Future directions for mobile: " the telecom industry will capitalize on maturing machine-generated communications to build connectivity inside machines and devices, resulting in remote process monitoring, asset tracking, traffic flow monitoring and more."

Comments

[Will McInnes]

Hi Tom - on the future directions for mobile, what do you make of the (supposed) threat of Wi-Fi-enabled mobile access to the core network operator's networks, supposedly cutting out the mobile operator altogether? Is this a real and present danger or not at all?

[Tom Hume]

Will - I'm sceptical as to the threat Wi-fi poses. Not least because there's been talk of Wi-fi killing 3G for over 5 years now, and it's still "about to happen".

There's a lot more to providing a telecomms service than the radio network: billing, customer support, doing handover between cells, network planning, subsidising handsets, and so on. Anyone planning to compete with the operators using Wi-Fi will have to do all of these things, and maintain a network which (thanks to the shorter range of wi-fi) needs more base-stations and thus more maintenance effort.

Who's best positioned to roll out a Wi-fi network? The organisations who already have call centres, billing systems, and relationships with device vendors: the existing operators.

[Will McInnes]

Very interesting. I can see the strength of your argument particularly in the last sentence.
So when I worked in telecoms the cable franchises were being rolled out and snapped up by entrepreneurs who (messily) made it happen on a regional basis. Hungrier and better funded franchises begain acquiring, which largely makes up what is now NTL. I can see now that the same opportunity may not be as clear cut this time round for other entrepreneurs because the mobile operators are very well positioned to take advantage, whereas the story last time was to do with deregulation and limited/no competition rather than proper big boys free market competition. Ho Hum. On to the next big idea then... ;-)