The prosperous cities of the future will be those that
offer ubiquitous advanced fixed and mobile networks supporting a
wide range of rich media services such as video conferencing. These
will in turn emerge as a ‘constant companion' to those that want
it.
Furthermore, evolving communication services will reach
everyone, anywhere at anytime. They will support rich one-to-many
communications from time to time; rich communication and
interaction at all time and all places. In short, such networks
will be a true marriage of the internet and telecoms.
These were among the key findings from
Ericsson's Business Innovation forum in Stockholm in which the
network giant aimed to outline the future that advanced networks
would bring over the next five years.
At the event based in Kista, otherwise known as Scandinavia's
equivalent to Silicon Valley or Silicon Fjord, the network
equipment supplier said that mobile broadband would be a necessity
to enable people's business and consumer needs. Jan Häglund, deputy
head of product area IP and broadband networks, offered the
proposition that “broadband benefits society Individuals,
enterprises and governments. He suggested that in this brave new
world Ericsson would have the advantages of being a primed driver
in a future converged world with its own portfolio based on open
standards and architectural flexibility that enabled cost-effective
growth.
Right at the heart of this proposition is the notion that the
development of
Long Term Evolution (LTE) would be crucial to the
mass availability of mobile multimedia services.
LTE networks will almost certainly boast data speeds that are
equivalent to those offered by fixed line broadband today. The
first networks are expected next year and Ericsson confirmed that
it had signed licence agreements for LTE essential patents. The
announcements are based on the industry practice FRAND (Fair,
Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory) licensing. Commented Kasim
Alfalahi, Vice President and Head of IPR Licensing and Patent
Portfolio at Ericsson, "This is an important milestone for us to
demonstrate our LTE leadership. We aim to strike a balance between
providing value for our customers and earning a fair return on our
significant R&D investments when other parties have the
opportunity to benefit from them."
Ericsson saw a world where people deployed content servers at
home especially in the transport of rich media content such as
video to a range of compatible mobile video platforms. It also sees
the rise and rise of the app store concept within mobile video.
Another area touched upon by Hakan Djuphamar, and Ericsson vice
president of systems architecture, was the need for service and/or
content providers to be able to use brokerage technology to enable
a reversed charge model for mobile services.
But there will be a lot more than just one device of the likes
of Casey Harwood to have to support. The LTE-powered future will
support billions of data-hungry Internet-connected PCs, mobile
Internet devices, MIDs, TVs and other mobile devices and platforms.
These will drive huge waves of traffic on mobile networks and
Ericsson concluded that this was an opportunity to be addressed
pro-actively and innovative business models and new technology
would be required to translate this traffic to revenue
opportunities.