On the development of global mobile environment

Abstract

The global mobile environment consists of hundreds of mobile access networks based on telecom air interfaces (GSM(+), PDC, W-CDMA,CDMA(2000), etc.) that facilitate well over one billion subscribers throughout the world. These digital communication systems and other global networks, like Internet, are designed in a cooperative manner by a Global Designer, an organization (such as ISO, OMA, ITU, ANSI, etc) that is responsible for certain technical area or geographic region. The companies and other actors participating in the work are often competing and cooperating simultaneously. The technical solutions agreed upon by a GD are results of a political process were the power constellation is more important than technically optimal solutions. The component systems of a cooperative global system exhibit usually various aspects of autonomy, such as design, execution, and communication autonomy, the latter being especially typical of mobile terminals.  

In the global environment there seem to be four relatively independent spheres of concerns that have their own development laws, Regulatory Frameworks (laws, standards, recommendations+ the organizations issuing them), Business Models (strategies, BMs of various actors), Global Infrastructure  (the wireless and wireline networks, terminals and mobile applications deployed at a certain point of time in the world), and Enabling Technologies (those being developed in the laboratories, but not yet deployed).  The dynamics of the spheres is of outmost importance for understanding the future trends. Perhaps the most startling effects will come from the convergence of already existing networking technologies.  What are the barriers for the advances in mobile applications and what are eh disruptive technologies that might challenge the telecom technology and operators?