Europe I 2009 (17)

Theme: Mobile and wireless - much more than voice and entertainment

Wireless, both mobile and fixed, is rapidly growing in importance throughout the world. The boarders between mobile and fixed wireless are blurring with the advent of the femtocell and the use of mobile networks for fixed broadband access in regions not reached by fixed broadband infrastructure.

Either LTE or WiMAX, depending upon the region and the local operators, will soon bring true wireless broadband to many with no other access. The advent of inexpensive smartphones will stimulate demand from businesses and individuals alike for a wide variety of more sophisticated services and applications.

Internet services, Web 2.0 applications, location-based technologies, unified access (a single phone number for everything) and of course an increasing variety of high-level entertainment services - both time and place-shifted - are all going mobile.

Web-based social communities are going mobile as well.

Device size and capacity limitations, user-friendliness and quality of experience considerations, especially those associated with mobile communications, will stimulate the use of cloud computing - using the Internet itself for the services once available only on a computer - and should propel the growth of SaaS (software as a service) as well.

The almost unlimited functionality that cloud computing and SaaS bring will also accelerate the trend towards more versatile user equipment - especially touch screen and two-way camera phones.

The growth of wireless communications, especially wireless broadband, is driving fierce competition among operators, service providers, network equipment vendors, end-user equipment suppliers, software developers, applications developers and content providers.

Outsiders, such as Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and others are entering the market with their own platforms and applications and changing the rules of the game.

Everyone is after a piece of the market, but the market has its limits, so new business models, some advertising-driven, are emerging.

This issue of Connect-World Europe will explore how the changes brought by this wireless revolution will affect the sector and the region’s businesses and citizens.