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Resurgent CeBIT show kicks off

Visitors gather at the lounge of the telecommunication group Motorola at CeBIT, the world's largest computing, information and communication technology fair, in Hanover, Germany, on Saturday. Around 500,000 visitors are expected to attend the fair which runs until Wednesday. PHOTO: EPA

A rush of new, lower-priced products that use wireless communications in a range of strengths were tempting trade buyers on the first two days of this year's CeBIT trade fair in Germany.

With visitor numbers seemingly up from a year ago, and the weather unusually warm at the fairgrounds on the outskirts of Hanover, it seemed to many like a kind of springtime after the gloom years of mighty promises and feeble sales.

In the networking section of the show, vendors from Asia lined aisle after aisle, showing gadgets such as tiny cameras that stream pictures to wireless local-area networks (WLAN). The technology was a year or two old, but the prices were clearly falling.

Taiwan makes up the biggest non-German contingent at this year's CeBIT, with 709 companies, while the tally from the People's Republic of China has jumped from 111 a year ago to 189 this year.

Visitor numbers in the first two days, the six-day fair runs until Wednesday, were up from a year ago, according to organizers.

But they cautioned that overall attendance at the world's biggest computer and telecoms show could fall because it was a day shorter than last year.

A traffic monitoring computer showed 31,000 cars arrived at fair car parks Friday and fair-bound trains were crowded.

"Friday was quite a good day," said a fair spokesman.

In a sure sign that the grounds were busy, mobile phone services were often unavailable as all the available Hanover channels were already in use.

This week a new alliance was formed to promote a wireless connection, near-field communication (NFC), that works over a couple of centimeters, and buzz centred on two companies, Alvarion and Redline, that were showing WiMAX, which works at up to 50km.

Between those two extremes are a raft of other standards with names like Bluetooth, 802.11 and GSM.

Industry leaders discounted fears that all the various wireless standards might somehow stymy one another, saying the different frequencies would exist side-by-side and many devices would be able to communicate in more than one band.

Nokia, Sony and Philips said a videocamera might "introduce" itself to a computer by NFC, but then transfer video footage by Bluetooth, which works at about 10m apart.

Roman Polz, a board member of the Wi-Fi alliance, which promotes the 802.11 family of standards used in wireless hotspots, said devices would soon be smart enough to decide themselves which band to use.

"In about two years, it will be like mobile phones," he said. "As a consumer, I won't have a clue about what frequency my phone is using."

In a related field, fairground talk suggests that while mobile-phone services are set to grow, traditional fixed-line phones are on the way out as it becomes easier to place phone calls via the Internet.

Known as voice over Internet protocol (VoIP), these new services have tempted many US users to scrap their old-fashioned telephone connections and send voice traffic at lower cost through the Internet "pipe."

For private households, the saving may not be much, but for a business with a mini-phone exchange known as a PBX, the economies could be compelling.

"They already have fat pipe, and are paying a phone company as well," explained Polz.

In an office building, the outgoing calls could be wireless for the first few meters, then travel the rest of the way by Internet.
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