WiFi, 4GWE and Mobility: Sociology, not Technology

“Welcome back my friends to the show that never ends.”

-          Emerson (News - Alert), Lake and Palmer

 

Mobility is at new point of our lives right now, and we should be looking at the technology not from the view point of an operator, but the view point of sociologist.

 

The changes are happening so quickly and so rapidly that the only way to actively participate is to take a wider perspective. Massive mobility is more than you and I becoming mobile; it’s things being able to interact through mobility.

 

WiFi (News - Alert) deserves all the credit. We have lots of people and innovation in the cellular network and the result has been people choose to be more nomadic with their work their play and their environment, but the ability to enable the end user with nomadic computing blossomed with WiFi. The reality is that Internet and the computing meet us nomadically with WiFi.

 

It’s WiFi that adds flavor to my conference calls with people at Starbucks. That makes the conversation start with the people apologizing for the dog barking because they are in their home, or at the airport, the hotel lobby and so on. Yes, cellular is there too.

 

In an interview with Suzanne Bowen, Brough Turner reiterated the things he said at the 4GWE Conference.

 

Kudos Suzanne for the transcript.

 

WiFi is the field trial for most of the technologies we are looking at for 4G. Want to use WiMAX or LTE (News - Alert) and you want to understand OFDM and MIMO look at WiFi. Want have a clue about White Space and the issues of multiple networks look at WiFi’s beam forming and ethernet.

 

As James Burke would say in his “Connections” series as he explained how change happens by cross – fertilization into other industries, we are now at point in history where everything connects to diverge.

 

I could make a case here that Ethernet should be the discussion point for all our future articles. Because it’s Ethernet, chatty, collision concerned and constantly on networking that are at the heart of this core. However, the sociologist in me points in all directions. The comparisons of Dual mode and Femtocell (News - Alert), the advances in machine to machine network, the development of smart products in various industries and applications that match these industries or are there just for fun.

 

All this connectivity in our hands.

 

And the next generation of WiFi is going to get another order of magnitude of processing speed to our connections. WiFi for a service provider to this point has required a lot of access points, but what if this next generation enabled more computation communication. Suddenly the any to any of networking has more power behind it.

 

Cloud computing in the office could be part of the mix. (My cloud friends would say that it doesn’t matter where the application is, but my security friends would tell me that a new breed of internal clouds would be enabled).

 

With Bowen, Turner hits a market she cares about with the use of interconnectons. What if 1 Wilshire or 60 Hudson were capable of using WIFI to expand the hubs. Should we all go for a REIT to buy the buildings next door. What if the WiFi was capable of enabling enterprises to connect to the points for less than the cost of a riser cable?

 

The reality is that we are at the epicenter of a mobility tsunami Want to know more? Sign up to read the slides.