Ofcom consults on mobile data strategy

Ofcom, the Super regulator, is holding a consultation on its mobile data strategy, potentially looking as far forward as 2030.

Ofcom has recently sold off spectrum in the 800MHz and 2.6GHz bands and is looking to award spectrum in the 2.3GHz and 3.4GHz in the near future as well as opening up the use of TV whitespace and even the 700MHz band (which is currently used for DTT) which would mean moving the DTT band to 600MHz (and using MPEG-4 and DVB-T2 technologies).

This can be summarised in a table: -

 

Relative priority for potential release	Bands for consideration
Current priorities	700 MHz, 2.3, 3.4 GHz, UHF white space
High	1452-1492 MHz, 1980-2010 / 2170-2200 MHz (2 GHz MSS), 3.6-3.8 GHz, 5350-5470 MHz, 5725-5925 MHz
Medium-High	2.7-2.9 GHz, 3.8-4.2 GHz
Medium	450-470 MHz4, 470-694 MHz, 1350-1518 MHz

Some of these bands are in use and therefore current users will have to migrate off them or shared use is being considered.

Newer WiFi technologies make more use of the 5GHz band (Ofcom have noted the 2.4GHz band is already congested in many areas), however the 5GHz band would have to be extended (currently the bands are either licensed or lightly licensed as some of it is used for things like military radar).

Other parts of the spectrum would be expected to be used to extend mobile usages for 4G and 5G services.

The full statement (PDF) can be found here (it's 113 pages long).

Stakeholders can respond on-line.

Al Gore Chicago Climate Leadership Training and Next Steps

Al Gore & Chicago Climate Leaders

Mary Vincent & Al Gore

I'm very grateful to have attended Al Gore's Chicago July 2013 Climate Reality Leadership Training. I highly recommend you try to apply for a future training, and the next one is in South Africa March 2014.

A video clip from his closing presentation is below. A few quotes include: "This is our home; it is in danger. You are the key to making that change! We have everything we need; we need to inspire political will and political will is a renewable resource".

As many of you know I've been applying my knowledge in tech to the climate challenge since May 2008 by starting out in Green IT/Data Center Energy Efficiency, co-creating a Facebook app called Green Facts, experimenting with a variety of online green stores, leveraging Blogs such as Smart Tech News and other digital media platforms to feature inspiring business, technology and entrepreneurial use cases, and creating Gratitude Gourmet to address Food, Climate and Health Issues.

Due to my global mobile health application work, I was recently asked to co-lecture at the Stanford School of Medicine to Global Health for Residents & Physicians For Social Responsibility classes, and in addition to talking about mobile health application development, I introduced 2 slides on Health & Climate Change, inspired by New Brunswick, Canada's Public Health Nurse, Marg Milburn's Health & Climate Change presentation at the Chicago Climate Reality Training. Examples include increased asthma, and heat, cold, and flood related mortality cases.

Here's the Closing Video Clip from Al Gore. How are you addressing climate change?

Video: Mark Zuckerberg on Facebook Product Development at Mobile Dev Day

Photo Credit: Mary Vincent

As a creator and co-creator of a variety of software products and services, I find great value in listening and learning from many people making creative, evolutionary and revolutionary products and services.

I attended Mobile Dev Day at Facebook this week, and Mark Zuckerberg gave us great insight on his Product Development Process in the video and steps below.

1. Listen to folks' qualitative and quantitative feedback and figure out what people want and want from us and what we're in a position to provide

2. Take that external and top-down perspective and try to couple that with bottom-up culture. Number one success criteria Mark predicts whether a project is going to work is whether there is someone at Facebook that's excited about doing it; I can't just decide we're going to do something and get feedback from the market that we should do something and pull a group of people together and alright now you're going to do that; without inspiration stuff just doesn't work very well.

3. Try to match up what people internally are very passionate about doing with what the market needs seem to be from whoever the segments of customers are, whether they're people using our services, developers, or advertisers

4. Prioritize what we think will have the biggest impact based on how well we think we can execute those things. It's a very fluid process.