By Jonne Soininen, Broadcom Communications Finland, ICANN
What is importance of mobile broadband and mobile Internet access and what are some characteristics you may want to kind of like or what you might want to — access full of broadband Internet deployment and technologies?
The first thing about mobile broadband and mobile Internet access is that it is the enabler for Internet access in many places. It’s the enabler in developed countries and for places in rural areas or not very easily wired with wireless — wired connections and it’s enabler especially as we’ve seen in developing countries where it is perhaps the only economically viable possibility to drive Internet access to the people and give Internet access to the masses. One of the reasons for that is because it is more cost effective to build wireless networks and one thing what is very important, also, is that the end users are less — are less tied to one place and tied to things like power line energy.
But it can be mobile and it can be working out of devices that run on batteries.
The other thing is what mobile broadband and mobile Internet access is driving is the new wireless revolution. Basically, what it is doing is doing the same thing for Internet access that mobile phones did to voice. Basically, making it first of all, personal, something that you can carry with you, something that you can use anywhere and everywhere. And something that brings it to the masses.
So if we think about, for instance, penetration of the fixed landline, in many countries, in the ’80s or ’90s, not only developed but also in developing countries the mobile phone has done revolution there, giving it basically the possibility for many more people to have it, use it in a different way, and basically driving a totally new possibilities for people to get connected.
And we really think that basically, the mobile Internet access is doing the same thing now for Internet access as mobile phone did for circuit switch voice access.
One thing that is important about affordability is that the mobile Internet access is affordable. To keep it affordable and to give affordable Internet access the first important thing is to use standardized technologies. Basically the systems of multiple vendors on hand sets, chips, multiple network vendors and having a full system of different players. And there’s where standards come in. When you have global standards and global adaption off of technology, you have much better possibility to drive for volumes and basically drive for more for cost effectiveness of the technology than it is with proprietary technologies. One other important issue to basically allow the economics of scale is to use to have harmonized spectrum regulation. Basically, if some countries or regions use very unstandard spectrum, it’s difficult basically you have to make special products for those countries which also then increase the cost for those countries or for those regions or for those operators basically that buy that equipment or the end users that buy the hand sets.
And, of course, the last but not least is making sure that you enable competition that between different players there, that did not get artificial lack of competition and then artificially high prices. The really interesting part at this time, we’ve had possibilities of mobile broadband for some time. But what we’re kind of looking at now and basically, this is really exciting, coming especially from platform or chip manufacturer is that the building blocks off especially hand sets are begun — I mean for affordable, more accessible, more powerful so you can build new — build smart phone devices for more cost-effective ranges and not only for the highest range.
The lower and middle and smart phones are becoming more affordable or more accessible. And what is even — what is also very important in developed countries for ease of use and developing countries for the ability to use them, is also that devices are becoming and platforms are becoming more energy efficient and you can get that smart phone experience out of a phone with less battery usage and you don’t have to basically charge your phone four times a day, and sometimes you do nowadays.
The mobile phone as a platform or mobile platforms, whichever they might be, tablets or — is kind of like the driver of Innovations rather than PC side which used to be the thing still a few years ago. Of course, what is good thing, things continue to get smaller. We can use it also especially get cellular wide area Internet connectivity with bandwidth into totally new applications namely machine to machine type applications like healthcare, automotive, safety and so on. And where you cannot previously do that, because the, basically the wireless modems were too big, too expensive or used too much energy.
(Excerpts of Speech given during Sixth Annual Meeting of Internet Governance Forum)
