Same old same old, but there are some signs of change
It seems as if some things just keep on keeping on. No matter that you may think, “Oh, I’m sure we’ve been here before,” you are somehow not surprised to see things haven’t changed since you were last there. It’s like going back to school and being surprised that the teachers, the classrooms, even the smell of the place, haven’t changed in the 10, 20, however many years since you were last there; or like turning to the football results and seeing that Hibernian have ground out another one-all draw away at Motherwell (No? Well maybe that last bit’s just me then.)
But, to get ever more tortuously to the point — there is the odd topic in mobile a bit like this. While some things move on ever quicker, you come back to a topic after an enforced absence and nothing seems to have changed. For a long time, the efforts of mobile operators to get into the business customer base seemed like this. Cannes this year was a good example. Several companies — operators and equipment vendors alike — majored or focussed at least part of their efforts on the mobile enterprise, and there seemed little new in there. There were the same system integrator and application vendor partnerships, the same sense that mobilising data applications remained a nice tick on the powerpoint, more than meaningful business. But 3G has provided the opportunity to break that cycle. Finally there is enough speed and bandwidth to address decent browsing and download speeds, and there is much more efforts at integrating VPN and security support. There is still work to be done on providing differentiated class of service, quality of service guarantees and applications service assurance, all the goodies that large business customers expect and receive from their fixed line comms providers. But it is now easy enough to access the Internet, or applications behind the firewall, from a laptop or PDA, whether by cellular or WLAN access, and this is changing the environment, leading many operators to once again make the enterprise market a real priority. After all, compared to the consumer market it remains relatively unexploited, and offers good growth potential. We have a couple of features on this, including the views of leading operators, in this issue, and hope it will shed some light on how operators are addressing the market — and there are some radical differences of opinion.
Another hardy perennial has been the war/ healthy competition/ heated debate (delete as appropriate) between those in the TETRA and Tetrapol camps. Mobile Europe readers will be familiar with the arguments by now, and pleased to know that the TETRA World Congress this year will be focussed on delivering business benefits, rather than on why TETRA is best and ya boo to the rest. And yet, as our opinion piece from the Tetrapol camp shows, there is still some mud flying around. The catalyst this time is the imminent award for the supply of the UK Fire Service’s radio system. Both camps are represented on the shortlist, and judging by EADS’ piece in this issue they feel there is still a debate to be had.
Finally, this month has seen a rash of conference and exhibition activity. We were perhaps most impressed with the buzz at SymbianExpo early in October. Taking place in London this event attracted around 4,000 visitors, and not many tyre-kickers tend to just drop by the Docklands venue. The range of application developers attending was impressive, as is Symbian’s efforts to become more than just a top end OS for people with fancy phones. Ecosystem is one of those words which, like proactive and synergy, have that buttock-clench factor when encountered in a press release, but Symbian can claim to be building one, which is essential in the face of the massive Java and MS development communities.