NPR Talk of the Nation Science Friday
11-16-2007
Phones of the Future and Google's Cell Debut
Host: IRA FLATOW
Time 14:00-15:00 PM
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IRA FLATOW, host:
You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION: SCIENCE FRIDAY. I'm Ira Flatow.
I hate my cell phone. I have to admit it. It's not easy to use. I hate my cell phone carrier because it locks me into a system. It doesn't let me choose the cell phone I'd like to use. It doesn't physically play nicely with my computer's calendar or its address book or my other tools that ideally would make my life easier.
And if I want to change my situation - you know what that's like. If I want to move to another carrier, I have to buy a new phone because that phone doesn't fit the next carrier. I have to get a new service with the limitations that are all there. It's basically having to start all over again in many cases. And it makes you wonder, why can't you why can't they make a cell phone that let's me do what I want to do. Let me choose me a provider I want to pick, the cell phone that I want to pick. Wouldn't you like that too?
Well we may be getting closer to that day because first, Apple introduced the iPhone. It basically puts a small computer in your pocket. And that gives you a lot more flexibility. You're still locked in that one carrier, so that's not so great. And it's still locked into the goodies that Apple wants to give you and let's you have on their iPhone.
But last week, Google, the search engine king, brought us a step closer, dipping its toe into the cell phone world. And I want a full-fledged G-phone, as they've been calling it or people have been calling it for a lack of a better word. But by helping to develop a new set of software tools called Android that can run on many different headsets with interchangeable parts, and that could allow more flexibility for consumers.
And this week, there are reports, unconfirmed reports - there's a Wall Street Journal article, among others - that Google is developing plans to create its own cell phone or wireless network. What's that all about?
Well, joining us to sort out everything that's out there and what might be on the horizon are my guests. Steven Cherry is a senior associate editor at IEEE Spectrum magazine in New York. And he joins me here in our New York studios. Welcome back to the program, Steve.
Mr. STEVEN CHERRY (Senior Associate Editor, IEEE Spectrum Magazine): Thank you, Ira.
FLATOW: Rich Miner is the group manager of mobile platforms at Google. He was also one of the founders of Android, that's the cell phone platform I mentioned before. And he joins me by phone from Mountain View, California. Thanks for being with us, Rich.
Mr. RICH MINER (Mobile Platforms Group Manager, Google): Great to be here, Ira.
FLATOW: Mark McCluskey is a senior editor for products at Wired magazine and was an editor-in-chief of a Wired Test, that's a rundown of 300 new products that is out now. And he joins us by phone from San Francisco. Welcome back to the program, Mark.
Mr. MARK McCLUSKEY (Senior Editor for Products, Wired Magazine): Thanks for having me.
FLATOW: Let me begin with you, Rich Miner. Can you tell us anything new about the rumors of a network new Google network?
Mr. MINER: Not really so much, Ira. You know, Google has been participating in discussions surrounding 700 megahertz auction. We were primarily just trying to encourage some to openness rules. We've mentioned, we are exploring participating in the auction, but it's not going to be until December 3rd that we make decisions known.
FLATOW: What is so great about that auction? What is so useful about this new auction?
Mr. MINER: It's really just that it's the last chunk of public spectrum that's being licensed to carriers and so, you know, Google just thinks that it would be good if the FCC, in licensing that spectrum, considered some openness principles. I haven't been so much involved in that, with my focus primarily being on really looking at the handset however.
FLATOW: Let's look at the handset. You've come out these sets of tools and there's a consortium of cell phone companies. Give us a little lay of the land here.
Mr. MINER: Sure. Well I think, you know, for a number of years, there's been the myth of the mobile Internet. Everybody wants to have in their pocket a device which has a great Web browser, a great online experience and, of course, is still a great phone. We have mobile phones with some of the frustrations you mentioned before. But the ability for these phones to connect beyond line, deliver applications like the small computer that they are sitting in our pocket, has been much more myth than reality.
So Google has been looking at that problem and with the number of partners that we call the Open Handset Alliance has announced a pretty robust platform, sort of all the software that you need, to build a very powerful mobile phone that has not only great phone capabilities, but is also a great connected data device.
FLATOW: And it could be used on any of the mobile networks?
Mr. MINER: Yeah, the idea is that anybody can build a phone based on that platform. We had four hardware OEMs as a part of our announcement. And any carrier could launch those phones on their network. And we had a number of carriers that also were part of the announcement.
FLATOW: Mm-hmm. 1-800-989-8255 is our number. Talking about the new cell phone technologies. Also on "Second Life," if you'd like to join the folks over there, we're in Science School in "Second Life."
How soon do you think this is going to happen? Would all of this be available, Rich?
Mr. MINER: So we said that there'll be phones mid-next year.
FLATOW: Yeah.
Mr. MINER: And we've already made available, effectively, the entire platform as a software development kit. So there's already large numbers of developers who've downloaded that whole software development kit for free and are off developing applications. We also announced $10 million worth of prizes that we're going to be awarding to some of the best applications that people build.
FLATOW: So people can win prizes to make applications that run on the phone?
Mr. MINER: Correct.
FLATOW: Mark McCluskey, how different is this from Apple's iPhone approach? They've been very successful with iPhone and they've sort of opened up their environment a bit too.
Mr. McCLUSKEY: Well, at the root level, it's actually almost 180 degrees opposed from Apple's approach with the iPhone, you know? What Apple is it's a very design-driven company and it's one person's vision. It's Steve Jobs, sitting at the top of Apple, driving a vision of what their product should do. And to their credit, they've been immensely successful of doing that.
You know, what Google and the Android platform, the Open Handset Alliance, is looking at is providing tools across the world to basically anyone and hoping that that spurs innovation. So it's, you know, Apple has announced that they are going to open up their own SDK for the iPhones so third-party developers can make applications which run on the iPhone. But, you know, at the root level, at sort of the system level, I don't think we're going to see the level of openness that we see Google pushing with Android.
FLATOW: Mm-hmm. Steven Cherry, to a certain extent, it really doesn't matter what the phone in your hand can do if the network around it isn't powerful enough to support it.
Mr. CHERRY: I think that's exactly right. It has to be both powerful enough and open enough. And that's what makes some other news interesting in this context. Sprint, which we some of us don't think of it as a long distance company but it's the third largest cellular network in the United States, is thinking $3 billion into a completely new type of network. And it will be both powerful and open. It's called Xohm. They plan on launching it next year. It's starting in Chicago and Baltimore, Washington, D.C., metropolitan area.
By April, they expect to have commercial service in those two cities. And by the end of the year, a whole bunch more serving 70 million people overall, including, by the end of the year, New York. The network uses a technology called WiMax, which is based on the IEEE 802.16 standard. And Sprint has a lot of spectrum. They can build a very powerful network. And they plan on making it completely open. It will be simply wireless broadband, like DSL but completely wireless and mobile.
FLATOW: Would it work through my router in my home, or does it work through a giant router in a building somewhere?
Mr. CHERRY: Well, it has it's basically a cellular network.
FLATOW: Yeah.
Mr. CHERRY: There are base stations that will actually be mounted antennas and radios to their existing base stations, using a different frequency, the 2.5 gigahertz band. And they have 120 megahertz of spectrum to do this with. Compare that to the 700 megahertz auction, which only has 22 megahertz in the C-Band.
FLATOW: Mm-hmm. So they're really banking a lot of money on this idea?
Mr. CHERRY: Three billion dollars, and you can expect a service. There really is DSL quality. It'll be
Mr. MINER: Ira, I think
FLATOW: Yes?
Mr. MINER: it we've clearly seen that to open this message is resonating not, you know, with a number of our partners, including the carriers. Clearly, they have an investment that they have to worry about and make sure they continue to capitalize.
But they are also realizing that while they can control some amount of content, we've also seen with services like YouTube what it means to open up content and let anybody publish. And I think, you know, the carriers are very interested in trying to understand how they can balance openness with their business principles.
FLATOW: Mm-hmm. We've heard a lot about Net neutrality when it comes to the Internet. Is there such a thing in the Internet service providers, how they handle traffic that's not in, you know, passing it along, Steve, if it's not to them?
Mr. CHERRY: That's the interesting question. You know, if AT&T, for example, doesn't want you to use voice over IP on their network, they don't have to allow it. That's true of Sprint's Xohm network as well. But they've announced that they are not going to choose between applications or service providers, that they plan on running their kind of open network that the network neutrality advocates or advocating.
FLATOW: Rich Miner, are we going to have to see - to create all the various little programs that you can put on a cell phone, are we going to have to see a new kind of cell phone out there?
Mr. MINER: Not so much, actually. It turns out the cell phones that are starting to ship today basically have the computational power that your desktop PC had only about three years ago. So we're seeing that mobile phones of today, and certainly tomorrow, have more than enough power to run powerful Internet application, games and lots of other services.
FLATOW: Mm-hmm. Are we going to see, though, the Apple model of the touch screen, do you think?
Mr. MINER: Certainly, you'll see touch screens continuing to involve. Apple has done a brilliant job with the iPhone. We have touch support in our platform. And I think one of the problems that you have on the mobile phone is that it's a small screen typically with a small keyboard.
So there are lots of innovations happening to try and figure out how do you give somebody a high-fidelity experience, the ability to input data when you're constrained with these small screens and small input devices. And some of the touch work that Apple has pioneered is certainly helping in that area. And I think you'll see other innovations.
FLATOW: So where's the money to be made here? Rich, I know that Google makes its money on ads on the Google pages, on lots of advertising, but a cell phone has such a small screen to it. Is there any going to be room for advertising? Is that the business model you're seeking here?
Mr. MINER: We'll that's certainly the primary business that Google is in. And you were right, there's certainly a lot of more phones out there than - our TV is as close to twice as many phones out there is there are TVs. So there's a lot of phones, about a billion per year. The ability to put ads on the smaller screens is a challenge.
Google has some very successful mobile applications. We have a great mobile maps application and mobile G-mail application. And initially, we didn't try and put ads into those apps because we wanted to make a great experience for the users. But we do think as the screen resolution gets higher and as we continue to improve the user experience, we'll be able to insert ads. We just want to make sure that when we do insert ads, that their meaningful and helpful to the user, that the user welcomes those ads, that they are in the right context. And we think if we can do that successfully, then we won't have problems with the business model.
FLATOW: Mm-hmm.
Mr. MINER: And that's why we've invested in this platform to which we're open- sourcing, which means we're not going to charge for it, none of our partners charge for that software platform, so that we can just help get a better base level of software that we can innovate on, but of course anybody else can innovate on top of as well.
FLATOW: Mm-hmm. Mark McCluskey, what about the voice over IP where you can, basically, have a free phone call through your computer and companies that support it like Skype. Are we seeing the end of them?
Mr. McCLUSKEY: I don't think we're seeing the end of them at all. I think what we might actually be seeing is those moving more and more into the mobile space as well so that, you know, you are able to move beyond the carriers charging you per minutes of voice calls. So instead of the sort of complicated fee structures that you get into that, it's easy to imagine a future not too long from now when the networks are capable of doing it, where I pay a flat fee for month for all the IP traffic I can generate and do all my calling over IP instead of over-the-voice cellular network.
FLATOW: Mm-hmm.
Mr. CHERRY: Mark, it occurs to me that on the Sprint network, it wouldn't take very much to take an iPod touch, which is essentially an iPhone without the phone part, add a microphone back in, add voice over IP. And on the Sprint network, you would have an iPhone that was completely released from the bonds of AT&T.
Mr. McCLUSKEY: Yeah, you know, and I think that, you know, I come in a lot of this from the consumer's perspective. And that's what excites me about these innovations and about companies like Google, trying to break the business model. As you were talking about, Ira, the business of cell phones, in a way, I think, constructed in the United States, especially, has not been very advantageous to consumers and has tended to stifle innovation in hardware and software.
FLATOW: Mm-hmm.
Mr. McCLUSKEY: It's been an unfortunate and a lousy situation. And so I think any move towards scenarios like that where, yeah, you could have together something pretty quickly that sort of let's you make all your calls from a modified iPod touch using Skype, and you're rocking and rolling without being locked in to AT&T or Apple's sort of world in that way.
FLATOW: Mm-hmm. We're talking about the next generation of cell phones this hour at TALK OF THE NATION: SCIENCE FRIDAY from NPR News. Talking with us: Steve Cherry of the IEEE Spectrum, Rich Miner of Google, and Mark McCluskey at the Wired magazine. Our number: 1-800-989-8255. Let's see if we can get a few phone calls in here. Michael in Williamstown, New Jersey.
Hi, Michael.
MICHAEL (Caller): It's Williamstown, hey, at South Jersey. Listen, gentlemen, I got a big question for all of you. I live and die by the cell phone. I'm a salesperson. I travel through - from restaurant to restaurant. I've been in several different states. I just want a cell phone. It's great, it could a picture. It could surf in in a - I want cell phone that works all the time. I'm always losing - it doesn't matter what carrier it is. There's a noble idea. That's great if it surfs the Internet, it's great to have - just give a phone that works. Can anybody do that?
FLATOW: Yeah, that's exactly where are those get rid of the dead spots. I just don't need the bells and whistles. I just need to make a phone call and get one one there, calling me, right?
Mr. McCLUSKEY: Well, I mean it's, you know, the U.S. is not a conducive country to build a fail-safe cellular network. You know, in countries like Japan and Korea and the Western Europe, you're just dealing with so much less geographic space. You know, I'm sitting in a mountain valley right now where I have no cell service, which, yeah, for me it's - like the caller, it's like having my arm cut off. I don't even know what to do without a cell signal.
FLATOW: Mm-hmm.
Mr. McCLUSKEY: But it's just it so hard to develop that infrastructure. You just need so much spending. And so you tend to get these situations, where some carriers are better in some areas and some are better in others. And everybody is just trying to get that network build up to never drop a call but
FLATOW: Mm-hmm.
MICHAEL: I mean, all that stuff that you guys are talking about would be fantastic. The iPhone and all that stuff, it would be great to have that in my fingertips. But if I can't make, on an average, a regular phone call without having to call my customer back three or four times depending on the area, it doesn't do me any good.
FLATOW: Yeah. We hear you. Thanks for calling. What about it? What about an idea that - you talked about WiMax, which is the large area. What about an idea where could borrow the Internet from people's houses, just the connection, as you drive by them and everybody would benefit that way.
Mr. CHERRY: Ira, there are people working on just that sort of thing. The problem is Wi-Fi, which is what we're talking about
FLATOW: Mm-hmm.
Mr. CHERRY: really just doesn't project very far. And when it does project far enough, it uses a lot of power, and there's potential for a lot of interference, including with itself.
FLATOW: Mm-hmm.
Mr. CHERRY: So in the long run, that's just not a very realistic scenario.
FLATOW: And what's wrong with satellite-based cell phone?
Mr. CHERRY: Just enough bandwidth, really.
Mr. MINER: Yeah, I mean there are innovations with Wi-Fi. I mean, for instance, T-mobile has some products now where you can buy a Wi-Fi access point from them. And if your home doesn't have great coverage, you put that Wi-Fi access point. And when at your house, you can switch over to Wi-Fi.
It turns out, a lot of the new phones, the ones that we're looking at, actually typically do have Wi-Fi radios as well as carrier radios. And so then the question is does this software support, in the phone, letting you into the carrier, enable you to switch over from their network to a Wi-Fi network if that happens to be a better stronger network.
FLATOW: Mm-hmm. All right, gentlemen stay with us. We're going to take a quick break and come back and talk lots more, take a few more phone calls. Talking with Rich Miner, Mark McCluskey and Steven Cherry, about the future of cell phone technology. If you can only wait at just a few more months. It's always a few months around the corner so stay with us. We'll be right back.
I'm Ira Flatow. This is TALK OF THE NATION: SCIENCE FRIDAY from NPR News.
(Soundbite of music)
FLATOW: We're talking this hour about the future, over the next generation, of cell phones, with Steven Cherry of the IEEE Spectrum magazine, Rich Miner of Google and Mark McCluskey at Wired magazine. Our number 1-800-989-8255 is our number.
Let's see if, well, if someone - let me - see if I can ask a question that's just would sum up the whole thing. Is the next generation - will I be able to choose a phone and choose a carrier and have both of them work just the way I want them to without having to say, this carrier you have to have this phone and this carrier you have to that phone? Steve?
MR. CHERRY: I think we're going that pretty soon with the Sprint network and we'll see it fairly soon, and that is within five or six years on - probably whoever wins those 700 megahertz auction. We'll see it in some places where unlocked phones are the rule. Those networks will become more and more open. And I think it will take a really long time before we see it everywhere.
FLATOW: Mm-hmm. Both of you want to agree with that?
Mr. McCLUSKEY: Well, I think one big change here, Ira, is that the mobile phone is starting to be heavily influenced by people who really understand software. That's one of the significant things. I think you see with Google and some of the other recent announcements that we've discussed here today is historically, mobile phones have been controlled by companies that know hardware or control radio networks. And you - now, with the entrance of someone like Google and you also mention the iPhone, you're staring to see the really the critical massive influence. And what that mobile phone experience is like
FLATOW: Mm-hmm.
Mr. McCLUSKEY: is coming from companies that really understand software. And as a result of that, I do think you're going start to see a much more enjoyable experience on the mobile phone.
FLATOW: Mm-hmm. Do you think this is going to spill over into other media like the cable company? You know, cable companies come bundled with a package. You can't pick and choose. If I can start seeing things that I want to see anytime on my cell phone, because it's going to have a better screen, high resolution, are the cable companies - might they say, you know, we've better get better? There was a revolt in the cell phone industry. There could be revolt in the cable industry.
Mr. MINER: You know it's - I think with all of this boil down to is the network and the bandwidth and the ability to get the content to people, where they want it, when they want it and how they want it. And, you know, historically both the cell carriers and you mentioned cable and you know I think that they have a lot in common. And that is they've controlled these delivery mechanisms, and that's given them control over things.
And that's lead to this business model where they want to lock you in for a couple of years and make sure that they have the revenue streams going, you know? As there more competitions with things like the 700 megahertz spectrum and with Sprint making this move towards the more open network and with, you know and in the TV realm with satellite becoming a bigger and bigger deal in pushing out more satellites to get more bandwidths going. You know, competition always benefits the consumer and we've not really had a lot of them in this industry for a long time.
Mr. McCLUSKEY: And I just - our stat is that 18 percent of the American population have watched a full-length TV show where movie on their computer. So I think what you're starting to see is as the computers enter the living room and as the, again, even TV platforms like phone platforms start to become smarter more open and Internet connected, then absolutely I think that openness is what causes people to rethink their business models and find ways to embrace openness as opposed to fight it.
FLATOW: Rich Miner, do you see yourself as the champions of the consumer?
Mr. MINER: You know, absolutely, I sort of, you know, division that we're following is one that I had - since I was working for mobile phone company myself several years ago. And very much, you know, our goal is really to drive innovation and drive choice for consumers. We don't think that we should do that independent of our partners, which are you know mobile phone carriers and handset manufacturers. But we think we can help elevate the view of the user and help educate people and bring people into a world, where you now have companies like Sprint, talking about and embracing openness where you wouldn't have heard that a few years ago.
FLATOW: Steve Cherry.
Mr. CHERRY: You know, it's interesting that you would connect the cell phone and the cable questions. First of all, the Federal Communications Commission Chairman Martin indicated that it wants to sort of end this bundling of cable channels, these plans. But more importantly, as the shift that we're also talking about in just consumer behavior. They just want to watch programs when they want to watch them. Some people what to wait and just buy a DVD that has the entire season and then just watch the entire season at a row.
The common thread here is the Internet protocol. It's what makes networks like Sprint different from every network, and it's what's going to make cable different once these networks are basically IP networks, and you're just delivering content as data. Then, consumers do what they want because application builders can make applications that they think consumers want. And people will pick and choose what they want and do what they want. And, really, the cable companies and the cell phone carriers have a limited ability to stop that trend.
FLATOW: We'll see how well that works out. I want to thank all of you for taking time to be with us.
Steven Cherry, a senior associate editor at IEEE Spectrum magazine in New York. And that's the publication of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.
Rich Miner is a group manager for the mobile platforms at Google. He is also one of the founders of Android that the soft phone software platform we've been talking about.
And Mark McCluskey is senior editor for products at Wired magazine and was editor in chief of Wired Test, that's a rundown of 300 new products that is out now.
Thank you all for taking time to be with us today.
Mr. MINER: Thanks a lot.
Mr. McCLUSKEY: Thanks, Ira.
Mr. CHERRY: You're welcome.
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