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Technology Stocks : Qualcomm Moderated Thread - please read rules before posting -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: rkral who wrote (37156)	9/20/2003 3:36:37 PM
From: Eric L	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 196995

OTA provisioning and downloads Ron, << OTA is acronym for "Over The Air" ... >> Yes, and it is a "killer data app." First used in mobile wireless I believe by Mercury One-2-One in the UK in 1994 to provision SIM. APC Sprint Spectrum in Baltimore/DC launched with it in November 1995 on GSM-1900. Data was downloaded loaded using SMS, and APC designed their own OTA Gateway, and later provided that Gateway to BellSouth DCN, and Western Wireless (VoiceStream) for their launches. It facilitated "shrink wrap marketing" of handsets, a concept also borrowed from Mercury One-2-One. Walk into a retail store. Pick up a brightly colored specially designed Sprint Spectrum shrinkwraped box containing a handset charger and Sprint Spectrum manual (packaged nicely by 3rd parties like Brightpoint), and check out. Return home. Read the Quick Start guide. Charge the phone. Dial Sprint Spectrum Customer Service, select your service plan and options, provide user detail and payment detail, and a few hours later your phone is provisioned OTA and your off and running. No standing in line. No paperwork to fill out or contract to sign. No muss no fuss and the carrier saves on brick, mortar, and staff. Through the life of the subscription, parameters (roaming detail, etc) are updated without a store visit. Truly a "killer app." Commonplace today. Magic back then. Verizon used their Openwave WAP 1.0 server to finally implement OTA provisioning several years back. Took them a bloody year to work out the kinks, but today subscribtion parameter updates happen in the background and Verizon techs in the store may use OTA rather than hand entry or attaching a cable to make OTA updates when you purchase a new phone. Now of course BREW and Java APPs as well as ringtones and screen savers are being downloaded OTA. Still small. They will get larger. The Holy Grail becomes OTA update and repair for patches, eliminating a store or repair center "flash" for update and eliminating recalls. I was just involved in a discussion on another thread about Insignia Solutions which is mentioned in the Qualcomm Press Release you cite. Insignia has sold their Java division that created that BREW capability and is now focused solely on their Secure System Provisioning (SSP) server software infrastructure system (for whom they yet to claim a carrier customer): Message 19324248 It looks like DoCoMo will be first to use a competitive solution for OTA patch, repair and update, and KDDI Au may not be far behind: Message 19323928 You might recall that back when Nokia and Motorola's IS-95 handsets were affected by a forward compatibility 1xRTT synch channel issue (resolved with a network patch that was essentially a reparametization) that IMJ stated that in the future BREW could be employed to resolve such issues. That's still a future, but it is certainly going to happen one of these days and save vendors, carriers, and customers a lot of grief. Best, - Eric -