More On Mobile
Earlier today I had a mini-rant on the US not getting mobile services then via Om Malik comes this super rant from Russell Beattie Where's the Mobility? It took me a while to get through the comments so I have not had a chance to get the rest of his blog but I agree with the theme of what he says if not all the content.
First of all the means of communication is (relatively) unimportant. There are great things to be said for CDMA2000 versus W-CDMA v's WiFI, WiMax and on and on. In short there are inherently better ways of delivering bandwidth to the place and time that it is required; some suffer from poor economics others from integration issues, others still from pure stupidity by carriers. However, the issue is not the means of connectivity but the services that can be provided by connectivity. Just because a person's connectivity is limited to a desk top PC does not reduce the communication services that he can access via SIP (to his machine) and via SS7 to other communications devices.
It is the services that matter; these used to be called apps. To build them quickly and to utilize all the services that may be required to make them easy to deploy and easy to market you rapidly move in to the great convergence that is rarely covered; networks and IT. Some quick definitions; what do I mean by services? Parlay does a pretty good job of defining them but here they are anyway;
Generic Call Control
User Interaction
Mobility
Terminal Capabilities
Data Session Control
Generic Messaging
Connectivity
Account Management
Charging
PAM
Policy Management
A mobile operator looking to build an app on a 2.5 - 3G network needs to use some or all of these capabilities in different mixes depending on the nature of the service; a PAM app requires PAM, location, terminal capabilities, call control, charging. A video call requires call control, charging and data session control. Just think of the charging capabilities required - do you charge per mb, or for the type of the call at the time of day? Imagine if a filewas transferred during a video call - how would that be charged. Ask a Bell-head what chance of developing these services in an AIN environment. And yet as I mildly ranted earlier US operators are building services using stovepipe solutions that don't allow these services to be easily offered and easily changed.
From hosted-PBX to VoIP services over any network the convergence of networks and IT (as well as object oriented programming) has fundamentally changed the way that services can be provided over networks of any kind.
I would be remiss not to acknowledge that there are issues, substantial issues, in provisioning data for different devices; securing enterprise data; marketing the need to enterprises and on and on. However, it strikes me that these are implementation issues not technology issues.
So I conclude its not just mobility, its mostly mobility but its about services over any network.
07 June 2004
More On Mobile
Earlier today I had a mini-rant on the US not getting mobile services then via Om Malik comes this super rant from Russell Beattie Where's the Mobility? It took me a while to get through the comments so I have not had a chance to get the rest of his blog but I agree with the theme of what he says if not all the content.
First of all the means of communication is (relatively) unimportant. There are great things to be said for CDMA2000 versus W-CDMA v's WiFI, WiMax and on and on. In short there are inherently better ways of delivering bandwidth to the place and time that it is required; some suffer from poor economics others from integration issues, others still from pure stupidity by carriers. However, the issue is not the means of connectivity but the services that can be provided by connectivity. Just because a person's connectivity is limited to a desk top PC does not reduce the communication services that he can access via SIP (to his machine) and via SS7 to other communications devices.
It is the services that matter; these used to be called apps. To build them quickly and to utilize all the services that may be required to make them easy to deploy and easy to market you rapidly move in to the great convergence that is rarely covered; networks and IT. Some quick definitions; what do I mean by services? Parlay does a pretty good job of defining them but here they are anyway;
Generic Call Control
User Interaction
Mobility
Terminal Capabilities
Data Session Control
Generic Messaging
Connectivity
Account Management
Charging
PAM
Policy Management
A mobile operator looking to build an app on a 2.5 - 3G network needs to use some or all of these capabilities in different mixes depending on the nature of the service; a PAM app requires PAM, location, terminal capabilities, call control, charging. A video call requires call control, charging and data session control. Just think of the charging capabilities required - do you charge per mb, or for the type of the call at the time of day? Imagine if a filewas transferred during a video call - how would that be charged. Ask a Bell-head what chance of developing these services in an AIN environment. And yet as I mildly ranted earlier US operators are building services using stovepipe solutions that don't allow these services to be easily offered and easily changed.
From hosted-PBX to VoIP services over any network the convergence of networks and IT (as well as object oriented programming) has fundamentally changed the way that services can be provided over networks of any kind.
I would be remiss not to acknowledge that there are issues, substantial issues, in provisioning data for different devices; securing enterprise data; marketing the need to enterprises and on and on. However, it strikes me that these are implementation issues not technology issues.
So I conclude its not just mobility, its mostly mobility but its about services over any network.
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