North America is Toast (aka Build a Wireless Network, Stupid!)
I've been talking about how North America is going to be toast if they don't hurry up and settle on a wireless standard. Europe is light years farther ahead, and it is becoming more and more obvious that both the post-PC era and networking in general are going to depend on ubiquitous wireless coverage.
Philip Greenspun's latest posting covers it a bit, with some history about the advantages that the US has had in the past versus Europe, and how it's Europe that's ahead with wireless:
After two days of touring Wales, a country that apparently has yet to discover the mixing faucet, it has become apparent that there is better mobile phone coverage in the remotest sheep pasture or coastal outcrop than in downtown Boston. How can such an otherwise backward place be so far ahead of the U.S. technologically?
I don't necessarily think that 802.11xxx will be the wireless network, but there needs to be one standard that you can access anywhere -- I'll take a pass on technology choices for now.
I still have to send Steve Forgeron a note explaining how he won our long-ago discussion about the evolution of PDAs vs. cell phones. At the time, I was a Palm champion, convinced that PDAs would morph into multi-function devices, adding phone connectivity, and that the lumbering behemoths at telcos wouldn't advance phones nearly as fast. I admit it. I was wrong. My North America viewpoint blinded me to happenings in Europe. Palm is sliding away, although OS6 might be interesting (I said the same, hopeful thing about OS5 -- I was wrong). Don't worry -- I think the PocketPC OS sucks, too.
Tablets is where interesting things are going to happen as well. Now that we are at a point where it is realistic to think that there can be a full-power computing device that is just...smaller, and more portable.
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Core vs edge
Intelligence: i.e. the ability to make a difference in a competitive market place is always moving (from handset to CPE, to distribution boxes, to tier 1, tier 2, ... or backwards) according to a variety of factors (that for another post). So its current orientation must always be reassessed, so I see no problem with that.
The core edge issues reappear in a variety of forms few years only with slightly different terminology. Examples: the debate between OS vs Applications, Micro-kernel vs Monolithic kernels, 1-800 SCPs vs DMS100s, routers vs Route servers...
I like Boris' post highlighting "network effects".
I was speaking to a fellow from Nokia a while back, and they are pushing the multi-vendor (panasonic, sendo, seimens) series 60 application platform really hard.
The develop page looks intersting.
http://www.forum.nokia.com/main/1,6566,1_36,00.html
Greg, should you find one of your tablet/gprs'=-#$@^& PCs, do let us know.
It's the wrong question in the Matrix:
it's not whether it's core or edge, it's whether it does anything useful. cOR3 0r eDG3 is a dogma, a diversion, a distraction. No one really cares where the keys are kept do they? It's what is behind the doors they open.
I think a phone(line) in a Tablet would be very useful, and it'd reduce all these gadgets I need to the One, wearably. In a few yrs, you should be able to fold up a Tablet and put it in your pocket.
It could resemble a slim and slyly innocuous silver case.
Lift it from your inside pocket, unfold it, it emits soft whirring sounds and lights up, jack in and you're:
"80ND, j@me5 8oND."
Re-write the code. Storm the matrix. In this case... wielding Protel.
Since the GSM/CDMA choices were more political
than technical or business, to me its seems kind of moot to argue those. The GSM network has been easier to modernize with services etc but not outragiously so.
My GSM/GPRS phone works no better or worse than my CDMA-1X phone did, but what I rilly rilly want is a GSM/GPRS phone which is integrated into a 802.11x Tablet PC with GPS, and UWB too why not.
Hard to believe NT is still debating core/edge issues, its own navel must seem very interesting.
That's what we're trying to do...
"That is, smart apps that can live on the phone/network and be accessed through other networks."
Far and away not an easy thing... First of all, we've got people clamouring to get things out of the network and into the edge (Cisco) and people clamouring to keep things in it (Nortel). It's definitely going to take a while to work all this out.
Nortel's IMS is our first true convergence product (in my opinion - others will argue that DMS is - based on the DMS and MTX being on the same platform, common software base etc.). It will soon work over both wireline and wireless access and hopefully allow us to deliver the same services to both sets of devices.
There is a large part of me that believes the intelligence at the edge with a dumb core is the most likley scenario (see isen.com), but there are definitely some advantages to keeping intelligence in the network... And don't ask me to tell you, cause then I'd have to kill you... :) I guess it all depends on what you consider the network to include... is it simply transport & switching? Cause I tend to think it includes servers... but not clients...
One Standard?? Why?
"there needs to be one standard that you can access anywhere"....
Why? What's wrong with multiple standards, as long as they can be accessed from anywhere? Remember, physical and data link layer standards can be seperated from anything else in the stack above. Interoperability does not have to be at the CDMA or GPRS level - there is nothing wrong with me making a call on my CDMA phone to you on your GPRS phone. Theoretically there will be nothing wrong with me doing a peer to peer file transfer with you with my tablet connected via 802.11b and your's with 802.11g - your's will just be faster.
So while I understand that pervasive coverage is necessary - I don't agree that you can't have multiple overlay networks - unless of course you think that everything should be owned by the people and are trying to remove capitalism from the situation. But then, you lose the efficiencies that capitalism imposes on situations {mind you, there are also follies that capitalism encourages - the Betamax vs. VHS debate rages on ;)}.
Oh... and while I love my CDMA1x Samsung A500 - I look at Russell Beattie's talk about the Nokia 3650 and consistently wonder why Samsung was so late jumping on the Symbian train...
Different systems
Different systems split the market, you lose the network effect. Companies in NA can't develop products that work everywhere (including different networks in NA), so have a smaller market.
Meanwhile, in Europe, a common standard used by everyone enables a large market to sell to/compete with.
I specifically passed on the tech -- by standard, I meant an interoperability layer, but "higher up" somehow. That is, smart apps that can live on the phone/network and be accessed through other networks. Most companies seem intent on capturing all apps -- witness the Danger Hiptop and not having the ability to sync to Outlook. You can access your contact lists online, but only through the telcos website...
If all the 802.11xxxx series, or all the data-over-something-cellular standards play together, that's great.
Samsung played with the devil (i.e. MS). Of course, many companies were/are leery of the folks that initially pushed Symbian.