Happy Cinco de Mayo! This is not, contrary to popular belief, Mexico's Independence Day, but rather commemorates an important battle in Mexican history. It is regardless a day when way too many margaritas are consumed, the finest of which can be found here.
But to business. I was at Interop last week, and mostly used the Eee for e-mail and such. It's not too big to carry everywhere if you put it in a bag, and there was of course ubiquitous Wi-Fi coverage in the Mandalay Bay conference center, courtesy of Aruba Networks. But back in my room was another story. Las Vegas is the one place I can understand charging for Wi-Fi (or wired service), and it was $14 at the Mandalay Bay. After all, they want you at the tables, not doing your day job. But, being cheap, I am using my Motorola Q tethered ("dial-up") as a modem, and the service provided by Verizon Wireless during Interop was quite disappointing. It was slow, frequently non-existent, and sometimes the Q even dropped the connection or rebooted. Wow - shades of another era, and simply not good enough. To be fair, such a configuration works fine in most places almost all the time - but high demand, which will become the norm, drives a stake through its heart.
Of course, the Verizon (and every other cellular) network was overloaded by the huge number of geeks and suits alike seeking access. The solution is mobile/mobile convergence, as I've noted before, but I also had an interesting conversation with my former boss (at GRiD Systems) and friend and colleague Glenn Edens, who continues to question my sanity in even suggesting that convergence will win out over femtocells. Um, more research is required, and I will have much more on this topic this year. But I remain adamant that no single wireless technology, especially cellular, can meet the challenge as demand for broadband proliferates - and, as I noted above, it's not getting the job done today. Glenn, by the way, served up a simply stellar presentation on the iPhone in the Enterprise; if you have access to the Interop materials, be sure to download this one.
I'm hard pressed to think of anything really new at Interop - another year of evolution, not revolution, and that's good for business, as buyers like some degree of product and market stability. Keith Shaw from Network World interviewed me at the show and you can see my quick video summary by clicking here. By the way, some folks said attendance was down; I didn't notice and it all seemed pretty crowded to me. Attending events like this is all about accidents - especially speaking with someone new or that you've not seen in a while. I conclude that conferences like this will be around forever, as it's almost impossible to create such accidents in cyberspace.
Mathias is a principal at Farpoint Group, a wireless advisory firm in Ashland, Mass.
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