clear. No amount of destruction is impossible,
as the tsunami has demonstrated. Only offsite backup could
protect important data such as bank accounts, land ownership and
population data.

On the other hand, a lot of other rural areas in Indonesia
could envy the Acehnese for the Pre WiMAX that has been put
together by Airputih, a group of highly dedicated volunteers.
Today, a lot of the areas in Aceh are covered under this wireless
broadband network, making it possible for anyone with the right
equipment to access the Internet without waiting for the landline
infrastructure to be rebuilt. Our Aceh friends have leapfrogged
to the wireless cyberworld. Once they are able to get back on
their feet, Acehnese schoolchildren will have the opportunity to
see a wider horizon compared with their friends in other parts of
Indonesia.

The building of WiMAX networks has been the highlight of this
year. In Taiwan, the WiMAX network has been built in Taipei and
its surrounding areas. Soon the entire island will have WiMAX
coverage. Amsterdam is another city that plans to have full WiMAX
coverage.

Interestingly, the WiMAX standard itself is still evolving.
The fixed WiMAX standard, known as IEEE 802.16d, does not support
mobility. The latest revision, the IEEE 802.16e, which was
released just a couple of weeks ago, was an extension of the
fixed WiMAX that supports mobility. This means that with your
mobile device you can move from one point to another without
getting disconnected from the network.

Mobility's the buzzword

By the way, the world's largest network of hotspots is
currently being built in the Republic of Macedonia, according to
a report on hesse Online last month. This infrastructure, which
can be upgraded later to WiMAX, will enable half of Macedonia's
entire population of two million to have access to the Internet.
Those who will benefit most will be the students of the
republic's 460 schools.

Mobility was another important buzzword in 2005, as reflected
in the proliferation of mobile devices -- smartphones, PDAs, even
GSM-enabled notebooks such as the FlyBook. Besides the hardware,
the software and application development for mobility has been
very active in 2005.

One of the most important results of the thrust in mobility is
the push e-mail services such as the one offered by Blackberry
and, of late, Nokia Business Center. These services ensure that
your e-mail will reach you wherever you go, and you can send your
replies from anywhere as long as you have the cellular network
coverage.

Now, with wireless broadband becoming available through
Wireless LAN (WLAN), Voice over IP (VoIP) technology has finally
gained momentum. The quality of voice has improved a lot compared
to when it was first launched in the 1990s, and the cost is
supposed to be much lower as the voice communication goes back
and forth as data packets rather than through a circuit switch.

Skype was one of the VoIP providers that enabled us to call a
landline phone number at a very low cost. Today, Skype has taken
another step forward in offering video-conferencing capability.

Top VoIP vendors, such as Awaya and Cisco Systems, have even
come up with solutions that allow you to receive calls with your
mobile devices -- including notebook computers -- as if you were
receiving them through your desktop VoIP phones. Clearly, a
conventional telco company can no longer rely on traditional
voice calls to stay in business.

The fast growth of VoIP usage also drives the addition of WLAN
and soon WiMAX to the cellular devices. Theoretically, if you are
in an area with WLAN or WiMAX coverage, your cell phone will
switch from the more costly GSM, CDMA or 3G network to the
cheaper Internet access.

TV on the move

Meanwhile, to address the insatiable hunger for music -- and
people's apparent need to show off their gadgets -- we also saw
the emergence of iPod and iPod-like cell phones. The new
multimedia cell phones such as Motorola RokR, Sony-Ericsson
Walkman and Nokia N91 handsets can store hundreds of songs.
Wherever you go, you will never be out of music.

Talking of entertainment, in Malaysia, where 3G services are
already available, subscribers can watch TV on their mobile
phones. A journalist friend demonstrated the service to me in
Kuala Lumpur recently, and it was using the High Definition
standard. Our neighbors over there have already started to enjoy
Triple Play.

If no 3G service is available yet, we will need a separate
network to broadcast the TV programs based on the DVB-H standard.
Nokia is the leading proponent to this solution in bringing TV
programs to our cell phones. In fact, Nokia N92 has been designed
specially for TV viewing and other video display (see photo).

As for Indonesia, we still need to appoint a DVB-H operator to
make this happen. It will not be high definition, though, it will
probably give us VHS-quality TV display.

What about the LCD itself? LCDs have finally come to the
mainstream in the desktop computer arena as well as TV. However,
there is one important thing that you will have to check if you
are thinking of buying a new LCD TV.

Because of the motion of the video, it is important to have an
LCD screen with very low response time. A high response time will
give blurred images on the screen. Samsung is advertising its new
LCD monitor four mili-second response time, while in its press
release BenQ announced in October its two ms response time TFT
screen.

The company claimed that it was the world's fastest LCD
monitor in terms of response time, which is said to be comparable
to a Cathode Ray Tube (CRT).

Finally, with misinformation about bird flu, dengue and
HIV/AIDS causing the paranoid among society to seek out a
sanitized environment, Motorola's i870 clamshell handset provided
a "solution". This cell phone has an antimicrobial coating from
AgION. The coating, which is used in pens, medical equipment,
etc., helps kill germs.

Upcoming gadgets

What will we see in the future? For starters, PC-based Media
Centers, with expensive features such as extra-large LCD screens,
very fast Intel Pentium processors, very-large-capacity hard
disks, DVD burners and lots of wireless capability will become
more popular.

Meanwhile, notebooks will continue to bite into the market
share of the desktop PCs, as people are getting more and more
accustomed to computing anywhere -- in the park, in a waiting
room and in other public places.

Entry-level cell phones will become cheaper, as companies such
as Motorola and Philips have pledged to provide sub-US$30 and
sub-$20 handsets. Meanwhile, high-end smartphone makers will have
to compete with each other to grab consumers' attention.

As High Speed Downlink Packet Access -- also known as the 3.5G
becomes more and more pervasive, we will also see notebooks, PDAs
and other mobile devices manufactured to support this
high-speed mobile broadband. This will certainly drive mobility
even further and faster.

Today, around one quarter of the world's population have a
cell phone. For sure, that figure will surge in 2006. We can only
hope that the price of making calls will also drop, although
value-added services may still be lacking and remain cost
prohibitive. Roaming from one country to another will remain
expensive, unfortunately.

In general, I believe that telecommunications will continue to
dominate the technology landscape in 2006. That is not to say
that stagnation will be experienced in computer gadgets.

In short, we look forward to a more exciting year, technology-
wise.