John Roese’s Blog CTO, Nortel

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Newer: Megatrends Part 1 cont’d: Hyper-Connectivity - The Implications

Megatrends Part 1: Hyper-Connectivity

By John February 2, 2007 9:17 am

Location: Traveling from Frankfurt to London

Well it’s been a busy week. Started in Ottawa, flew to Atlanta, then Frankfurt and I’m now on my way to London for more meetings with customers to discuss Nortel’s strategy, inflections in the industry and how we can move the telecom industry forward.

When you’re constantly traveling on a global scale, what becomes quickly evident is that convenient and available Internet access is just not there when you need it and have the time to use it. I guess that provides more justification to my theory that we, as an industry, still have much work to do to achieve the transparent connected state that many of us envision.

I wanted to take some time to talk about each of the three mega-trends I see happening in the industry and that I base much of my work on. To keep my blog entries a bit shorter (listening to some feedback from more experienced bloggers than myself :)!), I will break up this discussion into a few entries.

First, a mega-trend in my mind is an unstoppable force of change that causes us to rethink the way we do telecom. Past examples include open source, corporate LANs, home networking, security threats, etc. Each of these caused disruption and reaction from the technical community and each resulted in a new communications paradigm.

The three mega-trends that I view as significant and contemporaneous today are: hyper-connectivity, communications-enabled applications/frameworks, and “true” broadband services.

For this entry, I’m going to focus on hyper-connectivity.

I define hyper-connectivity as a state in which the number of network connections exceeds the number of humans using it.

To understand what I mean, consider the past. In 1994, for example, only a very small number of people were connected to enterprise LANs and even fewer connected to the Internet. By 2000, in North America, Europe and the developed areas of Asia-Pac, we had achieved full connectivity, where almost everyone who needed to be or could be connected to a network was connected.

Today, we are at the start of a hyper-connected phase where the number of nodes on the network is going to far exceed the number of human beings connected. In fact, analyses we’ve done at Nortel suggests that machine-oriented traffic is going to surpass people-oriented traffic in three to five years. This event will be as significant and as industry-altering as when data traffic surpassed voice traffic on networks in 2001.

We are already seeing evidence of this. In fact, it is not unusual today for a single person to bring two, three or even more Internet or network-connected devices to the network (think cell phone, PC, laptop, PDA,…). And this is just the beginning.

If we consider the number of nodes that could be connected and that would benefit from such connection we could hit a level of tens or even hundreds of entities per person. Imagine, for example, if your MP3 player, digital camera, home security system, power meter, automobile, refrigerator, HVAC system and everything else that could potentially communicate was actually connected to the network.

This trend is inevitable. We’re well on our way. But the discussion is whether or not as an industry we have considered its impact on the network, on the complexity of our operating models, on the security paradigms we depend upon, or on the time and budget we have for connectivity (defined by the size of our IT organizations and the amount of cost we can support for IT).

I assert that while obvious, this trend and its inevitability have not been factored into much of the technology and architectures we use today to build networks. In my next blog entry, we can consider the examples of this state and what it really means with respect to what must change in communications networks.

In the meantime, consider your own environment (personal or at work) and ask yourself what devices you currently connect to the network and what devices should or could be connected but are not yet. Then, once you consider the scale, ask yourself if the current operating model and technology you use are going to collapse under that new expanded hyper-connectivity. I have pondered this for years and every time I consider it I am both frightened by the potential impact and excited about the innovation opportunities in front of us.

More on this later… Now, time to land, get to my hotel in London and hopefully get a few hours of sleep before a busy day tomorrow.

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  1. […] One last, last observation… the one thing that was not at 3GSM with enough force was the acknowledgment of the hyper-connected world. This show was far too focused on the classic handset and voice terminal in the mobile paradigm and showed a pretty significant lack of vision around the opportunity to connect more than just phones to the mobile network. […]

    February 16th, 2007 at 4:48 pm from John Roese’s Blog » Blog Archive » Observations on 3GSM Conference: It’s a 4G World After All

  2. […] While the first mega-trend I talked about - hyper-connectivity - has a nice catchy word to associate it with, this second one lacks the “marketing” pizazz and, as such, I beg your indulgence as I try to describe the trend. Maybe in the course of our dialog and your thoughts, we can come up with a better name for this one. At first glance, this trend may not seem as obvious as the first but, in my opinion, is just as significant in terms of changing the telecom and IT industries. […]

    March 5th, 2007 at 8:03 am from John Roese’s Blog » Blog Archive » Mega-Trend Number 2: Communications-Enabled Applications

  3. […] 10) Thomas F.Angelero: One of my favourite bloggers whose perspective on things never ceases to amaze me. Has been blogging for four years now and has pretty much possibly seen everything that VoIP can throw at a person. 9) Mitel : An active member of the VoIP Security Alliance (VOIPSA), Mitel has never been given the recognition to its immense contribution in the field of VoIP be its phones or other solutions. John Roese: You would think that a CTO of Nortel would be a more influential man. In-spite of his unique observations be it on hyper-connectivity or Communications Enabled Applications, he still does not get the same attention as other lesser individuals. 7) BEA : Come on, having the best SIP based application server in the world needs to count for something,doesn’t it? 6) Gartner Communication Blog : I am not talking about the traditional ever pervasive Gartner reports, but their Communications Innovations blog which probably is the only blog that gives a balanced view on happenings in both Europe and North America. 5) Huawei : Granted, they are not the most ethical company ( but then who is these days?), but that should not be held against them. Their thousands of installations across the globe (Traditional as well as Next Gen networks) needs to be seen in an entirely different light. 4) Mercator Capital Newsletter: Definitely a one stop place to get news on all the mergers and acquisitions happening around the globe. Has published some very intuitive articles, yet not quoted as extensively as it should. 3) Sonus: If not for Sonus and its passion for VoIP products/solutions, VoIP would have never been carrier-grade. This giant is seldom talked about and I had even posted about the exclusion of its name in VoIP News top 50 list. Give more credit to this Gorilla. 2) CTI : VoIP as we know today is alive and kicking only because of CTI ( Computer Telephony Integration). What was essentially thought of as providing screen pops to agents in call centers drove the concept of Voice over the data network which transformed into VoIP as we know it. CTI and Call Centers are never credited with this. […]

    March 7th, 2007 at 2:30 am from Top Ten : Most underrated VoIP Contributors « Gokul Blog — A conversation on VoIP, IMS, Cisco and Just about Anything

  4. […] 8 ) John Roese: You would think that a CTO of Nortel would be more revered. In-spite of his unique observations be it on hyper-connectivity or Communications Enabled Applications, he still does not get the same attention as other lesser individuals (atleast in the blogosphere) […]

    March 16th, 2007 at 12:27 am from Top Ten : Most underrated VoIP Contributors | Smith On VoIP - Garrett Smith’s Insights on VoIP Products and Services

  5. […] In my past two blog entries, I have begun to discuss “communications-enabled applications” - the second of the three mega-trends that I am convinced are reshaping the communications industry. (For those of you new to my blog, I introduced the concept of the three mega-trends in an earlier entry.) […]

    March 19th, 2007 at 3:04 pm from John Roese’s Blog » Blog Archive » The Software War Accelerates

  6. […] We are defining our industry with new terms and business models that calculate users as devices/connections (hyper-connectivity), revenue as variable, applications as open (Google, Yahoo…) and market size in ranges that vary by orders of magnitude. […]

    April 10th, 2007 at 1:58 pm from John Roese’s Blog » Blog Archive » CTIA Update – Confirmation of an industry re-defining itself

  7. […] The interesting part was that in the dialog with the students and the media that attended, it is clear that the mega-trends of hyper-connectivity, communications-enabled applications and true broadband that I’ve been talking about are both understandable and resonant on a global scale. China is experiencing fantastic growth and build-out of communications systems but, at the same time, has a young and technologically aware population that is using cellular and Internet technology aggressively. They have very high expectations of connectivity and of the applications experience, so when we hypostatize that the future will be even more connected and more communications centric, this is intuitive to them. […]

    April 16th, 2007 at 8:03 am from John Roese’s Blog » Blog Archive » China and the Mega-Trends

  8. […] So, here we are at the edge of a new era, one driven by hyperconnectivity. An era that will provide connectivity to a more diverse set of devices than ever before, one that will ingrain communications into every aspect of our lives and the systems we interact with. […]

    May 1st, 2007 at 1:08 pm from John Roese’s Blog » Blog Archive » Security built in, not bolted on

  9. […] This is the vision that we began articulating in 2006 around the ideas and concepts of hyperconnectivity. To see it play out on the world stage of Vancouver in 2010 is both humbling and exciting. […]

    May 7th, 2007 at 1:38 pm from John Roese’s Blog » Blog Archive » Bringing Telecom to the World – Vancouver 2010 Winter Games

  10. […] So, what is next as carriers start to introduce new services at 700 MHz, 1.7/2.1 GHz and 2.5 GHz? 4G, starting with WiMAX 802.16e. Success in 4G will occur when consumers and devices are connected — in fact, when they are hyperconnected — to an affordable wireless broadband network. Low cost and convenience will allow users to have full access to the web and applications wherever they and their laptop, game device, MP3 player, etc. are. […]

    August 2nd, 2007 at 9:24 pm from John Roese’s Blog » Blog Archive » New Spectrum Paves Way to 4G

  11. […] there are a host of other new technologies emerging that also advance the trend toward global Hyperconnectivity. One that I am personally involved in (sit on the Board as Nortel’s rep) and am pretty passionate […]

    September 12th, 2007 at 9:51 am from John Roese’s Blog » Blog Archive » One Laptop Per Child - Where in the world is that cool green and white laptop?

  12. […] not be enough to create the kind of network experience the hyperconnected world expects (see my blog for more details on hyperconnectivity). In order to mobilize the Internet, we need to look not just […]

    September 17th, 2007 at 7:00 pm from 4G Is Key To An Ultra-Broadband Mobile Experience « GigaOM

  13. […] not be enough to create the kind of network experience the hyperconnected world expects (see my blog for more details on hyperconnectivity). In order to mobilize the Internet, we need to look not just […]

    October 1st, 2007 at 11:55 am from Pangasinan Blog » 4G Is Key To An Ultra-Broadband Mobile Experience

  14. […] the end, hyper-connectivity is making the world a smaller place, connecting more people, applications and even things together […]

    November 28th, 2007 at 8:12 am from Enterprise Technology » Blog Archive » Guest Blog - Will the Computer be the Network?

  15. […] connecting people and handsets to the mobile network. Today, that is only part of the story. The hyperconnectivity we envisioned and began talking about well over a year ago is becoming a mainstream dialog in this […]

    February 18th, 2008 at 10:16 am from John Roese’s Blog » Blog Archive » Mobile World Congress 2008 – Oh, what a difference a year can make

  16. […] by Nortel Networks, a telecommunications gear maker, but I don’t doubt the general theme of hyperconnectivity at […]

    May 13th, 2008 at 1:15 pm from When It Comes to Broadband, There’s Never Enough - GigaOM

Comments

  1. John, I’ve pondered the very things you’ve pointed out in your blog. However, my mind tends to go towards how would such hyper-connectivity be used.

    For me, what would be great is to do away with the notion of Network Address Translation (NAT) and create an always-on VPN like connection between my devices. The traffic between them is still protected and now I do not have to deal with all the complications of NAT. To reach ALL my devices.

    If users can’t communicate between their devices whether at home, work, or on the road no amount of hyper-connectivity will mater. I want to be able to hit my SharePoint server that runs my house without having to open ports on a firewall or launch a VPN session. It should be seamless and just work.

    -jonmck

    February 2nd, 2007 at 11:47 am by Jonathan

  2. I would propose a very subtle correction to one of your statements. Rather than “the transparent connected state that many of us envision,” I suspect we are after a transparent ability-to-be-connected state. This would enable people to opt out as well.

    There are a lot of people that sometimes just want to be left alone. No matter how convenient we make rules-based presence applications, there is a certain attractiveness to just sitting on a lake with a fishing rod in one hand, a cold one in the other and the only buzzing is from a mosquito.

    February 2nd, 2007 at 3:27 pm by Mark G

  3. The hyper-connectivity you reference is probably inevitable, but there will always be a hold-out somewhere, be it on a regional basis due to economic conditions, or at home due to people being scammed out of their money.

    First: economic conditions around the globe will undoubtedly create different penetration of that hyper-connectivity and I think it will remain elusive outside the G7 well past ten or twenty years from now.

    Secondly: with all the scammer, phishers, money grabbers and time wasters already harassing me on my e-mail, I don’t see how I could get connect more devices to the Internet. In fact, I’m almost ready to unplug a number of things, keep only a manageable few connection points and armor them to the max in order to keep my sanity. And everyday that I do my internet banking, I’m thinking of the dangers I’m exposing myself to: lately my trust fund company sent me a note: they had “lost” my personal information while in transit…

    I fear security within the network ( like the VPN Jonathan talks about) will be necessary, but probably not sufficient since we network those devices in order to communicate with people outside our “home” environment. How can we ensure that every transaction performed by machines, on our behalf, are in fact transactions we would have agreed to? The machines can digitally sign, but the counterfeiters can sign with forged signatures… just like in the real world!

    Before consumers and enterprises get all gong-ho about connecting everything they’ll want re-assurance of the over-arching security as well as the backing of insurance companies to cover the potential losses due to machines lead astray by the bad guys.

    Cheers

    Henri

    February 2nd, 2007 at 4:13 pm by Henri

  4. Hi John,

    > When you’re constantly traveling on a global scale,
    > what becomes quickly evident is that convenient and
    > available Internet access is just not there when
    > you need it and have the time to use it.

    I think this is less due to wireless networks not available today but more to international mobile data roaming being still ‘hyper’ expensive. Another aspect is surely also the use of different technologies and frequency bands throughout the world.

    Fortunately first signs can now be seen that access to the mobile Internet both at home and while internationally roaming starts to become more affordable. ‘Three’ no longer asks for international roaming premiums (http://mobilesociety.typepad.com/mobile_life/2007/01/free_data_roami.html) and just last week a number of MVNO’s have slashed prepaid charges for mobile Internet access to 24 cents a megabyte (http://mobilesociety.typepad.com/mobile_life/2007/02/prepaid_mobile_.html). Revolutionary!

    I guess you will be at the 3GSMWorldCongress in Barcelona the week after? If so, how about joining me and lots of other people passionate about mobile at the Mobile Sunday in Barcelona? (http://mobilesundaybarcelona.com/). For details you can always drop me a line at Nortel.

    Cheers,
    Martin

    February 3rd, 2007 at 4:07 am by Martin Sauter

  5. John:

    As one of Silicon Valley’s top angel investors, I believe strongly in what you and Mike are trying to accomplish. I am one of Nortel’s larger beneficial owners and our teeth are bleeding to see some upward movement in your share price, this ultimately is how we will measure Nortel victory. Remind Mike that we are still bouncing off the bottom of the ocean.

    Kind regards,

    February 4th, 2007 at 4:28 pm by Hugh J. Sloan III

  6. John,
    I agree we are quickly entering hyper-connectivity mode, a state in which the number of network connections exceeds the number of humans using it. Personally I think this hyper-connectivity is going be the reason for a sudden global adoption of IPv6 (as opposed to the up until now moderate pace).

    IPv6 solves several problems: it vastly expands the available address space and it eliminates Network Address Translation (NAT). NAT gets in the way of many applications and is a real stumbling block when adopting new technologies. IPv6 can solve this by giving each IP-enabled node its own IP address, allowing for renewed innovation. The wall will come down and creativity will soar. IPv6 is still IP. All protocols and applications that can run over IPv4, new as well as current, can also run over IPv6 with minor modifications to accommodate the larger 128 bit addresses.

    I also think this transition overall shouldn’t be too expensive in the long run; the Service Providers’ cutting-edge routing hardware has a short economic life span anyway (in case they don’t have IPv6 support today), and building in IPv6 support in end-user hardware such as small home routers should not be a big deal. So the problem of high expense should disappear by itself in just a few years, as long as the Providers’ networks are able to scale with time to accommodate increased service and bandwidth demands.

    Cheers, Johan

    February 5th, 2007 at 2:21 pm by Johan Milbrink

  7. Hyperconnectivity will lead to commoditisation of the network. Commoditisation leads to simplified component based architectures. Hyperconnectivity is a user orientation of technology. The user defines or draws the connections to the information web. The explosion of connecting nodes enhances the users ability to choose and often transparently connect to the multiple nodes.
    ……….http://deepakleads.blogspot.com/

    February 5th, 2007 at 6:35 pm by Deepak Alse

  8. John,

    Firstly thank you for starting a blog and letting the world know your thoughts, I look forward to your entries with great interest.
    Regarding your last entry although you have a point regarding the amount of peripherals joining the web and creating large machine traffic you also have the opposite effect of machine consolidation.
    Classic units such as the mobile phone - camera - MP3 players are all becoming single devices, and on the main server side VMware and Solaris containers are having a massive impact in the reduction of units required to run data centers. In fact I would quite like to hear where Nortel is going down the virtualization route.
    Good luck with the blog.

    Simon.
    http://blogs.sun.com/sbullen

    February 6th, 2007 at 4:04 am by simon bullen

  9. John,

    I would like to see your thoughts and visions on how Nortel can create real differentiation by 2008, and where the company is placing it’s bets in the Enterprise business. Nortel has some of the best products out there, with just a few gaps that need to be resolved. If you could identify these gaps and engage directly with the R&D teams to resolve them, then Nortel could quickly grow market share.

    Please provide us with information regarding these tangible forecasted deliverables. This goes along with the vision versus stratgey comment you made earlier. We understand the vision, but how will Nortel deliver upon their strategy in the near future for their customers and investors?

    Respectfully submitted,

    GC

    February 6th, 2007 at 3:12 pm by GC

  10. As I sit here returning from work and syncing (new word) my PDA/Cellphone’s music, email, notes, photographs,calendar with my home laptop, and wirelessly with my work server, I see your point. Well made.

    February 7th, 2007 at 8:14 pm by Eyeball

  11. Slot machines are another example of a hyperconnectivity trend (I used to work for the #2 slot maker)
    Currently many slots still use serial connections to record game statistics. Many of the newer games are moving to ethernet, but still primarily for “coin drop” statistics. What is coming though, is that slots will evolve to change from having stained glass and paint to being covered with LCD screens. This will allow a slot machine to download a new personality and be changed on the fly. These systems are already being rolled out in Indian casinos and will start to show up in major markets as they mature.

    February 8th, 2007 at 2:10 am by Art F

  12. Hi John,

    As a Nortel employee who is engaged in selling Nortel products and services in the Middle East, I think the challenge is not only to predict these inevitable changes in the industry and in the future of networks but to be able to stay in touch with the different markets in which we sell these products and be able get the right product at the right time. I think we all agree with your vision of hyper-connectivity but when and where (in which markets) this will materialize so that the result is that we have the right products at the right time. An Example of that is Nortel SIP multi media communications Server (MCS) which in my opinion came very early to the market and by the time the market was ready to for such services they were available from the competition.

    Regards
    Ashraf Hassan

    February 10th, 2007 at 6:09 am by Ashraf Hassan

  13. Rather than confronting our customers IP/MPLS core networks with PBB wouldn’t we be better to offer both and expand our opportunities in the process. With PBB we appear to be on the defensive, bashing MPLS, since we don’t provide it on our metro networks. This could foster the customer the perception that PBB isn’t better, but this it is all that Nortel has got. While MPLS is used in their general networks, Verizon & British Telecom have confined PBB to their business network space only, where in NA MPLS doubled last year from 17% to 34%, so it seems inevitable at some point we must consider it. Offering MPLS & PBB would put us on the offensive where we could use the PBB wins to expand our product into our customer general IP/MPLS networks beyond business networks alone.

    February 21st, 2007 at 1:42 pm by Robert John Gibson

  14. My dentist in Cary NC USA called me in Frankfurt Germany to tell me I had an appointment. I explained I was in Frankfurt and would not be able to make it …however she became somewhat “hyper-connected” and explained she had dialed a local Cary number and that I would not escape the drill so easily. I handed the call to Helmet Schmidt who in fluent in German explained that I was in Germany.

    Nortel’s soft-phone will work anywhere in the world because its voice services are decoupled from the access service allowing internationally roaming. Hyper Connectivity is dependant on decoupling the content service providers from access providers so you can roam between access types. Decoupling content or voice from access precipitates the potential for a whole new breed of converged mobile devices iPhone, Pocket PC, Zune or whatever it turns out to be. This decoupled market is rapidly developing to meet user’s desire for seamless mobile content for video, music, voice, browsing, location services such as navigation etc.

    Users are frustrated with the lack of seamlessness between access providers. Moving from WiFi hotspot, CDMA/GSM and Wireline is anything but seamless. WiMAX has the potential to break through this issue and allow inexpensive roaming without the current hassle. This holds great potential for Nortel but we must think beyond the coupled services box on focus on mobile WiMAX.

    February 21st, 2007 at 1:44 pm by Robert John Gibson

  15. Interesting thread. Having the benefit of living the NorTel vision (wireless R&D) and pushing the Cisco vision and strategy to executives in the SP/telco space … the fundamental issues is one of corporate culture … that is: when we reach the next architectural inflection point called “hyperconnectivity” … will the network equipment vendor be adequately positioned, and be agile and savvy enough to adapt quickly to meet product demand? If the corporation has cultural impediments that limit innovation and rapid development, then it’s stock price will stagnate or decline!

    April 2nd, 2007 at 6:43 pm by Malcolm

  16. I agree with Robert John Gibson’s comment about PBB. The average carrier is a bit cynical about MPLS claiming to be simpler than ATM, and now PBB claiming to be simpler than MPLS. The bottom line is that there is an essential complexity to networks and claiming to be simpler is getting old.

    MPLS stared out to be simple 1980’s tag switching, it has evolved into a complex undertaking not the least of which are general traffic engineering, the fact their is no checksum for the labels (as their is for an ATM header), fast reroute calculations, static LSPs and MTU match-ups.

    I suspect PBB will suffer from the same maladies as it get deployed, and might even be worse because switched Ethernet still lacks the OAM capabilities and Telco mindshare of Sonet and ATM.

    April 3rd, 2007 at 3:03 pm by many

  17. The end-user devices are getting smaller and smarter with “all you can communicate, watch and play” embedded into single device. Thus, I cannot fully agree with the size you want to sell for the hyper-connectivity.

    April 7th, 2007 at 3:36 pm by Augustin

  18. Augustin,

    The real concept of hyper-connectivity is that in the near future there will be an order of magnatude greater number of devices on the network that are not end-user devices. While you may carry an IPOD, cellphone, PDA device. You will also see surveillance camera, sensor networks, telemetry reporting devices etc all on the network. You will also see blended devices, for example is a car an end-user device or not? Well the answer is yes, you may recive phone calls in your car, listen to podcasts or access your music library, but your car may also be sending telemetry information to the dealership, airbag deployment notification to e911, and location data to traffic management systems. Lots of devices, multiple identities, providing a variety of services, some person to person, some person to machine and some machine to machine.

    April 9th, 2007 at 2:05 pm by Kelly McDonald

  19. Kelly,

    That won’t happen without ipv6. What is nortel doing in that area to enable hyper-connectivity? What is nortel router product to compete w/juniper and cisco? The merger of DNS and telephone number databases is a huge area, what is nortel doing for enum/e.164 rfc3761 services?

    Yes, a car is a very important end user device. What is nortel doing in the area of telematics? How are you making using telematics safer? What car companies/audio companies is nortel partnering with?

    With all of the devices and identities, security an password management is critical. For example, how come nortel can’t manage to productize its norpass software?

    April 9th, 2007 at 7:15 pm by many

  20. John,

    Not sure if you are answering previous replies with this post?

    Interesting point that the machine to machine traffic is outpacing the user to user traffic. I attribute this more to the network having all of the function that used to be performed by one box being broken up into individual applications, devices and vendors than “hyper connectivity”. Then again maybe its the NSA :)

    That said, the amount of traffic is definitely increasing.

    As I have said before, the seminal events in the network that enable all of these devices are IPv6 and the reallocation of the current TV broadcast spectrum. I do not see nortel’s hand in either of these pending events.

    April 10th, 2007 at 5:54 pm by many

  21. Post’s are interesting. Interesting and entertaining:-)

    It’s hard to ignore the ‘hyperconnectivity’ trend as you’ve outlined. Quite easy to see that there is value in devices communicating with other devices. This trend can only continue to grow as the benefits of ‘connected’ devices are understood. Hard to understand the benefits of ‘OnStar’ until you own a vehicle that has ‘OnStar’.

    Think outside the box.

    May 23rd, 2007 at 11:14 pm by SpecTek

  22. What’s next? Why multi-mode service (ability to have a phone on both networks) of course. The masses do not just drop something they know for something new. They need to understand and find new ways to use the new services available before they will switch. Basically that is how 3G is rolling out. If 3G is not available the 3G phone “falls back” to GSM.

    Once the platform has coverage and the applications are compelling enough……it looks to me like location based services integrated with your home and car networks will be first. These may well be individually branded provider networks.

    I don’t think the revised FCC rules will be scary enough to keep the big carriers away and it may lead to sort of a fickle service model where consumers can go to whatever carrier/service offers the best deal or most compelling service at any given point in time.

    “Membership” as a service model may become important. Selling services to communities of interest and loosely associated groups under one brand or bill. Live voice, presence, mobility and location allows for gaming applications with whole new dimensions.

    Integration of entertainment will be driven by the success of applications like American Idol. File sharing of video and music will continue with the ability to have a “network” recorder allowing people to set up recordings remotely and then play them back anywhere.

    Billing this could get very interesting (not in a good way) and hearken back to equal access remediation. Hmmm, might be a good business to be in.

    I also think as carrier data centers get more and more complex and overloaded hosting of services will become more prevalent.

    Regulatory agencies also need to update their models as peer to peer becomes more the norm and may slow things down a bit. This may well be a very good thing for emergency services, but I expect litigation in this area allowing the lawyers to get their piece.

    August 3rd, 2007 at 8:41 am by many

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