Moving the world of mobile

I’ve been following the use of IT for medical/health applications for a great many years. At one point, more than a decade ago, I considered starting a tele-medicine based service company, but the available technology didn’t measure up. I saw some solid mobile-based applications that fill a real need and should find a market – most of them mobile phone heart monitoring systems, but no really innovative breakaway applications and equipment. Diabetes, heart monitoring, medication reminder systems and such are all good, necessary products, but there are many other medical needs that today’s technology might conceivably address. It was terribly disappointing to see the limited range of innovative medical applications; there should be some way to stimulate new ideas and new cell-based medical systems for a far wider range of serious medical needs. The GSMA might look into what they can do to crank up the search for really original cellphone answers to a much broader range of serious medical problems.

Throughout the show, I kept running into, DPI (deep packet inspection). Not overtly, just slyly stuck into the conversation as traffic management, traffic shaping or customer ‘whatever’ (lots of euphemisms when it comes to DPI). At first, I innocently asked, “oh, how do you do that?” Almost no one responded – ‘DPI’ – most sort of wiggled around the question. Why is everyone so uncomfortable about discussing the technology? Once upon a time, DPI was mostly used for security. It is still used for government ordered surveillance of digital communications. Carriers also use it to discriminate against certain types of traffic and, within limits, this can be justified. But what are the limits are, who sets them, who enforces them and how? DPI can provide very accurate customer surveillance and control content.

The potential for misuse is great. After the show, just a few days ago, Al Jazeera, the Arabic news service, reported that certain Arab governments were using DPI to inspect Facebook and Twitter traffic and react against dissidents. Data is also routinely collected for marketing purposes – and some of the inspection is likely to go deeper than common ethics would allow.

In fact, much of what DPI legitimately does for carriers, to prioritise traffic will not be necessary in the near future. IPv6, the Internet’s new addressing scheme, has two new fields – one designates the service and the other the level of service selected by the user. The service provider need do nothing; the customer will specify the service and agree to the appropriate pricing for each transmission.

I hadn’t thought much about DPI, but it was hard to avoid and it was hard not to question how this deep-probing tool is being used. Not everyone is a paragon of virtue. Certainly, some must use it to obtain information that law enforcement officials can only obtain with a court order.

The Microsoft/Nokia agreement, the Friday before MWC 2011, to form a “broad strategic partnership”, was a hot topic on the exhibition floor. The comments and gossip about the Windows Phone 7 deal, ranged – as one would expect – from pleased about the heightened mobile OS competition to derisive. Generally, the feeling was that if the two manage to work together, effectively sum their market assets, turn their backs on past errors, innovate and move forward on their strengths the mobile OS market could shortly become a true race between Apple, Google, Microsoft and, perhaps, Blackberry – and that was all to the good.

Microsoft previous mobile OS, Windows Phone 6, just didn’t measure up to expectations. I was an early WP6 adopter; I haven’t had an opportunity yet to live with WP7, but what I have seen is a big improvement over its predecessor and a worthy contender in the OS race.

Speaking with Geoff Thomas, Microsoft’s General Manager for its Communications Sector Asian Sales, some of the pieces – especially its history of providing telco operators with such vital back office tools as convergent billing and CRM platforms – of Microsoft’s mobile sector positioning began to click together.

Windows Phone 7 is a fresh start; as such, it is a latecomer to the mobile OS race. Another company might have found the market entry window closed, but many operators know and trust Microsoft solutions and Microsoft has been carefully emphasising how they work with service providers to give them the innovative tools needed to deliver a wide range of new services. The new alliance adds Nokia’s traditional operator ties to the mix.

Microsoft’s OS appeals strongly to many customers – even special niches such as Xbox gamers, but without a fully committed major handset as a standard-bearer it’s been an uphill fight. Now Microsoft can count on Nokia’ and its handsets as it mounts its drive to build WP7’s market. The mix of products, platforms and OS that Microsoft brings to the table can make it a very attractive partner to many telecom operators. None of the other mobile OS providers have this sort of appeal on the telco side of the market – an appeal that might play especially well to those operators concerned about the perceived dangers of an Apple/Android duopoly.

Both Nokia and Microsoft face stiff competition in the high-end smartphone market, but neither is a stranger to competition. Their biggest enemy will be themselves. In the last year, they have both been slow to react to the market as their current market share attests. Still, if they pull together they can be hard to defeat. Microsoft, for one, has a history of running full tilt into market walls until it finally get it right and smash through. I hope they get their game plans sorted; the market needs contenders of their calibre.

Fredric Morris
Editor-in-Chief