 better quality. Also, good-quality displays more readily expose source coding and channel impairments, or, put another way, we can get away with sending poor-quality pictures provided they are being displayed on a poor-quality display. These hardware issues highlight the requirement for device discovery. We need to know the hardware and software form factor of the device to which we are sending content. It also highlights the number of factors that can influence quality in a multimedia exchange - both actual and perceived. This includes the imaging bandwidth of the device, how those images are processed and how those images are managed to create user experience value. Table 7.2 Colour depth Colour Depth Number of Possible Colours 2 (ie Black and White) 4 (Grey-scales) 16 (Grey-scales) 65 536 16 777 216 Making Telecoms Work 7.6 Code Bandwidth and Application Bandwidth Value, Patent Value and Connectivity Value The developing narrative is that bandwidth can be described in different ways. As code bandwidth has increased, application bandwidth has increased. Application bandwidth value can be realised from end users and/or from patent income. As this book was being finished, Nortel raised $4.4 billion from the sale of 6000 patents to Apple, RIM and Microsoft. Some of the patents were in traditional areas such as semiconductors, wireless, data networking and optical communications but many were application based. As application bandwidth has increased, the way in which devices interact with the network and the way that people use their phones and interact with one another has changed. The result has been a significant increase in network loading though quite how effectively this is being translated into operator owned network value is open to debate. The risk is that the operator ends up absorbing the direct cost of delivery and the indirect cost of customer help lines and product returns but misses out on the associated revenue. However, it is too early to get depressed about this. A substantial amount of applicati