The Government has offered Australia's three mobile operators, and vividwireless, renewal of their existing spectrum allocated on 15 year licences in the late 90s and early 2000s at set prices, while the Government expects to rake in $3 billion.
Its claim to fame is that if offers the fastest mobile browsing experience and to achieve this it uses a server-based browser and a proprietary interface that effectively delivers a page image to the handheld device, which runs proprietary software.
Nevertheless, the launch of any dedicated Internet access device by BT will serve to legitimise and raise awareness of a nascent market in which DataWind's PocketSurfer2 is one of only a handful of pioneering gadgets: mobile broadband connected specific-function portable devices. Amazon's Kindle eBook is another.
According to ABI Research, these devices are only the vanguard of a 90 million strong invasion of ultramobile devices that will march into consumers hands over the next five years. The possibilities are almost endless and, co-incidental with BT's hints this week they were the subject of the latest posting on his blog site by John Roese, CTO of Nortel. neatly sums up all the enabling technologies and trends leading to these devices and concludes:
"By themselves, each of these elements is not revolutionary. However, as they start to combine in new ways, they suddenly create a new telecom tool kit that creates entirely new experiences. Consider the possibilities if you start with a device that has the capability to present rich content. Then, you enable it with mobile high-capacity connectivity (such as WiMax or LTE). And finally, you allow it to access content libraries or entertainment experiences on the Internet. You do it all at a cost that is only a few dollars more than the cost of the access to the content subscription. What could you do with such a device?...With this set of building blocks, not only can we create entirely new experiences, but we can deliver all of the experiences of today's telecom world in spaces and environments never before possible.
"To me that is exciting. Seeing all the building blocks becoming available and even starting to be assembled (à la the Amazon Kindle) is a good indication that we might just have an opportunity to do something entirely new in telecom for the first time in quite a while."
If BT does unveil some kind of handheld Internet access device in coming month it will join - along with Amazon and its Kindle - the select ranks of major organisations at the leading edge of this trend: it will be one to watch very closely.
David Bass
| ComOps, a leading Australian provider of business software products and services, has won a competitive tender to deploy its Salvus safety, r…
How to Make Business Discovery Work for Your Business
Business Discovery takes its cues from consumer apps. Like Google, it encourages us- ers to hunt for and explore data without worrying about or even noticing the underly- ing technology. Their entire experience is working within an intuitive interface to get real-time, self-service results with only minimal training. ...more
Try an easy-to-use set of web-enabled
tools for business-class productivity services. Office 365 provides
anywhere-access to email, important documents, contacts, and calendars
on almost any device.
