It was really interesting, in the sense of the old curse "may you live in interesting times", to have been in New York all this past week, ostensibly attending a technology conference, but hearing at least as much about the foolishness going on all week on Wall Street. Physics, our little corner of reality, can't be fooled. Exploited, yes, but fooled, no. Quite the opposite from what was going on in big office buildings right around the corner from my hotel. And guess who gets stuck with the bill now? You and me. And what did we do wrong?
But things were decidedly more upbeat at Mobile Business Expo. I structured the program this year around key areas of debate, and that we had. Here are the big ones, at least from the sessions I was able to attend:
- Open access and network neutrality vs. the carriers getting to do whatever they want - as you can tell from my postings here, I'm usually of the opinion that the carriers behave like the folks on Wall Street, exploiting us. We need a free market, of course, but one that optimizes for the customer, and that's you and me, and not the supplier. I think my fellow panelists agreed that open access and net neutrality need to be in policy if not law. Carriers must carry. Cut the crap.
- WiMAX vs. LTE - a very surprising (to me, anyway) conclusion is that these two are so close together technologically (both are based on OFDMA) that both may survive. OK, I can buy that, but I think WiMAX will still have no more than a small share of the market. Sure, we can build-software-defined radios that can do both, even on handsets (another interesting session at the conference), but when you have two technologies that do fundamentally the same thing the one with the larger market share, or larger group of supporters for whatever reason, will survive. LTE it is.
- Thick vs. thin platforms, and local vs. Web/cloud execution - The hybrid model wins; you need both. So, then, which OS platform will survive? I think we'll do a session on that one next time, but how can LINUX fail to capture half the market, and quickly? It's free, and there'll be lots of iPhone-like shells for it. A serious slam dunk, in my opinion. The iPhone gets 5% or a bit more. Symbian loses share, but slowly for now. RIM/BlackBerry is also fine for the moment, given the loyal following and innovative new handsets. Microsoft is obviously vulnerable, but may throuw marketing at the problem. This is competition.
- Convergence vs. femtocells - Convergence (handing off between cellular and Wi-Fi) makes way more sense than a single-technology solution from a spectral-efficiency and sheer-bandwidth perspective. But then, you do need a dual-mode handset to make it work. The residence has femtocells; the enterprise has distributed antenna systems and microcells. Convergence is a tough sell until you consider service cost and bandwidth available (read: required) for data applications. Then - well, still tough at present, but the convergence guys continue to make arguments that keep me in their camp.
- Metered vs. all-you-can-eat access - A key element in higher throughput is greater spectral efficiency, which implies that prices should fall while service quality improves. Not so fast. At least one panelist noted that tiered pricing is coming, something I've advocated for quite a while. You want faster? You pay more. Simple. Improved spectral efficiency and even more spectrum (both of which increase supply) do not guarantee lower prices; upgrades to 3.5G and 4G are expensive, as is spectrum thanks to those looney auctions. Prices are set by the competitive market, after all, not cost. And the carriers need all the cash they can get their hands on (which will be harder after last week's market swings) to continue to build out their networks and buy more spectrum. Ugh, those auctions. Bad idea. Very bad idea. As a panelist noted, spectrum is not the bottleneck. But access to it is.
No, we didn't settle any big arguments; that's almost impossible when the technology continues to change at such a rapid rate. But the mental (and personal) connections made in the fast-paced and dynamic environment of MBX made last week more than valuable for me regardless.
Oh - I almost forgot. I also attended Pepcom's annual "Holiday Spectacular" trade event, open only to press and analysts. Keith Shaw and I picked up a bunch of goodies for the next installment of Network World's annual Holiday Gift Guide. I'll post the publication date for this as soon as I have it.
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