A few things I learned at the NGMN Conference
by Volker Weber
I am currently attending the NGMN Industry Conference. These guys are talking about networks beyond 3G, to be delivered from 2010 onwards. It's a senior management type of event. There are lots of engineers there, and everybody knows more than I do. There is so much to learn in just two days.
Most interesting however is the stuff you get to learn while talking over coffee or beer. Here are a few:
- You can scare mobile operators by saying "bit pipe". They will quickly say "smart pipe".
- Accessing the internet from your phone means going through 50 to 100 boxes of equipment today.
- The backhaul to the base stations is going to be the bottleneck.
- Blackberry messaging is faster over EDGE than over 3G. Probably true for iPhone as well.
- Mobile TV (over IP) kills the "charge by volume" business model.
- With voice, cost and revenue grow linear. That is not the case with data.
One more interesting tidbit: BlackBerrys are designed to fall apart when you drop them. The goal is to eject the battery on impact. Just put them back together.
And the biggest one: Android attracts all the developers. If somebody makes at least one decent Android phone, the world is going to change again. Because you can build cool stuff for an Android phone, that Apple simply won't let you build on iPhone.
Comments
Good stuff Volker.
I have to wonder on that Blackberry design deal it sounds like they're using the racing car design mentality. Have the battery eject to lessen the impact force and essentially protect the rest of the phone.
Android should be very interesting indeed. Who knows maybe Lotus can get in on that first. : )