Unplugging The Internet - Brief Article

Business Asia, Sept, 2000 by Phil Pryke

PHIL PRYKE(*) says future wireless communications will match mobile internet capabilities to the lifestyles of consumers. And it is happening today in Asia

REMEMBER WHEN making a call meant sitting down at a phone plugged into a wall socket?

Chances are that your children will not. Free from ties to wired infrastructure, there is a generation that already takes wireless voice communications for granted. Indeed, for most of us today the mobile phone is simply a necessary tool of everyday life. And over the next five years the majority of voice traffic will be wireless.

But this is only the beginning of the story. In the same five-year timeframe, data traffic will increase dramatically. The internet is already opening up new ways of living and working but, as with the telephone a few years ago, it requires that we adjust our lifestyle to use it.

For the most part, the technology still forces us to sit at a desk, in front of a computer that is plugged into a wall socket.

In the near future, however, this will change. Consumer demand will set the pace and direction of technological development in the mobile communications arena. And this is especially true for us in the Asia-Pacific region.

Many mobile phone services available globally today were pioneered or perfected in Asia to meet Asian lifestyle needs. Now, the region is also driving the evolution to full data mobility.

Short Message Service (SMS) is a good example of this. SMS is the most accessible form of mobile data and it has taken off in Asia more dramatically than in any other region. Through SMS, we can conveniently communicate with individuals or groups of friends. We can sign up for personalised news, weather and sports updates.

We may even join an SMS friendship service that alerts us when a fellow subscriber matching our preferred profile is nearby, giving us a chance to chat and perhaps meet.

This last service, in particular, was created for young people. All across Asia, the youth market is embracing SMS and often using it more frequently than they do voice services.

As their needs mature, and as more people from other walks of life catch on to SMS, we will see even more consumer-driven SMS developments in the future. And these will, in part, provide the impetus for the migration to a new generation of networks.

Known as 3G or third-generation networks, these will encompass broader bandwidth, "always on" internet connections, and more sophisticated devices enabling data to be conveyed visually rather than in a text-based format.

Ultimately, 3G networks will enable two-way communication, allowing transactions to be conducted online and thus heralding the era of truly mobile e-commerce. This so-called "m-commerce" will open up the world of the internet to people who are comfortable with a mobile phone but who do not have a laptop or fixed-line internet connection.

Many of these 3G pioneers will be in Asia. Wireless subscriber numbers will grow more quickly in Asia than anywhere else as global penetration rises from 200 million to a total of more than 600 million within the next two years. Alongside this, internet usage will expand even more dramatically: in 2002, Asia (excluding Japan) will have around 150 million users, up from about 40 million today, and will overtake America in user numbers.

At about this time, the first true 3G networks will start coming on line here in Asia, further accelerating the process. Technology has, in fact, evolved more quickly than anyone predicted and so we are already enjoying some 3G capabilities on existing 2G networks.

However, we will not have true 3G until the infrastructure is capable of supporting the convergence of mobility, internet content and e-commerce: what my company, Lucent, calls the "Internet Unplugged".

Lucent argues that the evolution to 3G networks is less about advances in optical networks, switches or radio speech coders -- although these are all essential -- and more about how the new capabilities of 3G networks will empower consumers. Thus, we are working with content providers like Yahoo, Strategy.com, and Local.info to provide specialised services for mobile internet users.

These and other partnerships are based on consumer need. Looking ahead, we predict that lifestyles in Asia will demand communications services that are independent of location, time of day, and device. So at work we will have instant, anytime, anyplace access to a suite of office services.

In our personal lives, we will rely on a 3G lifestyle manager to find information, submit homework, call friends, go shopping, do our banking and play games.

And a new generation will be reminiscing: "Remember when the only way to cyber space was through a wall socket?"

NTT MONOPOLY STILL AN IRRITANT

AFTER AGREEING to cut its lucrative "last mile" fees after months of wrangling with Washington, Japan telecoms powerhouse NTT is still being derided as an unfair monopolist in the world's second-biggest telecoms market.

Competitors of Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp (NTT) want more concessions from the dominant carrier, and analysts say its efforts to diversify revenue should offset any pain inflicted by the connection fee cut agreed with Washington.