The MWC 2012 Conference – A vision of 2022

The third day of the conference was chaired by Paul Lee, one of Deloitte‘s R&D managers.The conference speakers were:- John Donovan, from AT&T- Erik Kruse, Ericsson’s R&D managerJohn got the ball rolling for AT&T’s future in mobility. Nothing new compared to yesterday’s presentation (see my previous post here). Two major points on which John particularly insisted come to my mind:- Networking of intelligence: AT&T manages a huge amount of Data (Big Data), including personal data as well as anonymous data. AT&T wants to interconnect the cloud with services (such as health services for instance) to provide new generation mobile services (a doctor can provide remote assistance).- Security is among the main concerns of AT&T. The user must be allowed to choose whether or not to share certain data with particular people or Apps. In order to achieve this, they have created 130 API via the WAC program for 14 use categories. With transactions amounting to 4.5B in 2011, and a 10B forecast for 2012, it is all the more important for AT&T to help (and even to control) the developers concerning the possible future network uses in their Apps.- HTML5: AT&T pushes forward the use of HTML5.John presented two Apps examples: a man enters his car and it checks whether all the elements he tagged are in the car, preventing the driver from leaving for work without his laptop. A mobile device can be used to manage the access key (via NFC/RFID) to enter a place (a hotel room, for example).In a nutshell, for AT&T, the world of tomorrow is an entirely connected world, where all the objects help the user in everyday life.Erik takes over and presents Ericsson’s vision for 2022. Since 1999, Ericsson has known that new communication means must be invented. He insists on the number 3 and introduces 3 people who embody the announced changes:- Kayranga Moses, a Rwandan who lives in a village far from large cities and their infrastructures, who has connected his village in order to “bring” medical services there.- Irina from Russia, who uses social networks to find lost children in Moscow.- His own son, 10 years old, Alexander (Swedish) who knows no communication limit regardless of the equipment used (it seems that his father takes a lot of prototypes home).After that, Erik presented a telepresence robot which enables sick children to attend classes if they cannot leave home.As far as Erik is concerned, Broadband, mobility and cloud are key technologies for the future (the number 3 again), they are the cornerstones of change. The web is the new worldwide marketplace. Erik summed up with the following: “Networks are everything (physical but also people)”, “Speed is everything”, and “Innovation is everything”.Once again, it is a vision of an ultra-connected world, even for the most remote regions. A colleague of mine has pointed out lately that only a small percentage of the world’s population is currently connected. We still have a considerable way to go until everybody could reap its benefits. Mobile telephony is one of the first means to achieve that, but the gap will continue to widen.As for myself, beyond connected devices, I think we must continue to advocate for simplified usage and a revolution in data and application management: as their number has grown exponentially over time, we are going to reach saturation. Just as business intelligence has enabled us to aggregate data and redistribute it to decision makers at the right time, I think operating systems must turn around to provide services (instead of applications).The conference continued with a presentation of several solutions provided by young companies which epitomize the future. I invite you to read more on this topic in my next post.