Ubiquitous Mobile Internet in Five Years? Why Wait?

Yesterday at CES, Intel's Paul Otellini talked about "...an internet that is proactive, predictive and context-aware."

I do like his one definition:

"A mobile internet device is something that you carry around in your pocket, and can deliver the full internet, with no compromises," he said.

What I don't like is the prediction that it will happen in five years. I can see where, as a hardware guy, he wants to sell better chips, build out more networks and so on, but it seems that everyone has gotten into this mindset, at least for mobiles. The networks and devices today seem totally capable of being proactive, location aware and contextual.

All it takes is the will.

Operators and app makers need to use what they have available today. Pricing of unlimited internet is the only legitimate issue I see for end user adoption now, and how hard can that be to solve?

i’m pretty sure successful operators are aware of what they have available today – but what Otelini refers to is that they have a vision, too – that is something that all but the best IT companies lack in my opinion.
You do need those timeframes to be able to deliver groundbreaking technology – a good friend of mine who is also mixed reality engineer requested a timeframe of 7-9 years, although it will be hard no to loose sight of the ultimate goels in such a long time…

Having worked for a big, mobile, telecom I am not at all sure operators know what they have.

As I’ve seen it, anything operational (in any industry) becomes operationalized. Financial goals — and for publicly traded companies, short term, quarterly goals — become the deciding factor when planning and budgeting projects.

“The next big technology” is always going to be what will really present cool, new stuff for the company, the user, etc. WiMax (some still call it 4G) is currently getting this affection as its not operational. But all the talk about what it will do for us, is strikingly similar to the miracle that “3G” was supposed to bring us.

I hope, instead of just being seen as poo-pooing WiMax, my point is clear. All these features (location, always-on, contextuality…) are available now, at EVDO (et. al.) speed and availability. I hope to see some entrepreneurs come up with applications that act like this with the current networks.

Speaking of operator choices, I think this post (referencing yet another article) is right on:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Mobhappy/~3/216616100/

“...operators will only become dumb pipes if they choose to. This doesn??t mean they should try to be media companies, but rather, as Chetan says, they should focus on building smarter pipes.”