Silicon Valley says "Meh" to Google Fiber

My friend Stephen Blum at Tellus Venture Associates recently posted about Silicon Valley's response to Google Fiber's "Fiber Ready Checklist".  Only five cities in the region (San Jose, Santa Clara, Sunnyvale, Palo Alto, and of course Google's home port Mountain View)  responded.  Of these, only Palo Alto seems to be serious about their response.  One city said it wants Google to fund hiring the staff needed to review the permits.  How about another idea: Streamline the permitting process.  Crazy talk, I know.

Silicon Valley generates so much technical greatness, yet for some reason it can't implement greatness for itself. I sat at a red light recently for almost three minutes, wasting gas, generating pollution, staring at an empty intersection. Meanwhile cities and towns outside Silicon Valley have interlinked traffic lights with adaptive prediction systems that allows timing to change as needed based on roadway, radar, optical, and other sensors. The Valley was one of the last places to get rid of A/B cable, and even in 2001 it lagged behind other metro areas in DSL deployment.  We know how to make great technology, but we don't know how (or don't have the political will) to tame runaway government bureaucracy which impedes deployment of that technology.   The fact that Google Fiber will provide residents of selected cities with free basic (5 Mbps) service - a huge economic opportunity for those cities - seems to not matter.  I suspect that we're once again rushing towards mediocrity, and that we're likely to get left behind while Google deploys fiber in cities like San Antonio.

Flying Red Horse

+Darian Drake posted this funny commercial to G+ earlier today.  The name of the energy drink "Flying Horse" brought back memories of something that happened when I was working at Verifone in the late 90's.

Verifone does Point Of Sale (POS) terminals. One of their target markets is "Petro" meaning gas stations, pay at the pump, etc.  My project assignment was to prototype an RFID-enabled POS terminal for Mobil Oil, with one of the design elements being that the Mobil logo (a red Pegasus) would light up if the transaction was approved.  The branded name for this system was "SpeedPass".

The project's execution was problematic.  We struggled to design a loop antenna that wouldn't have to be made by hand.  The product used ultra-bright LEDs - fairly new at the time - and custom Lucite "light pipes" to illuminate the logos.  The technician assigned to construct the prototypes procrastinated and ended up completing the work after the last FedEx pickup of the week.  Strapped for time I was preparing to take the shipment box to a FedEx depot when the UPS guy showed up to make a delivery.  I quickly filled out a shipping form for overnight delivery and handed the box over.  Turns out the story was just beginning.

Monday morning I came in to find several urgent messages on my desk.  (1997 - I hadn't yet bought a cell phone.)  The shipment had not arrived, and the sales meeting had started.  People (including Verifone execs) had traveled to Mobil Oil offices for the meeting - this was supposed to be the deal closure.  I quickly called UPS and got no answers.  Unlike FedEx, UPS didn't track packages every time they're touched.  The box had been put into a shipping container, and after that nobody could tell me anything.

The box didn't show up later that day as the UPS helpdesk suggested it might.  It didn't show up the following day, nor in the following week.  I called the UPS helpdesk every day, seeking news.  UPS wanted to compensate me for the loss, but how do you assign a value to hand-built prototypes?  How do you file a claim against the possible loss of a multi-million dollar deal?  I wasn't eager to repeat the painful prototype construction process.  Sales wanted the prototypes YESTERDAY - literally.

Ten days after my first call to UPS I was on the phone with the helpdesk.  I'd been speaking with the same person each day and while he was nice enough we'd made no progress.  Somehow I wound up telling him about the custom Lucite light pipes, and the Pegasus logo.  "What's a Pegasus?" he asked.  "You know, Pegasus.  The mythical flying horse?"  [typing sounds in background]  "I found it!  The box is in an overage center, listed under 'flying red horse' - we can have it delivered tomorrow."

That the shipment was listed under "flying red horse" is astounding.  The prototypes did indeed have a red Pegasus logo, but they also had the Verifone logo on the model/serial number plate.  They were inside individual boxes with the Verifone logo, and those boxes were inside a larger box again with the Verifone logo.  Someone had to have opened all the boxes, ignored multiple Verifone logos, and decided to list it by the 1 inch diameter Mobil Oil logo.

I sent an email to the team letting them know that (a) the prototypes would arrive the following day, and (b) the project name henceforth would be "Flying Red Horse".

Persistence

A few years ago I started experimenting with microphone audio processing as a way to way to improve my HF signal.  I live in a fairly dense suburb and haven't been able to put up a tower, so running >100 watts isn't really an option.  Speech processing such as that described in this article seemed like a good idea.

I started out playing around with a PC app called Voice Shaper by Alex VE3NEA.  (YouTube demo of Voice Shaper.)  This worked fairly well, had all the features I needed such as RF envelope clipping/limiting, compression, and equalization.  The only downside to Alex's app is that there's a digital processing delay, and I like to monitor my transmitted audio with headphones so I can detect if there's any distortion or RFI on the signal.  Voice Shaper's delay was enough to send me looking for other solutions.

Reading around I found that a few hams are using equipment like Mackie tabletop mixers, parametric equalizers, etc.  The one that caught my attention was the dbx 286a, a rack-mount microphone processor for studio work.  I found one used for a decent price and figured I'd be on the air no problems.  As it turns out, I was starting a journey of discovery which would teach me a lot about RFI, filtering, ferrites, and ultimately signal impedance.

I made up an adapter cable from the mic processor to my Heil Pro-Set Plus and another to the mic input on my Kenwood TS-2000 and started testing on the air.  I quickly discovered that while some bands were OK, others were causing some RFI on the transmitted audio.  Depending on which antenna I used, the RFI ranged from barely noticeable to so bad that it blocked my audio completely.  A couple of cases were so bad that even keying the radio caused RFI feedback which continued until I unkeyed.

So I started experimenting with adjusting audio levels, adding ferrites, grounding and tuned grounding, etc.  I found that I could clear up some bands, but others got worse.  After a lot of work I was able to get most bands working, but it bothered me that I couldn't get all of them to work.  The question haunted me, and the dbx processor sat near my station unused, silently accusing me of being an idiot.  Why won't it work?  Other people had clearly made theirs work.  Was I just doomed to wander the earth for the rest of my life in search of a solution?

Every few months I would get an idea and try again.  Modern HF radios use BALANCED inputs, and so I went through and made sure that nothing was pulling the differential pair to ground.  I didn't find anything, but at least I had eliminated that as a possible cause.  Maybe I had faulty bought equipment?  I tested using some other audio gear and found that the problem shifted around; some bands got better, others got worse.  I gave up for about nine months after that.

My most recent attempt proved to be the solution.  I had been listening to Ham Nation while driving and Bob Heil was talking about ground loops.  Something he said made me realize my mistake.  He was talking about balanced microphone inputs (already knew that) but he also mentioned that most radio microphone jacks are expecting a LOW LEVEL audio signal, whereas the auxiliary in port usually wants to see line level signals .  Clearly the mic processor was emitting a line level signal.  What if I connected the mic processor to the AUX IN port on the radio?  This proved to be the solution!  Not a bit of RFI on any band, or on any antenna.

It's a little embarrassing to admit that it took me so long to figure this one out, but I'm really pleased to have finally resolved this one.  I'm looking forward to finally getting some use out of the mic processor I bought!

Fixed: Toyota Highlander Brake Light

Note: This post has nothing to do with wireless. 

Toyota Highlanders are well made cars - I bought a 2004 for my wife who later upgraded to a Sienna minivan, so I took the Highlander for myself.  It's at 100,000 miles and still going strong.  However, apparently they have a known problem where the brake lights on one side will intermittently stop working.  I've had people pull up next to me at stop lights and tell me I have a light out, then I get home to find the light is fine.

Then recently the light went out and stayed out.  I replaced the bulbs but they remained out.  Fuses were fine, my trusty Fluke 77 said voltage was getting to the assembly.  Posters in Toyota forums said that dealers are asking $40 - $140 for diagnostic, plus possibly $300 to replace a "circuit board"...?  Sounds like a scam to me.

I did some searching online and found reference to how the contacts on the bulb holder will get compressed and not make proper contact. (Kudos to Berto for the original post and Kujath for the photos.)  Kujath suggested using a flat-blade screwdriver to bend the contacts a bit, but I think a needle-nose pliers works better since you can control the amount of bending.  I did both bulb holders and the lights are working just fine. 

TK-890 Amateur Radio Mod

Over the past weekend a friend of mine asked if I would help him convert his Kenwood TK-890 mobile to work on the ham bands.  I wasn't sure how successful we'd be, since most every online search came up with at best little information or at worst flat out statements saying "Nope, can't be done."  As it turns out, it can be done.  Kudos to Tim K for his notes posted to Radio Reference which gave enough hints to make this happen. 

In general this is how it went.  My friend wanted his radio to work on the Bay-Net repeater system, which operates 443.225 with a +5 MHz TX split.  TX was fine, but RX was giving a steady "beep-beep-beep..." which indicates PLL unlock.

In the PLL section, under the copper foil, are three adjustment pots: A = TC302, B = TC303, and C = TC301.  (Don't ask why they're out of order.)  According to the Service Manual, Pot A sets the PLL for the low end of the receiver range, Pot B sets the high end of the receiver range, and Pot C sets the TX PLL.  The goal is to monitor test point CV with a voltmeter and adjust for minimum voltage during RX and TX.  This requires re-programming the radio's test frequencies to match the band of interest, so you'll need the KPG software and cable. 

Once we had the PLL voltages minimized for RX and TX, I found that the radio's TX frequency was way off, so a frequency alignment was needed.  This again required the KPG software - for some reason we couldn't get the radio into Panel Test/Tune via the control head.  It was easy enough with the KPG, once we realized you need to press "Enter" to lock the modified value. 

Other things like adjusting the BPF and checking deviations should be done.  In the end, the conversion was very easy and the radio is working well on the UHF amateur band.

Android's UTC vs GPS Clock Error

Official Blog: Time, technology and leaping seconds

Google's Site Reliability Team blogged back in 2011 that "Having accurate time is critical to everything we do at Google."  This is an interesting statement, in light of the known issue with Android (i.e. Google) having a known clock error which equates to the difference between GPS Time and UTC Time. 

First reported back in 2009, the Android clock error is the result of the device's date/time being locked to the GPS time signals, but as I discovered and reported in 2010 the GPS driver fails to apply the time correction.  As of this writing the error is on the order of 15 seconds, and will increase over time.  The reason that GPS and UTC time differ is due to various factors, but the largest is that the two time systems are increasingly divergent due to "leap seconds" which are small corrections applied every couple of years to UTC time which attempt to keep the UTC year aligned with the "Solar year". 

You might argue that 15 seconds is not an issue, and for the majority of users this is true.  However for scientists, some professionals, and even amateur radio operators the error can cause huge problems.  In the amateur radio world we use smartphones to track the location of satellites and the International Space Station.  Depending on their orbit, most sats are visible in the sky for at most 15 minutes.  So the error in time means that an antenna pointed at the satellite will be incorrect by at least 3 degrees, possibly more. 

The thread on Android Google Code about this issue has grown quite long over the years.  I asked for users to report if their devices had the bug; over the years every post has been a "yes" with the one exception being a Nexus 4 running Android 4.2.1.  A response from the Android team has never been posted.  It would seem that "Having accurate time is critical to everything we do at Google" is a bit of a stretch - because clearly it's not even worth talking about when the inaccuracy is on Android.

Update: I picked up a Nexus 7 running Android 4.2.2 and find that the time issue is resolved!  So to be fair, the issue existed for a long time but "Jelly Bean" seems to have resolved the issue. 

Spectrum Analysis of a Smart Meter

We got our smart meter installed this past week, so of course I had to take a look at the RF signals coming from it. The results were very interesting!  I used the spectrum analyzer on an Anritsu S412E LMR Master™, which is fast enough to capture the 20 - 200 millisecond pulses in the 902 - 928 MHz ISM band coming from the PG&E electric smart meter (the meter itself was actually made by GE).

Summary of my findings?  As I expected, there's far more RF energy in the air from the TV and FM broadcast bands and cellular signals than from the smart meter's short-duration pulses.  You have to really hunt for the smart meter signals, which are buried underneath a lot of other stronger signals. 

The Un-Club: Validation

At ARRL Pacificon 2012 I presented "Club is a Four Letter Word" - during which I set forth the idea that most amateur radio clubs are hurting more than helping our hobby.  The thesis of my presentation was that, in the modern world where membership can be obtained by simply clicking the Like button on a Facebook page, and information on innumerable subjects can be obtained from YouTube and other sources, a traditional club structure is often not needed.  A recent article on the ARRL website entitled "The Un-Club" talked about many of these same ideas, and gave examples of how their group has rejected the traditional club model and the positive benefits from that approach. 

Consider Bay-Net in the San Francisco Bay Area.  It's increasingly one of the more popular amateur radio groups in the region, with a popular linked analog repeater system and D-Star node.  Bay-Net has no members; if you're on the email list, you're in the group.  Bay-Net doesn't hold regular meetings, except for a once-per-year gathering at which goals for the coming year are set forth for consideration and an informal expo is held where members bring in projects to share and discuss.  There are three "board members" (required to maintain the Bay-Net vanity callsign WW6BAY) but they're not treated any differently than anyone else and most of them group doesn't even know who they are.  We host a Field Day site every year and usually come in last place because we spend all of our time playing around with radios and gadgets instead of making contacts, but we always learn something. There are no dues; if we need to buy something we ask for donations and people step up. 

One of the great things about Bay-Net has been that it's attracted a lot of younger operators, which I credit in part to the "not a club" approach.  I encourage you to consider whether your club might be more efficient, more effective, and more inviting if it wasn't a club at all.

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Update: As if to yet again validate this idea, I received an email from a local club that allows non-members to monitor their mailing list:

We are having an election to make a change in the By-Laws. The proposed change is shown in RED LINE in the attached petition and adds the words "more than once" to the end of Article IV, Section 1 of the By-Laws. In essence the proposal is that the By-Laws be amended in order to allow officers to serve up to two one year terms in a row rather than only one term as presently provided. It would not extend officer terms and all officers would still stand for election each year at the April meeting.

Gaaahhhhh.....

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Update, Part II: I keep getting comments (here and on my G+ post) about the importance of f2f interaction and why clubs provide that.  Let me clarify: I'm not saying that Bay-Net never interacts f2f.  We meet up all the time, for a variety of reasons.  We just don't do it *formally*.  If we need or want to meet, we do.  What we don't do is waste time with minutes, financial reports, committee reports, voting, etc.

Narrowbanding: A Retrospective

The FCC-mandated deadline for narrowbanding is less than 100 hours away, and as was predicted many license holders will not make the deadline.  (e.g. New York City, Philadelphia, and Chicago)

Starting with a Notice of Inquiry in 1991, and ordered in 2004 (yes, it really took over 13 years for the gears of governmental progress to get from "should we do this?" to "we're going to do this") narrowbanding refers to the conversion of land mobile radio systems from 25 kHz channel spacing to 12.5 kHz spacing.  It was first formally considered in the 1991 NOI because, before cellular phones became affordable and widely available, land mobile radio spectrum in some areas was very scarce.  In many major cities during the 1980's and 1990's it was often impossible to add new channels. 

Dissolve (as they say in the movies) to late 2012.  Many commercial land mobile radio users have switched over to cellular, cellular push-to-talk, or even smartphone push-to-talk apps.  It doesn't make sense to pay an LMR repeater provider for something that has limited coverage, limited flexibility, and requires professional installation in a vehicle.  Yes, LMR works when disaster strikes, which is one of the reasons why amateur radio has kept non-cellular radio in its arsenal of disaster communication solutions.  For the average commercial user, cellular makes more sense operationally and financially.  So there's a lot more LMR spectrum to be had, and yet the narrowbanding mandate continues; a 2013 solution to a 1986 problem.

Why are we even bothering to continue?  There are a wide variety of possible reasons, the sum of which probably answers the question.  The government doesn't like to admit it made a mistake, or that its thinking is two decades behind the technology curve.  It wouldn't be fair to let some people off the hook, when others have already made the change.  (Although this doesn't hold up, because obviously big cities mentioned above ARE being let off the hook.)  And of course there's big money to be made in narrowbanding; the government charges a fee to modify a license, and the radio manufacturers charge taxes on sales of new radio equipment.

All of the above reasons would be perhaps excusable if the end result were something desirable like interoperability, but we're farther away from interoperability than we were 20 years ago.  (Ref: "Meeting the Interoperability Challenge", Witkowski, CMU DMI Workshop 2012)  At the same time the FCC has been beating the narrowbanding drum, it's also allowed proliferation of incompatible radio technologies into public safety communications.  So where before we had everyone on analog FM but at different frequencies, we now have FM, P25, NXDN, DMR, etc and the frequencies are still not aligned.  God forbid these people get hold of our healthcare system.  Oh wait...

Dynamic Spectrum Sharing & Amateur Radio

Update: My prediction has come true.  I eagerly await the opportunity to tell the ARRL they should have listened to me 10 years ago.

FierceWireless reported yesterday that the US FCC has issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (FCC 12-148) that if enacted into law would allocate the 3550-3650 MHz band for use by small-cells.  Heralded by industry groups such as Wireless Internet Service Providers Association (WISPA) and the High Tech Spectrum Coalition (whose members include Apple, Alcatel-Lucent, Cisco, Ericsson, Intel, Nokia, Qualcomm, Research in Motion, and Samsung) the rulemaking will implement a dynamic spectrum-sharing architecture similar to that proposed for TV white space users.

Not discussed, but likely to become relevant over time, is the fact that the 3550-3650 MHz band sits right next to the Amateur Radio Service's 3300-3500 MHz allocation.  I've been saying for years that amateur radio is very likely to lose this band because it's almost never used.  Even here in the Silicon Valley, where hams tend to push the technology envelope, the band lies dormant.  I think we're seeing the beginnings of the end for amateur's "ownership" of the 3300 GHz band.  If FCC 12-148 moves to law, and the dynamic spectrum sharing model proves to be successful, it's not unlikely that the FCC will move to expand the allocation.

On the other hand this could wind up being a windfall to amateur radio, because dynamic spectrum sharing works both ways.  It could be that the amateur radio of the future will leverage spectrum sharing and allow operators to use frequencies currently unavailable.  This is more likely to be true in data networks than voice networks, but of course digital voice could also make use of dynamic spectrum sharing. 

Apple won't enable LTE until system is vetted - by Apple

Last week Telecoms.com reported that Apple is not releasing the iPhone 5 for sale by mobile operators until they've confirmed the system's performance.  Originally rumored back in October, and now confirmed by Swisscom; it puts Apple into a unique and unprecedented position of essentially holding an operator hostage until their network is up to Apple standards.

In a way this is understandable.  The days when you bought a phone from a carrier and then got support from that carrier are long gone.  If you're operating an iPhone 5 on Verizon and encounter problems, you're more likely to call Apple than Verizon for support.  So Apple, wanting to reduce support calls, needs to insist that the network perform adequately before approving products.  The operators may not like this (maybe even for ego reasons) but it makes sense.

Disturbing GMRS Trend

Went it Frys to buy some walkie-talkies for the neighborhood kids. My girls often loan theirs out, and since I went high-end for them I wanted something less painful should they get damaged.

Problem is that it seems like most of the radios now don't come with CTCSS/DCS support. You have to go up into the > $50 range to get tone squelch. Midland seems to have more models at the lower range; from what I saw Uniden had almost none. The premium price seems like a lot, given that the code squelch support is likely already in the radio's ASIC. (It would make zero sense for the radio vendors to design more than one radio ASIC.)

I should probably note that I can understand the business motivation behind this. Most people who don't work with radio as amateurs or professionals are likely confused by CTCSS/DCS. The vendors made this problem worse by marketing it as a "privacy code" - customers likely call tech support all the time complaining that people can monitor their "private" transmissions. Eliminate the code, support call rates will go down. That doesn't mean it's a good idea.

Are Church Steeples the Answer to Cellular's Prayers?

CBS5 in San Francisco recently ran a story about how churches are allowing cellular carriers to locate cell sites in their buildings and steeples.  It's a seemingly win-win solution - churches are usually in need of supplemental funding, and carriers are faced with the dilemma of adding coverage while also dealing with community rejection of towers/poles due to aesthetics and/or concerns about RF radiation safety.  Win-win?  Maybe not...

Over the past few years there have been a lot of new stories about problems with police radio systems.  Complaints about noise, drop-outs, and sometimes a complete failure of the system are often cited in these articles.  In some cases, the issues are caused by substandard equipment, poor planning, and poor installation.  But other times all of these are ruled out, and yet the system remains problematic.

What then is the cause?  A while back the City of Oakland, which has been plagued for years by failures of their police radio system, pointed the finger at cellular carriers as the culprit.  Oakland PD's radios are very close in frequency to some of the cellular bands, so it makes sense to investigate this.  And in fact, when the cell sites were turned off the problem went away.  So is the problem with the cell site, the police radios, or both?  Certainly there are some radios on the market which have poor receivers and are likely to pull in radio signals from cellular bands.  But lately I've been working with a team of consultants on analysis of these cases which shows that over-crowded cell sites may in fact be contributing to the problem.

Securing the permits, regulatory approvals, and community support for cell site construction is a huge problem for the cellular carriers.  So when they find a site, they tend to load it up with as many systems as they can.  The problem is that the signals can mix with each other and create very fast transient high noise floors near the sites, even outside the cellular bands.  The more systems sited close together, the more likely it is that this will occur.  So while cellular may seem like a God-send to churches, they should be careful to avoid overcrowding - or there might be hell to pay in the long run.

Pacificon 2012 : Club is a Four Letter Word

Had a great time at Pacificon 2012 today.  This was the first year I brought the kids.  It may have been a bit over Tara's head, but Nora enjoyed hearing from NASA Astronaut Lee Morin about life aboard the International Space Station, and soldering her own Morse Code Sounder at the ARRL's Youth Program area. 

My presentation this year was on organizing in the 21st century, and how to reorganize existing organizations to attract and retain people born after 1980 (termed "Millennials").  I think it was well received, and in fact the audience started asking so many questions that I didn't get through all my slides.  For anyone interested here's the presentation.

Field Day 2012 is almost here!

Getting ready for next weekend.  Are you attending Field Day?  Check the ARRL Field Day locator for a site near you and join us!

Kids and Morse Code

About three years ago my youngest daughter Tara took an interest in Morse Code.  I think she just liked the sound it made, but the way she sat there so intent when she was pretending to send was cute, so I took a video and posted it to YouTube.  It got picked up by a few amateur radio blogs, worked its way around the world, and as of today has just under 10,000 views.  In fact, it's my most watched video.  Not exactly the Dramatic Chipmunk, but still...  I had no idea it would be so popular.

JT65 Articles from CQ Magazine

Last year (October and November 2010) I co-authored with Tomas NW7US a two-part article "Communicating Under the Noise" about JT65A on HF which was published in CQ Magazine.  Thanks to Rich Moseson for agreeing to make the articles available in digital form.  PDF copies of the articles can be obtained here: Download (PDF)

Enjoy.

You're doing it wrong

The ARRL kicked off 2011 with a news item that hopefully is not a harbinger of more retro-tech lameness to come during the new year.  (Hint: It is.)  "Ring in the New Year with Morse Code Ringtones" started off well enough; make your cellphone ring with CQ CQ CQ or some such.  I did this almost two years ago and it's great fun; I even made ringtones with my wife's name, the callsigns of hams in the Bay-Net group, etc.  I got lots of good comments on my ringtones from folks at the 2010 Dayton Hamvention; a few even requested that I email them copies of my MP3 files for their phones.

The ARRL article fails on two fronts; first off it talks about creating Morse Code ringtones like it's a completely new thing (clearly it's not), and secondly it goes into detail about the horribly convoluted process Tom AD1B used to create his tones.  Tom actually used his Ten-Tec rig and a keyer paddle to generate the Morse Code, recorded the audio (article is unspecific on how he did this; my money is on "8-Track Tape Deck"), massaged the audio files in Audacity, and then generated MP3 files.  Talk about using a bazooka to kill a mosquito.

Clever.  And completely unnecessary.  I generated my MP3 files by going to LWCO.net, a website created by Fabian Kurz, DJ1YFK.  Fabian's website (the URL is an acronym for "Learn CW Online") offers a number of useful tools, many of which are based on Fabian's excellent open source "ebook2cw" library.  One of the tools on LCWO is "Convert text to CW".  You type in text.  It generates an MP3 file for download.  You put the file on your phone.  Done.  I can generate a library of unique ringtones for twenty people in the time it takes Tom to record and process one.

And even my method is now somewhat obsolete with the advent of apps for smartphones that convert text to Morse Code on the fly.  MorseRing for Android is available in the Android Market for 99 cents.  It converts Caller ID strings to Morse Code.  The beauty of MorseRing is that I now know who's calling me even if my phone is 25 feet away.  I'm sure there is similar apps for the iPhone, possibly one for Palm, likely not for Blackberry.