Day Two

Professor Omer Gurewitz of Ben Gurion University of Israel and formerly of Rice University provided the opening presentation for the second day of the conference. He discussed his experience in setting up a mesh network in Houston. The system he helped create used 802.11a/b/g with mesh nodes to bring free Internet access to a 3-km2 region of southeast Houston.

Next up was Mark Louison, president of Nokia, on the topic of “Embracing Openness for a Rich Mobile Future.” He opened by reminding everyone of cellular radio’s 25th anniversary in October, then went on to predict 4 billion subscribers by the middle of 2009. Additionally, he noted the massive convergence of mobile and the Internet. Nokia is trying to manage that collision. The addition of context to mobile applications represents a major trend as well, he said.

Louison then described Nokia’s recent purchase of Symbian and how they were establishing a foundation to help standardize and distribute the S60 operating system as the free and open system for cellular phones. While the Symbian OS isn’t as widely used in the U.S., it has well over 50% of the worldwide market and is expected to grow, worldwide as well as in the U.S., as the open movement continues. In closing, Louison mentioned the growing explosion of data traffic that was driving the need for more spectrum, LTE, and a solution to the coming backhaul overload. He said he thought 4G would come faster than 3G did.

The panel on open business models comprised Thanasis Iatrou of Media Excel, Uwe Luhrig of Simfonics GmbH, Taneli Ruda of Nokia, Dave Skiora of Digby, Moneet Singh of Mpower Mobile, and Bill Wolfe of Clickatell. The moderator was Frank Bernhard of the Omni Consulting Group LLP. The group tried to answer the question about the possibility of the mobile operators tuning their business models to adapt to the new reality of any device and any application on any network. There was no consensus.

I got the feeling that all of the panel’s members doubted the workability of an open network. They discussed the potential of free content to spur open services and how multiple cell-phone OSs would require multiple developments of the same application.

Rowland Shaw of Ericsson next spoke during his session, “The Key Aspects of Next Generation Networks.” He sees a growing gap between the rapidly increasing data traffic and the flat revenues being generated with wireless broadband networks. He also didn’t think LTE would begin rolling out until 2010 and beyond. Data traffic will continue to grow, with backhaul becoming more critical.

Ted Rappaport, professor at the University of Texas WNCG, moderated the panel on open networks panel, which included Jim Keeler of Wayport, Venkat Rayapati of SAI Technology, S. Rasoul Safavian of Bechtel Telecommunicaitons, and Yoram Solomon of TI. Again, the panel went around and around without much agreement on what open means. However, the speakers did note some trends.

First, a common platform is needed for open development. Also, openness may hurt the quality of the user’s experience. Wi-Fi is generally considered open, except for the security issue, as any security measure will go against openness. Then, someone asked if the UMA/GAN system was considered open. Another person asked if carriers will get any return on investment on their spectrum buys with open applications and products. Finally, the panel noted that femtocells can help with the backhaul problem in an open system because of the backhaul of the Internet via cable TV or DSL home lines. Overall, though, there were more questions than real answers.

At one of the breakout sessions, Lynne Patterson of Anritsu provided a great tutorial on LTE. I wished there had been more time for her to get into the details.

The closing event was a keynote chat. Moderator Richard Schwartz of Openwave discussed operator perspectives on market changes and opportunities with John Donovan, CTO of AT&T. I got the distinct impression that Donovan wasn’t too enamored of the open movement. He did say the AT&T had been open at the application level since 2001, though.

AT&T is okay with openness, as long as it doesn’t hurt the network. Donovan also said that open to him means easy to use. He sees video driving the need for a faster Internet backbone, and AT&T is upgrading its network to 40 Gbits/s. He thought there was lots more life in HSPA technologies as well, meaning that LTE would come slower and later.

Erin Defosse of the Austin Wireless Alliance closed the meeting and invited everyone to the 2009 session, which will be in Austin next November. Overall, this Texas Wireless Summit made a first good attempt to define what open means. It is an elusive subject, even to those trying to implement it. It means different things to different parties. And, there are degrees of openness. At least the movement to more open systems is under way. Like much of the industry, companies are making it up as they go along.

• Austin Wireless Alliance
• Texas Wireless Summit

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