Networks | Abhishek Tiwari

I Agree With O’Reilly

December 18th, 2007

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Tim O’Reilly of the Web 2.0 fame posted a great article on the NYT. He talks about the fact that mobile handsets are gradually becoming more and more like wireless PCs. This change along with the movement within the service provider community is forcing the”Open” mantra within the mobile landscape.

He reflects disappointment behind the fact that even though carriers are beginning to listen, they have not welcomed this with open arms (no pun intended). I am in complete agreement with his recommendation to the carriers to adopt the well established internet/PC business models.

I have mentioned this in a previous post. Carriers are inching towards the “Open” thought process versus taking the bull by the horns. Its simply a strategy where they are hedging their bets with a safe approach.

Yes I understand that they do have a lot of responsibility with the service. Even if they get past the thought that going “Open” won’t hurt their business, they are still worried about security and privacy. Carriers are concerned about the fact that Open models will lead to malicious content on the device, which results in a bad experience and increased customer support calls.

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Its Official: The Walled Garden is Coming Down

December 06th, 2007

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Most of you know about the infamous mobile Walled Garden, enforced by the big boys of wireless in the North American market. This approach to lock the wireless offering has led to significant frustrations for the service / application providers and subscribers alike.

The walled garden established by the carriers, allowed them to have complete / absolute control of the content and applications provided to the handset base. Application developers were at the mercy of the carrier, who essentially controlled most aspects of their business. Right from application functionality, marketing/promotions, discoverability and pricing were mandated by the carriers. Unless you as an app developer partnered with the carrier and deployed a native application (specific to their ecosystem), you had little or no chance of getting into the mobile ecosystem.

As expected this mode of operation has received lot of heat from the application developer community over time. Lately the pressure increased after Google decided to throw down the gauntlet for the upcoming 700 MHz auction. Google’s approach to open the ecosystem drew a fair bit of heat from the incumbents (obviously).

However one thing was certain, the mobile landscape was about to change. Participation from Google and other’s with the strong software background meant that carriers could no longer operate in a close environment. They would have to rethink their strategy.

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Google Officially in the Race

Google, who has been dabbling with the idea of participating in the FCC’s 700 MHZ auction, finally confirmed their participation on Friday. This comes after various discussions on this topic during most of 2007. The news was first broken by WSJ.

Here is some of my previous coverage around Google’s wireless plans.

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Sprint’s XOHM, The Video

August 27th, 2007

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In the previous post I covered the importance of XOHM (Sprint’s WiMax service) and why you as a consumer and mobile enthusiast should be interested. Today, I bring you some additional details (from Sprint Blog, yes their blog) about this new service.

Below is video by Sprint executives Barry West (Chief Technology Officer and President, 4G Mobile Broadband) and Atish Gude (Senior Vice President, Mobile Broadband Operations) to their internal teams. The video clearly reflects Sprint’s commitment to this business unit and their vision around this space.

Read more »

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Rise of The GoogNet, Most Likely

August 23rd, 2007

Over the past month I have closely covered the story around Google’s efforts with the FCC. Google had ponied up a sum of $4.6 Billion for the auction if its conditions were met. Again the conditions were (from Google’s press release):

GoogNet

Open applications

Open devices

Open services

Open networks

This had surely irked most of the big boys. FCC eventually agreed to including 2 out of 4 requests and factored in “Open Applications and Open Devices”. Google was definitely not disappointed with this reaction and they welcomed the change and positive thinking at the FCC. However it was unknown that if Google will still continue to participate in the auction scheduled for early 2008.

Yesterday Google CEO Eric Schmidt, speaking at a conference said that Google will “probably” participate in the auction next year for the wireless spectrum, which becomes available in 2009. This is great as Google is doing a much better job in representing user’s interests and championing free speech.

Here is the video of Eric Schmidt’s presentation: