The Story of 2009 Will Be 3G

Amid a Smartphone Explosion, WiMAX, LTE Set to Square Off, But HSPA Is Here Now

And of course, the popularity of the Apple App Store and the Google Android Market has changed the thinking on the walled garden, demonstrating instead that there is a viable business model in embracing third-party developers.

The biggest factor is perhaps what’s happening with network speeds, which have the power to supercharge the apps: 7.2mbps HSPA is here for deployment, with AT&T trialing it in Chicago and planning to go to 14.4mbps with a software upgrade. Meanwhile, 21mbps from Ericsson is installed in Telstra’s network in Australia, with device manufacturers like Sony-Ericsson and Huawei scrambling to create devices to take advantage of that HSPA+ technology.

“This total ecosystem approach translates into low churn, increasing data usage and overall ARPU going up, today,” Lurie said. “Counter to what you’d expect, people are relying more and more on wireless devices and less and less on others. People are turning off things at home and using things like the iPhone as their one portal to Web.”

New for 2009

If these are the themes of 2008, what does it mean for 2009?

For one, next year will go beyond basic handsets to see the development of a range of devices that can take advantage of that aforementioned developer resource, Lurie added. The industry as a whole will embrace open ecosystems as the norm. They’ll also demand connectivity and access to applications out of the cloud, across devices.

“Consumers, small businesses and large enterprises are all starting to be very vocal about the expectations for their devices,” said Lurie. “It’s about being connected to the Web, but also to each other, and being able to do those applications across multiple devices. There is a huge opportunity for HSPA to enable navigation devices, telemetry in cars, e-books, gaming devices and so on down the line. All of those devices have the ability to bring wonderful applications if they’re wirelessly enabled. Customers want this, are willing to pay for this, see the benefit for what it can do for them, and the growth predictions are just phenomenal.”

Subscribers will find the value proposition even more compelling at faster speeds; that will be new for 2009 as well. “Users have not yet seen what 7mbps looks like; they get about 700-800kbps right now,” explained Arun Bhikshesvaran, CTO for North America at Ericsson. “So they haven’t really seen what multi-megabit can do for you. The experience is progressively becoming better and better, and in turn they’ll use more and more applications and rely more and more on wireless.”

That said, connected devices will potentially be disruptive for carriers. “Consider the Amazon Kindle e-Reader,” said Bhikshesvaran. “People are used to carrying a wireless device — but now you have a wireless entertainment experience and no relationship with the carrier because Amazon takes care of everything. Amazon has zeroed in on a new approach that considers what the value is to you for a book, and you just pay for that. Exactly the same that you pay for a paperback only the cost of having a brick and mortar facility, well, everything has been eliminated in the chain for them. Where does that leave carriers?”

Share this article: Email, Slashdot, Digg, Del.icio.us, Yahoo!MyWeb, Windows Live Favorites, Furl
Add this article feed to: RSS, My Yahoo, Newsgator, Bloglines

Read Comments [1]