Wireless Week

There were two important wireless announcements last week. Both might have drowned in a sea of color handset faces or the remains of iPhone hype. First to the scene was Qualcomm with the announcement of EV-DO rev. B roadmap. While this sounds cryptic, the message is really clear: next generation mobile phones will reach 9Mbps downstream transfer rate. At least twice as fast as most DSL lines we use today. This really means a lot of new multimedia applications. Mobile YouTube is the first that comes to mind, followed by on-demand music downloads. With 9Mbps speeds many existing business models will fail. The first will be metered data plans. With HSDPA at 1,8Mbps in most networks, you are already capable of reaching 3$ per second transmission rate. If that rate was to stay, you could even pay 15$ per second at 9Mbps. This model will fail. Mobile networks will be forced by competition and by regulators to settle on flat rates for both voice and data. They will earn their dollars on VASes (Value Added Services) like voice mail, ringback tones, notification and presence services, location based services and other. Music stores will have to remember your content and stores will essentially morph into personal network attached storage. Your music and your movies, once purchased, will be ready for your multiple downloads. Hopefully services like eMusic will get the message and let me buy songs, download them to my Slimserver or iPod, but later the purchased music, with playlists and sets included, will be available on demand from my mobile phone over high speed data link. With fast data link your phone will be just a cache.

The second announcement I want to bring up front here is the Microsoft Deepfish mobile Web browser. Designed by Microsoft Live Labs team, Deepfish seems to be a good cure to the "Web on a phone" illness we suffer from. Deepfish is about panning and zooming the way it should be. It really shines on a touch screen displays and it would be lovely to have it on the iPhone (but I'm afraid this won't happen, although Apple may try to launch something similar). And it should shine with fast data connection (pity the iPhone is GPRS only).

Mobile Web is coming. And with fast speeds it will be pleasure to use. The only compromise to stay for a while will be between device size and screen size. At least until we have Microvision in every phone.