Hello! And welcome to our Friday column, Worst of the Week. There’s a lot of nutty stuff that goes on in this industry, so this column is a chance for us atRCRWireless.com to rant and rave about whatever rubs us the wrong way. We hope you enjoy it!
And without further ado:
I was fortunate enough to attend the 4G World 2009 event earlier this week in Chicago, an event I have also attended in the past when it was held under different names but produced by the same people. And besides the positive impression I got of the Chicago Convention Center, which is quite nice and ranks among the nicer convention centers I have been forced to traverse in attending industry events, I felt the focus of the show seems to have finally been caught by reality. (You know, reality. That thing that many people in the telecom industry seem to have a slim grasp of? I mean did we really think some company with the overly awesome name of Zero1 would be able to offer a service that was so advanced that its secret sauce would require 1.21 jigawatts to power?)
Refreshingly, this year’s 4G World event was able to coincide with actual deployments of advanced networks that are actually being used by consumers and not just some lab prototypes. (Very important side note: I am overlooking the very name of this conference as there is no set “4G” standard yet and any and all claims some may proffer to actually provide 4G services is not based in reality. But, I digress.) Keynote speakers were not just being forced to show off some hybridized examples of how their advanced networks would make the world a better place using some lame mini-movie showing overly excited people using their phones to talk with a fire hydrant, but were actually able to show these networks working. Even if there are not a lot of consumers clamoring for these services yet, there are actually people paying money to use them. Actually.
Of course, all this talk of advanced network architectures and flat-IP cores is well and good for those looking for a bit of reality. (Or those looking to catch up some sleep after having spent way too much time the night before writing stories from their overpriced hotel rooms – more on that later. Not as important side note, but still worth a side note: Refrain from the urge to order room service “Nachos Grande.” You have been warned.) But, for me, I was hoping for something a little more of the far-fetched and along the lines of true progress in the world of telecommunications. For me, the next advancement should not be evolving from 3G to 4G to 5G, or in how these high-speed networks will revolutionize the way we live and finally allow me to send picture messages to that fire hydrant outside my house that always seems to be laughing at me. Instead the next evolution in telecommunications should be in the advancement from 4G to teleportation. That’s right. I said teleportation. (I will give you a minute here to catch your breath.)
I mean if plans for 4G services call for network data speeds of up to 100 megabits per second, which I am guessing is fast enough to provide access to even the most advanced porn sites in the world in an instant, do we really need an evolution that would provide speeds of 200Mbps? Is that progress? I say no. To me real progress will be when instead of having to look up some mundane fact on Wikipedia and have it beamed to my handset in word or video form, I am instead instantaneously transported to the subject of my search. Now that’s progress.
And imagine how much easier it would be to attend the numerous trade shows that we feel if we don’t attend we will be missing something so important that the fate of our very existence depends on it. With this coolteleportation technology we can beam ourselves to the important venues, take it all in and be back home in time for “ Dancing with a Fifth Grader America Idol.” (Man, I love that show.)
Sure, the hotel industry may take a hit from my drive for teleportation, but for an industry that seems to not bat an eye in charging $400 per night for a room with a bed, sympathy for that segment is hard to muster. (I know there are less-expensive options when it comes to hotel and I am all about watching the bottom line, but I think it’s only fair to seek out accommodations that are priced on a per-night basis instead of the per-hour or per-week.)
And I know this will likely wreck the airline industry as well. But come on. Does anyone really like air travel? Is this something anyone is really going to miss? Don’t get me wrong. I love all the free food and snacks the airlines provide, but we all know that if that food was offered anywhere else but inside an aluminum tube traveling at more than 500 miles per hour we would say it was not fit for neither man nor beast.
I know there are a ton of smart folks out there whittling away at getting another couple of Mbps out of some arcane acronym. I say we get these people focused on something truly needed, and fast.
OK! Enough of that.
Thanks for checking out this Worst of the Week column. And now some extras:
–One topic that constantly reared its head at the 4G World event was that 3G still has a lot of life to it. Several keynote speakers, most notably AT&T’s KrisRinne, as well as several meetings I attended centered on the legs still left for such “outdated” technologies like HSPA and EV-DO. Not to tell the show organizers how to run their event, but I would think a little bit of control over what is said during the event would go a long way in pushing the “4G is king” angle of the show. I mean isn’t there some cool iPhone app that can seek out anyone uttering the word “3G” if it’s not accompanied by the term “sucks,” or is at least followed by a gut-busting laugh? No?
–In last week’s WOTW, a comment was made regarding the actual existence of a “downtown” in Overland Park, Kan. (Home to both the Oak Park Mall and world headquarters to a small telecom firm awkwardly named Sprint Nextel.) Well turns out, this quaint Kansas City suburb of more than 150,000 people does indeed have a downtown, and a bustling one at that. A nice person heading up the Downtown Overland Park Partnership let us know that the downtown area hosted more than 260 local merchants and service providers. So, there you go. Now, I wonder if there is a downtown toBellevue, Wash.?
I welcome your comments. Please send me an e-mail at dmeyer@ardenmediaco.com.
