Summary of 'The Future of Wireless International Conference' #fwic

Here is a summary of the Future of Wireless International conference held in Cambridge on the 27th and 28th of June 2011. The summary is a compilation of my notes with the tweets sent using the #FWIC tag.

DAY 1

Roberto di Pietro, VP Product Marketing and Business Development, Qualcomm CDMA Technologies

• 26 million 3G connections being added every month

• 226% growth is seen in smartphones from 2010 - 2014

• Mobile as a single platform for developers.

• Devices smart enough to know which network to connect to

• Qualcomm arrived on the scene 6 months after everyone but they are the only ones with 4G, 3G and 2G multi-mode chips

• In 2012 they would be releasing the new System Architecture with Single / Dual / Quad cores upto 2.5GHz (Snapdragon next gen)

• Question: Will smartphones die in the future when people move to tablets for everything except for voice/sms and they get simpler phones for that

• Answer: Smartphones will co-exist as companion devices with the tablets and will continue growing for a while.

• In other discussions: QoS will be a big differentiator and offloading would certainly be needed. Femtocells are going to form part of any strategy.

• Network signaling load and need for developers to improve apps design noted in qualcomm keynote here in cambridge

Mr. BongGoon Kwak, Senior Vice President, The head of Mobile Business Fast Incubation Business Department Mobile Business Group in Korea Telecom.

• KT adding 0.5 million users every month.

• Mobile data predicted to grow 26 fold by 2015 (6.2 exabytes/month)

• E = MC^2. Where E = evolution, M = mobile and C = connectivity

• mobile banking users in Korea increased 100% to 18 million due to smartphones

• smartphone ARPU up 32% on feature phone

• KakaoTalk (http://www.kakao.com/talk/en) users have increased which has in turn reduced the SMS ARPU

• NaaS (Network as a Service) is a new trend

Mr. Edward Zhou, CMO of Western European Region, Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd.

• states they have 5300 people in Europe but only 65% are from local market

• No. 2 telecom solution provider with revenues of $28 billion

• has 110,000+ employees with 150 nationalities worldwide, more than half work in R&D

• By 2020 there will be 5.5B MBB (Mobile Broadband) users as opposed to 1.5B FBB (Fixed Broadband)

• 70% of companies (especially SMEs) will be using cloud based services.

Mr. R. Swaminathan, Senior Executive Vice President, Reliance Communications Ltd.

• Low cost mobile networks and devices helped drive innovation in low cost business models in Rural India

• Customisation is a mecessity for the rural market.

• One offering includes a fixed phone that uses Mobile as a backhual using the Yagi antenna

• 15 operators in rural India. Voice tariff went from 20cents to 1 cent. Entry cost reduced by 95%

• ARPU in rural India is $2.

• Telecom operators have done innovations to keep costs to minimum

• Phone to tablet is best evolution for Indian rural market, using visual images and txt to speech technologies not smartphones

• Good to have some text to voice and vice-versa apps

• Ends with saying that there are 870 million people in rural India and possible market size is $25 billion that can be exploited

Kanwar Chadha, Chief Marketing Officer and Board Member of Cambridge Silicon Radio

• Innovations in location-aware wire-free connected world

• Spoke on view of local business vs global, very entertaining perspective , assume nothing and be careful of interpretation

• Example is the initial GPS cost $3700 but was still successful in Japan because guys wanted to show it off to their dates.

• Maslow's hierarchy of needs dont work for India as its more important to have entertainment (TV) than roof.

• FM very succesful in India but nowhere else.

• Sat Navs will not succeed in India because addresses and maps not very well mapped. Things like coupons, sms will be very successful

Innovation Hothouse: Mr. Christian Leicher, Member of the Executive Board at Rohde & Schwarz GmbH & Co. KG.

Session on start-ups very interesting

• Augmentra talked of GPS based smartphone apps. Users can share and get paid when someone else download what they share. Their guidebooks, etc are trusted by half the search and rescue mountain teams

• Oxems have a solution for the new plastic pipes that are being deployed. The normal metal detectors cant detect these pipes so they have a RFID based solution.

• Pneumacare has a non-contact medicare solution that can be used to track people with respiratory problems

• MagicSolver.com has a unique app discovery solution that can reach upto 6 millions users in 90 different countries.

• Cambridge temperature concepts has a solution that can increase the chances of fertility without IVF to the same levels after 6 months use.

Interesting points from the breakout sessions:

• Mike Bowerman of Alcatel-Lucent: Soon we will see pricing based on time of day, location, etc. Infrastructure sharing lower costs but it means that coverage from some location can completely vanish.

• John frieslaar of Huawei talks about how many will be connected to networks and the cause of demand

• Stephen temple says industry must spur innovation not gov.agree but will gov let us?

• 75% of UK mobile data consumption is driven by BBC iplayer, YouTube and adult videos says Sam Leinhardt of Penthera

• Ed Candy, 3: Apps evolving from Handset Apps to Widgets to Intelligent Browsers based

• Content is king but context is queen

• O2 in UK started putting data caps and lost 7K customers in London. They were using 7% of network capacity so O2 happy to get rid of them

DAY 2

Stephen Baily, General Manager, BBC R&D

• BBC R&D iPlayer usage on tablets is 3million/mth 2% of total

• Dual screens being explored by BBC with a universal controller API. The proposal has been submitted to W3C.

• Working on Dual-Screen concept where iPad becomes a complimentary device to TV (See http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/40584/bbc-focused-ipad-dual-screen)

• BBC R&D iPlayer usage on tablets is 3million/mth 2% of total

• BBC is looking again at mobile broadcasting based on DVB-t2m standard

• 90% of broadcast os normal schedule than the time shifted one.

Dr. Tapani Ryhänen, Laboratory Director, heading Eurolab (Cambridge and Lausanne) of Nokia Research Centre

• Imagining tomorrow devices, creating technology today

• Morph concept video

• Nokia Research Center in Cambridge working in lots of futuristic technologies like Data driven Apps, Stretchable electronics, Bend to zoom, flexible phone and display

• Another video that I wasnt able to locate on Youtube

Few points from The "Can big wireless deliver on the promise of a big society?" Panel Debate

• Motorola's David Chater-Lea: "Due to spectrum needs we're going to see breakdown of barriers between commercial & private networks"

• Neul/Ofcom's William Webb: "To get a truely wireless society we need more small cells and increased backhaul. Then we need FTTH"

• Otherwise we're going to have situation where wireless will be held back by the wired network

• Public safety: should governments use private networks or commercial networks & give priority to emergency services over customers?

Graham Fisher, Former CEO of Orange Labs R&D, BathCube:

• Net neutrality doesn't work in a world of finite resources

• High end phones expectaions include screens that can work in sunlight, AR, 3D, etc.

• When it comes to retail price plans mobile operators are all in a bargain basement, they need to reintroduce value

Dan Reed, Corporate Vice President, Technology Policy and Strategy and eXtreme Computing Group at Microsoft

• The uber change happening is collision of computing/comms/content. We need to work out how to work together

Ken Blakeslee, Chairman of WebMobility Ventures:

• Digital natives vs digital immigrants

• Is mobile too inward looking?

• We're moving from hardware to software driven marketplace where communities are the new currency

• Users can be bought and bribed, communities can not

Interesting Obervation:

• Cambridge Wireless - run largely by women as an organisation but 95% of attendees at Future of Wireless conf #fwic are male

Poll of #fwic audience returns 50:50 re: whether mobile infrastructure should be common wholesale solution vs competitive between operators

Hopefully you have enjoyed this summary!