calling from Moon ~ ஹல்லோ ஹலோ சுகமா ?

Dharmam Thalai Kaakkum released in 1963 featured MG Ramachandran and Sarojadevi.   The film, produced by Sandow M. M. A. ChinnappaThevar, directed by MA Thirumugam  had musical score by K. V. Mahadevan – one hit song was ‘hallo, hallo sugama, aama neenga nalama ?’  [ஹல்லோ ஹலோ  சுகமா ?  ~ ஆமா  நீங்க நலமா ?? ] .. .. .. how do you greet people when you take a call ? – is your voice pleasant and audible ??

Tens of thousands of miles away, this  mission will land two Audi lunar quattro rovers which will be connected to a base station in the company's landing module via 4G. The technology behind the network, which will be provided by Nokia, will weigh about the same as a bag of sugar.Using the network, the two rovers will transfer data and HD video – can you imagine, what this is all about ?

The Oxford English Dictionary puts that ‘ hello ‘  is an alteration of hallo, hollo, which came from Old High German "halâ, holâ, emphatic imperative of halôn, holôn to fetch, used especially in hailing a ferryman.  To us it is the most heard word – especially with people shouting when receiving a call in a public place – hala, haalo , hullo and hundreds of variants .. .. the use of hello as a telephone greeting has been credited to Thomas Edison; Alexander Graham Bellinitially used Ahoy (as used on ships) as a telephone greeting !  By 1889, central telephone exchange operators were known as 'hello-girls' because of the association between the greeting and the telephone.

We get to hear this more often not only because calls have gone up exponentially with every person carrying mobile – also to some extent due to the fact that, calls are not audible, people make calls while walking, riding and doing everything else and .. .. .. and because cell phone signals are weak at places – some say they are not able to take calls inside their homes, some because their workplace is in a high rise building.  Whence inside a building, there is an   additional layer of building materials that block or inhibit cell signal.  Cell signals are not completely blocked by building materials; there is just a reduction of usable signal that occurs.

By the 19^th century, as buildings got taller across New York, engineers struggled to find ways to pump water to the uppermost floors. Now, with the mysteries of water pressure long since resolved, a new quandary is facing the city’s tallest residential buildings: poor cellphone reception.Such problems arise on higher floors because most telephone carriers have installed antennas on building roofs relatively low to the ground, to reach cellphone users on the sidewalks. Spotty reception and dropped calls have been an issue since the dawn of the cellular age, and are more pronounced in skyscrapers. 

We have read about Spectrum scams – and World is moving ahead – 4G  is the fourth generation of broadband cellular network technology, succeeding 3G. A 4G system must provide capabilities defined by ITU in IMT Advanced. Potential and current applications include amended mobile web access, IP telephony, gaming services, high-definition mobile TV, video conferencing, and 3D television.The first-release Long Term Evolution (LTE) standard (a 4G candidate system) has been commercially deployed in Oslo, Norway, and Stockholm, Sweden since 2009.

This post is not about skyscrapers but ‘up above the World so high’ – the beautiful moon !~ the  Moon will have a 4G mobile network installed next year, according to plans set out by Vodafone and Nokia.The mission, organised by space exploration company PTScientists, will be the first ever privately-funded Moon landing. Reports suggest that Nokia masts will be launched on a SpaceX rocket in 2019 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, USA.The network will enable Audi lunar exploration vehicles to communicate with each other and with a base station.The 4G signal, provided by Vodafone, will also be able to transmit high-definition video streaming of the Moon’s surface.

Just as you hear the cacophony of people announcing that the plane has just landed to all their near and dear, the moment, they are allowed usage of cell phones – perhaps will be a day sooner that one would tell that he has landed at moon, which Armstrong and team were not able to.  Perhaps they could immediately post a Selfie at moon too – on Facebook, Instagram and other social media.   “This project involves a radically innovative approach to the development of mobile network infrastructure” said Dr Hannes Ametsreiter, CEO of Vodafone Germany.The vehicles are exploring the Moon as a potential human habitat. The introduction of a 4G network is hoped to be the first step to creating a communications infrastructure for future lunar missions.

Sounds pretty interesting ! ~ though for many of us, this would not make any impact at all.

With regards – S. Sampathkumar

28^th Feb 2018.