The tiny cube that could cut your cell phone bill

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- As mobile data usage skyrockets, wireless companies are spending billions each year to maximize capacity, and consumers end up footing the cost in the form of higher cell phone bills.
But a cube that fits in the palm of your hand could help solve that problem.
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It's called lightRadio, a Rubik's cube-sized device made by Alcatel-Lucent (ALU) that takes all of the components of a cell phone tower and compresses them down into a 2.3-inch block. Unlike today's cell towers and antennas, which are large, inefficient and expensive to maintain, lightRadio is tiny, capacious and power-sipping.
As tiny as it is, it has been tasked with solving an enormous problem.
The global wireless industry is spending $210 billion a year to operate their networks, and $50 billion to upgrade them, according to Alcatel-Lucent and PRTM. Networks are dealing with that cost by putting data caps in place with heavy overage charges and by raising prices on their smartphone and tablet plans.
Despite all that spending and pressure on consumers to curb their data usage, the networks are fighting a losing battle. Mobile data usage is expected to grow 30 times in the next four to five years and 500 times in the next ten years, according to Alcatel-Lucent.
With a combination of miniaturization and cloud technology, lightRadio just might be able to help wireless carriers keep pace with their customers.
A cell tower that fits in your palm
When conceiving of lightRadio, Alcatel-Lucent's engineers stripped out all the heavy power equipment that controls modern cell towers, and moved them to centralized stations. That allows the lightRadio cubes to be made small enough to be deployed virtually anywhere and practically inconspicuously: Atop bus station awnings, on the side of buildings or on lamp posts.
Their small size and centralized operation lets wireless companies control the cubes virtually. That makes the antennas up to 30% more efficient than current cell towers.

Live data about who is using the cubes can be assessed, and the antennas' directional beams can be shifted to maximize their potential. For instance, radios may be pointed in one direction as people are coming to work in the morning and another direction as they're leaving work at the end of the day.
Multi-generationalantennas:

The lightRadio units also contain multi-generational antennas that can relay 2G, 3G and 4G network signals all from the same cube. That cuts down on interference and doubles the number of bits that can be sent through the air.
Today's cell towers, by contrast, send power in all different directions, most of which is lost, since it doesn't reach anyone's particular devices. They're inefficient in other ways as well: Roughly half of the power from cell towers' base stations is lost before it makes its way up to the antennas at the top of the tower. And they have separate antennas for 2G, 3G and 4G networks, causing interference problems.
Cut carries operating costs:

All of lightRadio's smart technology and power efficiency can help cut carriers' operating costs in half, Alcatel-Lucent believes.
"We need to think differently about this, because no one wants limits," said Tod Sizer, head of wireless research at Alcatel-Lucent's Bell Laboratories. "We hope to solve this problem so that the AT&Ts (T, Fortune 500), Verizons (VZ, Fortune 500) and Sprints (S, Fortune 500) of the world will be able to provide the data capacity that is needed by the customer."
The lightRadio trials will begin in September 2011, and the company expects to be producing them in volume by 2012. Several carriers have expressed interest in the technology, and Sprint Nextel plans to try out the cubes later this year.
"Sprint is talking to Alcatel Lucent about this technology and we will be working with them to test and evaluate it," a Sprint spokeswoman said. "We have been aggressive in smaller factor cell sites to help us support the growth in data traffic."
Complemintarytechnology:

Sizer said he sees lightRadio as a complimentary technology to existing cell towers. Those big antennas still serve a purpose, providing long distance signals or beams down a highway.
But as wireless companies add infrastructure to keep up with the ever-rising data demands from tablets and smartphones, carriers are finding that they're running into a cost and a space issue: Towers are expensive, and they're running out of room to erect new ones.
Exciting qualities:

Each 1.5-Watt lightRadio cube powers about a two-block radius, so in urban areas, they can be deployed throughout the city and stacked like Lego blocks in stadiums or other areas that need extra capacity. In rural areas, they can be deployed atop existing cell towers in arrays.
"The thing that's incenting us to move quickly is that more and more people are using smartphones, and my customers are being crushed by the enormous amount of data that people want to use," said Sizer. "We have to meet the access demands of the consumer, who wants to access data in any place."

Will Apple win or …………?

Apple’s new shot:

Most popular talk of the day is as u know that Apple is preparing for the launch of the iPhone 5 this summer, the company finds itself in the odd position of needing to compete with a mainstream competitor which should never have existed. The iPhone is still the only smartphone which anyone outside of geek circles cares about, but it’s far from the only smartphone in popular use.

Black Berry losing market value:

The long-languishing BlackBerry is losing marketshare and has become the AOL of its industry. Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 is as doubtful as Windows itself is mainstream. The HP Palm Pre doesn’t have a chance. The iPhone still has no competition except for one platform, which has roared into popular usage in much the same way cockroaches take over a house: unwanted, ugly, and leaving most folks eager to rid themselves of it if feasible.

Apple’s mistake:

Apple’s mistake, of course, was in launching the iPhone in such a manner in which the door for a cockroach like the Droid was left wide open, a vacuum to be filled by anything which came along, and now Apple is left cleaning up its own mess as it heads into the iPhone 5 era.

A comparison:

Features and specs aren’t the iPhone’s problem and never have been. Outside of geek circles, the only segment of the population which actually prefers the Android OS to the iPhone, no one cares that there are Android phones available with built in 4G. Come to think of it, almost no one cares that the iPhone has FaceTime either. Greater than ninety-nine percent of smartphone owners can’t name the processor speed of their phone or that of any other phones they may have considered. Usability, more specifically a positive ratio of frustration-free use to frustration-filled geekiness, is the only real litmus test the mainstream has when it comes to such devices. It’s why the iPod won the MP3 marketshare battle hands down. It’s why the iPad is doing the same in the tablet market. But because of an iPhone original sin, Apple embarks on the iPhone 5 era with a fraction of the marketshare it should have, and more problematically, a statistically significant competing platform in Android which almost no one (outside of the geeks) has anything positive to say about, but which plenty of them are willing to settle for if it means being able to stay with their preferred carrier.

Verizon’s internals show:

For a brief moment there, it appeared Apple was going to win the battle when it came to making the iPhone an AT&T-only product in the United States (and tying the iPhone to one carrier in each other nation) in the hopes of getting the public to mass migrate to that carrier. But even as Verizon’s internals show that was bleeding enough customers to AT&T over the iPhone prior to the Verizon iPhone 4 launch that the carrier’s growth had all but stalled out, that was more of a defeat for Verizon than it was a victory for Apple. Even as each non-iPhone carrier got its lunch individually eaten by the AT&T and the iPhone, with each carrier’s pet Android phone not being enough to keep customers from leaving in favor of the iPhone, that hasn’t been enough to keep the iPhone firmly atop the overall marketshare battle. And that’s shocking when one considers that none out of ten random non-geek consumers on the street will affirm that they want an iPhone, but perhaps only three out of ten actually have one. Ask why they’re using an Android based phone instead of the iPhone they say they want, their answer is straightforward and has nothing to do with Android. “I’m on Sprint,” they’ll say, as if that’s not a condition which can be corrected. “Our family uses T-Mobile,” they’ll protest, making it clear that they’d rather have a phone they can’t stand than a carrier they can’t trust. “I’m on Verizon,” they’ll retort, “and I skipped the Verizon iPhone 4 because it’s old news and I’m not eligible for upgrade pricing yet anyway. I’m waiting for the Verizon iPhone 5.”

WHAT should Apple do?

So half the battle is won. The mass migration among Verizon customers from the Droid to the iPhone has begun in earnest, and will evolve into a tidal wave the moment the iPhone 5 surfaces. But if Apple wants to actually win the smartphone marketshare battle instead of continuing to fumble it away, the iPhone 5 must surface on Sprint and T-Mobile as well, along with every major carrier in every nation in which the iPhone 5 is offered. Years ago, it was a cute experiment to see whether Apple could use the leverage of exclusivity to motivate AT&T into becoming a carrier which iPhone users could be proud of. The results of that long term experiment speak for themselves. And now Apple must deal with a competing platform which no one seems to even like but which far too many people appear to be perfectly willing to settle for.

How iPhone 5 would be?

We know that we are months away from any type of iPhone 5 announcement, a Chinese site claims to have new pictures of the rumored product.

Engineering images obtained by iDealsChina show iPhone 5 to have a much larger, edge-to-edge screen that covers most of the front of the phone. However, besides the bigger screen, the device looks much like the iPhone 4.

Site statement

"We just got what appears to be mold engineering drawings for iPhone 5," the site says. "These would be used by case designers to create plastic, TPU, aluminum, silicone, and leather cases. A while back we [heard] rumors that iPhone 5 would have a curved back but these images show iPhone 5 with the same form factor as iPhone 4 but with an edge-to-edge screen."

This statement could expose the rumors that came out earlier this week that the back design of the next iPhone would be different. Sources said Apple would abandon the current glass back in favor of a metal back that would be similar to the original iPhone. Apple is reportedly nixing the glass back because of frequent scratching and difficulty painting that part of the phone.

Apple Rethinks:

Additionally, Apple could be rethinking the external frame that doubled as the iPhone 4's antenna. The external antenna led to a flood of bad press for Apple when it was revealed that holding the phone in a way that covers the antenna, dubbed the "death grip," could interfere with wireless signals. Apple would instead use the Apple logo on the back of the phone to transmit signals.

MacRumors says:

Whenever product rumors surface, there is always a question of whether or not they are real. But the newest images are in line with shots of an iPhone bezel that were posted on iDealsChina last month. However, MacRumors says that the authenticity of the previous images has been questioned.

Some more rumors

There have also been rumors that Apple would unveil different sized iPhones. A Recent leaked image from a Chinese iPhone parts supplier show a slightly bigger, 4-inch screen. The iPhone 4 has a 3.5-inch display. There have also been reports that Apple would produce a smaller iPhone, but The New York Times refuted that claim, and said that the main focus is lowering the price on the phone.