Mobile Unified Communications Featured Article

Doug Mohney, editor-in-chief of HD Voice News and a 20-year veteran of the ICT space, will be moderating a pair of sessions at the upcoming ITEXPO East 2011 event, which officially kicks off on Feb. 2 in Miami.

The first session, titled "The Future of Video Communications on Mobile Devices," will offer attendees a number of different viewpoints on the future of mobile video and its anticipated adoption rate in the enterprise. Those discussing the matter will include Hanna Tong, director of business development convergence solutions at Samsung, Doug Makishima, COO at D2 Technologies, and a still-to-be-named member of the Sprint family.

Meanwhile, the second session will concentrate on next-generation VoIP peering and its relationship to seamless video calling. The sessions will take place on Thursday afternoon and Friday morning.

TMC (News - Alert) CEO Rich Tehrani recently sat down with Mohney to get his opinion on the aforementioned matters as well as some other major trends in the technology world today.

Mohney believes that the Android operating system will have a major impact in both the consumer and enterprise markets in the coming year. He sees Google's OS as the "glue" that will help bind together a number of projects in the coming years, especially when it comes to enterprise- and SMB-related hardware.

As for the loser in 2011, Mohney has his eye on Research in Motion. He expects the company's hallmark Blackberry smartphone to continue to lose market share, and believes its tablet to be a bit of a "slap job."

Mohney and Tehrani also touched on a number of other hot topics in the tech space, including the issue of net neutrality and the future of cloud computing. The complete interview can be found below.

Rich Tehrani: What was the most significant technology trend in 2010 and what impact will it have in 2011?

Doug Mohney: The Android OS.   You've got a whole ecosystem of tablet computing that will end up being a cornerstone of home automation systems, healthy alternatives to the iPhone/iPad family of phones and hardware, and it's starting to roll into TV sets. 

Anyone with a pulse and LCD-manufacturing capability is building Android-based tablets, so you've got the TV set guys suddenly diving into deeper into computing and some like Vizio that are moving from TV to tablet to phone -- to phone?

Does anyone even talk about Windows CE anymore other than Microsoft (News - Alert)? Everyone's on the Android bandwagon. You have to feel a little bit sorry for HP buying Palm. I think Chrome might have some trouble too, just because Google has to explain to everyone why you need two separate OS's from them for consumer gear while Apple is providing one, iOS.

Now that people have the building blocks of Android and tablets are in high swing, you'll see Android become the glue to put together a lot of projects. Avaya's Android tablet is the harbinger of enterprise-based apps and you'll likely see Android turn up on more SMB/SME and enterprise hardware over the next twelve months.

It doesn't take rocket science to turn an Android tablet -- or a TV, for that matter --into a kiosk or point-of-sale terminal.   There's going to be a lot of interesting things resellers can do that once required a lot of deep customized skill. Now it's a matter of buy the parts, buy the software, maybe buy the cloud service, and plug it all together.

RT: What impact will the continued growth of cloud computing have on the communications industry in 2011?

DM: I think we're going to see some WTF moments when it comes to core network technology and wireless speeds.   At the core, 100GigE is just way too expensive and you try to look around the corner beyond 100 GigE and it's one big black hole with "There be Dragons." 

Wireless is a big mess because you have the big marketing lies being told about 4G. When AT&T rolls out LTE (News - Alert), do they call it 5G? It's a mess. I also think it's time to either end-of-life or re-invent the use of 2.4 GHz spectrum. It's clear that people are sticking with 802.11 b/g/n because of inertia, but when you get lots of 2.4 GHz devices under one roof, unless you've engineered really well, things start to break.

RT: Who will be the mobile winners in 2011 out of Google Android, Apple, Microsoft, Nokia (News - Alert) and RIM?

DM: It's more perversely fun to ask who loses hardest: Microsoft, Nokia, or RIM? I think Microsoft's happy just keeping their toe in the door at this stage of the game. Nokia has a huge overseas base and they've been working on diversification with mixed results for a while. I heard Howard Stern -- of all people -- talking about how he's ditching his BlackBerry for a Verizon Droid smartphone. Put that together with the slap job on the RIM tablet and RIM is not going to have a fun 2011.

RT: What impact will mobile technology have on the tech space in 2011?

DM: It'll be interesting to see how much of a pull-through mobile has on Carrier Ethernet and flattening the mess that 2G and 3G have left behind in wireless networks. If you're running WiMax or LTE, you're running all-IP. How long do you think carriers want to run separate networks? IMS may be something people can talk about with a straight face this year.

RT: Where are the best opportunities in the tech space this year?

DM: Making things work better in the healthcare space, I think.

RT: How can technology change the world for the better?

DM: Driving down the costs to conduct business. You're going to see a lot of interesting things out of Africa over the next three years, between the deployment of cell phone networks, fiber, and low-latency satellite broadband. IBM (News - Alert) and France Telecom are putting significant efforts into the area, so it's going to be fun to watch the economic growth enabled by all the communications and IT being lit up.

RT: The FCC has recently voted to support net neutrality.  Is net neutrality necessary, or will it present more challenges than it will solve?

DM: What is net neutrality? It's like 4G -- everyone co-opts the term to mean what they want it to mean.

Should service providers block applications, regardless of wired or wireless delivery? No, they shouldn't. Should I be able to pay for guaranteed quality of service for voice and video to my home? Yes. Should Level 3 try to shake down Comcast for free bandwidth under the guise of net neutrality? No.

RT: What will be the greatest technological development in 2011?  Why?

DM: Now, if I knew that, I'd be buying a lot of stock in that field! 

Hopefully we'll see some breakthroughs in green energy this year. I had high hopes for the Bloom Energy server, but the company hasn't scaled up yet. We could use a real home run in solar panel technology; right now it's incremental.

RT: Why is your session a must-attend at ITEXPO?

DM: I will be moderating a pair of sessions, and one flows into the other. On Thursday, "The Future of Video Communications on Mobile Devices" will take a hard look at the reality of video in the mobile environment and how it fits into the mobile enterprise. We've got Hanna Tong, Director of Business Development Convergence Solutions from Samsung, and Doug Makishima from D2 technologies, along with a "to be named" from Sprint, so it will be great to see what Samsung thinks and stack that up with what Sprint sees on the carrier side along with trends D2 is seeing out in the device pipeline.

"Next Generation VoIP Peering" rolls on Friday morning and a lot of what people are doing in peering will show up when it comes to seamless video calling, including QoS, ENUM, SLAs and the like. AT&T came out of the closet with its SIP peering scheme, so it'll be interesting to see what others think.

RT: What new and exciting products/solutions can we expect to see from your company in 2011?

DM: I'm trying to get my first HD voice report out the door before ITEXPO, but I've had a couple of minor setbacks. There's a lot of enabling technology and ground work that is taking place in different corners of the world. Huawei is at the core of a mobile HD Voice roll out in Canada -- who would have thought?

All in all, last year was disappointing for HD voice. I'm thinking the first half of 2011 will be growing mobile HD voice around the world and we'll see some interesting things in North America in the second half of the year.

RT: Please make one surprising prediction for 2011.

DM: LTE in your fridge or washer is serious overkill -- it's using a steamroller to kill a fly! You really need megabits to your appliances? You want to load anti-virus on your dishwasher?

I think DECT and the CAT-iq standard are going to gain traction as the home to broadband (H2B) network solution to link bits in your house to other services.

CAT-iq provides a lower-power and more elegant solution -- glue, if you will -- to get locally networked devices to exchange data. It's all plug-and-play for the most part, unlike the mess you get with WiFi and mixing and matching devices and interference.   So you've got service providers -- cable and telco -- that want to have plug-and-play solutions for home monitoring, home safety and smart grid. 

DECT wireless silicon is dirt cheap and doesn't require having to jump onto a cellular wireless network with your smart phone so you don't get docked for the minutes. And it all ties into the existing broadband connection through your router/gateway.   

To find out more about Doug Mohney and HD Voice News, visit the company at ITEXPO East 2011. To be held Feb. 2-4 in Miami, ITEXPO is the world’s premier IP communications event. Doug Mohney will be moderating “The Future of Video Communications on Mobile Devices. Don’t wait. Register Now!

Beecher Tuttle is a TMCnet contributor. He has extensive experience writing and editing for print publications and online news websites. He has specialized in a variety of industries, including health care technology, politics and education. To read more of his articles, please visit his columnist page.

Edited by Stefanie Mosca