I had to bug out early from CTIA so I could get back home to Texas before hurricane Ike hits. The airports are closing today, and that would have kept me away from home another four or five days—not good. But I did want to take some time to close out my CTIA coverage with a quick overview of some interesting briefings I had on Wednesday.

Alcatel-Lucent

I got a behind the scenes look at what goes on in the infrastructure as we send and receive 75 billion text messages a month. The Alcatel-Lucent (A-L) software carries the big load in most of the large carriers. We don’t think much about how that backroom software works, but it is key to making our texting transparent. Now, A-L has introduced another piece of infrastructure software that should have some real influence on what new services we can see coming in the months and years ahead.

The location-driven Geographic Messaging Services Platform (GMSP) supports the delivery of finely targeted “push” messaging, advertising, and social networking services to mobile users based on their location. This software overcomes two of the key challenges in the delivery of such services by using sophisticated techniques to reduce the capacity demands on mobile networks and the consumption of battery life in handsets.

Patent-pending, the A-L GMSP technology sets up a virtual “fence” around a specific location or individual. When a mobile phone user crosses the given “fence,” it triggers the delivery of an SMS text message or multimedia message that is relevant to that individual or location such as a promotion for a particular store or the presence of a friend or associate in the area.

The industry has been talking about location-based services for years now and it appears that GMSP could kick things off in a big way. To find out more, go to www.alcatel-lucent.com/GMSP.

M2M and Enfora

The largest specialized exhibit area at the show was the M2M Zone, with 24 companies exhibiting products and services related to the growing machine-to-machine business. I had hoped to talk to as many of them as possible but got in only one before I had to leave.

Enfora was promoting its Wireless networking solutions, which enable enterprises to access, analyze, and leverage information from their geographically dispersed assets. Using their distributed intelligent architecture, they offer solutions for location-based monitoring and control and asset management.

The company also announced its Enabler III Low Power Platform (LPP), which allows wireless IP connectivity while optimizing power management, maintenance, and manageability of detached remote enterprise assets. The Enfora LPP will help permit greater usage of M2M in applications where low cost and power consumption are critical, like energy and utilities, fleet management, asset tracking, and remote patient monitoring. Enfora’s platform uses the GSM/GPRS wireless system combined with GPS. Its embedded modules draw less than 10 µA at idle. For more details, go to www.enfora.com.

4DK Technologies

Many companies were showing new software and applications for cell phones. I got to speak with Tamara Casey of 4DK Technologies, who explained the company’s SuperConnectivity product.

4DK offers new interoperability solutions that solutions cut across all the wireless technologies, networks, devices, and applications. Its patent-pending SuperConnectivity technology increases functionality and adaptability across the wireless ecosystem. SuperConnectivity consists of SCout, the service platform, and SCamp, the device engine.

SCout connects networks, applications, and content and delivers them in a way that suits the end user’s preferences, context, and location. Designed to create interoperability across the wireless ecosystem, SCout makes it easier for users to get what they want, when they want it, and how they want it.

SCamp is the intelligent middleware in the wireless device that links native applications, newly added applications, and the user interface. It breaks down the silos that exist in wireless devices, allowing the device to adapt to the user instead of the other way around. The demo I saw permitted a user to make a voice-activated inquiry for a document that resulted in the document showing up almost immediately in Spanish. There are lots of possibilities here.

Incidentally, 4DK is “geek speak” for 4 degrees Kelvin, which on the Kelvin scale is just above absolute zero or literally “supercool.” Remember superconductivity, the condition where a material is cooled to the point where all resistance disappears? Through SuperConnectivity, “supercool” 4DK eliminates resistance to new technologies. Get more info at www.4dk.com.

Symbian

One very interesting briefing was with Jerry Panagrossi, vice president and general manager of Symbian’s North American operations. Nokia recently acquired the cell-phone operating-system (OS) company, which enjoys a 57% market share in the mobile OS business, making things interesting for other competing handset manufacturers that use the Symbian OS.

After the acquisition, Nokia formed the Symbia Foundation with membership open to all organizations. The idea is to create a strong open mobile platform for future smartphones. Nokia is contributing the Symbian OS and S60 to the foundation. Sony Ericsson and Motorola are contributing technology from UIQ and DOCOMO, and Fujitsu is contributing is MOAP assets.

All this software will be available for all foundation members under a royalty-free license. The Symbian OS is in version 9, and more than 20 new phones using it this year have been announced. Already, Symbian’s OS customers have shipped over 200 million phones to more than 250 network operators worldwide, making Symbian the leading OS supplier.

With this new arrangement, Symbian will have a good shot at maintaining the open OS lead even with the huge efforts of Microsoft and Google Ardroid. For an update, go to www.symbian.com and www.symbianfoundation.org.

Qualcomm

I had hoped to meet with Qualcomm for an update on its Gobi technology. I will do that later, but the company was promoting it at the show. The Gobi chipset and software technology allows cell-phone connectivity to be embedded directly inside a laptop rather than as a data card or USB plug-in. It supports all the major 3G technologies, such as cdma2000 EV-Do/Rev. A and HSPA/HSUPA, and it’s backward-compatible with GSM/GPRS/EDGE. Full GPS is included. For more info, go to www.GobiAnywhere.com.

What’s Next?

Remember that the bigger CTIA show will be in Las Vegas, next year, scheduled for April 1-3. Now, I need to put away all the patio furniture to keep it from blowing around during the hurricane. I don’t expect too much damage, but it is nice to get some relief from the 60+ 100°F days. And the rain is certainly welcome.