The Internet is being extended to be accessible through wireless connectivity. Hundreds of millions of  wireless devices connect  through Wi-Fi access points  to cable or fibre, then on to the Internet. Telecom operators also provide mobile Internet access via HSPA, and will eventually provide it via LTE. Over the next 10 years or so, we will see oscillation of the world’s giant balancing scales measuring billions of wireless Internet users and billions of wired users.

“Open”  Mobility

Despite this growth and technological progress, the state of an open wireless Internet, free of charge, seems like a hard one to reach.  If  there are costs involved with providing a wireless Internet, they need to be amortized, and the business must be profitable. Currently, the business of wireless access to the Internet is run primarily by telecom operators, and by ISPs providing local area wireless connectivity. They have managed to establish some way of providing the service and keeping afloat in this economic whirlpool.  Some of the ways they have persevered are:  providing tiered or  flat rate pricing for limited data bandwidth and limited amount transferred plus fees for overage;  high prices for access, especially when roaming or in spots like airports, malls or hotels where a spatial monopoly can be arranged; and prohibiting certain services such as HTTP unless higher fees are paid; amortizing the costs of the mobile terminal across a two year contract with penalties for early withdrawl.  Pretty much all of these business models have been attacked as unreasonable, especially by Internet companies who are content and service providers. They have also been disparaged by the early adopters of mobile data devices, typically smartphone or laptop users who are traveling frequently. Even if the operators and ISP’s take steps to improve their rates or services, the damage has already been inflicted in the body of public opinion.

As the temperature rises on this simmering pot, there are additional ingredients thrown in that flavor the issue. One is  “any device on any network”.  The other is “any software on any device.”

Any Device on Any Network

The ‘any device’ issue has a direct relationship to the business model of amortizing a phone across a two year contract. Providers have been ‘locking’ their devices to prevent them from being used on other networks, ostensibly to cause greater charges and therefore earn more revenue. This practice didn’t have anything to do with Internet access from a phone, but still affects us just the same, now that phones are able to access the Internet.  It happens that the same network which provides our voice and SMS service also provides the Internet data service.  When a device was ‘locked’ it could only be used on the provider’s network.  As a minor side note, some operators have a policy where they don’t carry information or help users having trouble with phones other than those they provided.  Since there are over a hundred new models of phones in some years, operators cannot train staff on all those models. However, the ‘locking’ policy has been so despised that it is relatively immediate that a technique is developed for a phone to be unlocked once it has been released.  Some operators have taken to providing it as a service for an extra charge!

Any software on any device

For the most part, operating system software has not been a separately charged item, when delivered by the hardware platform vendor. That is primarily because Windows O/S has dominated the market of nomadic (laptop) and fixed (desktop) Internet devices as the add-on O/S,  making the computer useless to most consumers without it. We might expect users to create a lot of gravity to pull Windows applications onto mobile devices, given the existing bulk of content that is Windows specific, the existing number of braincells allocated to Windows application skills, and the coping mechanisms users have developed to deal with Windows difficulties. But wait…

Let’s take a step back for a minute, and look at the  evolution of the phone from a circuit switched, non-data device into a mobile hybrid computing and communications platform.  The phone originally handled its functions with very special purpose hardware and software, none of which was capable to run Windows O/S or applications.  As the processor and memory grew in capabilities, the phone could take on more computing tasks. This evolution happened separately from the PDA, where Windows was a better fit, and  first made strides into the mobile device space.  For various business reasons the PDA space could not compete with the phones as they evolved.

Now we have smartphones colliding with the Internet tablet, netbook, mobile Internet device, umpc, etc  in the “pocketsized” device space. The smartphone still has the advantage because it has the best communications capabilities, and because operator networks support for mobility is superior to other networks.  As we move computing applications onto the communications mobile hardware platforms, there is another possibility for a de facto standard O/S to emerge.  So finally, this is where we come to the issue of any software on any device. Operators have been hoping to create a market for their own variations of software on the mobile devices.  Smartphone vendors are also devloping applications for their platforms. There has been tension between the operators and the phone providers on this issue. Now enter some relatively new players, such as RIM, Apple, Google, and open source mobile platforms. Oh, did we forget Windows Mobile? That’s right we did. Because the applications for the mobile device have been communications applications such as voice, email, SMS, and lately web browsing, none of which contain Windows proprietary formats or applications, the mobile device platforms have been able to develop separately, and the O/S with them.  So the providers of mobile device O/S’s are vying for domination in this space. Let’s see if the lessons of the evolution of Windows as the 90% marketshare leader in O/S apply again in this new ‘race.’

There was also discussion of TCP and higher layer mobility. Also MOBIKE. Perhaps the ideal would be if IP address change didn’t matter at all. SHIM6 and other efforts both standardized and proprietary have been made. Is there room for anything else? Is there something wrong with every solution? No security, too much security, slow handover, triangular routing… there seems to be complaints against all the solutions.

As an escape, or a way to make something, anything, work… application vendors including M$FT seem to be hand coding each application with Application Level Mobility. This has benefits even in the presence of lower layer mobility solutions, so it’s not bad, just platform and even application specific.

Maybe we can still come up with something else…

First, let’s look at what we mean by ‘mobile’ There are some generally agreed ranges of mobility. Something like moving around the apartment or your average sized house is often called portability, but does count as mobile. Then there’s lugging a laptop with the screen open down the hall or across the quad, or walking into a wall, a tree, or falling down a staircase while operating your Nokia 800 series. This is called nomadic, where we sit for a bit, move to the next class or meeting, then sit for a bit more. Then there’s walking or running or even riding a bike a ‘long’ distance… that’s pedestrian mobility. Then there’s driving a car, riding a train, or riding in a plane, which is high speed mobility. So the entire range of mobility is lumped together when tallying mobile Internet devices.

Second, what do we mean by ‘dominated’. Well, one idea might be simply the largest raw number. Another might be aggregate bandwidth being used by the mobile class of devices. Another might be the number of actively used IPv4 or IPv6 addresses (regardless if they are NATed or not) Still another might be the class of Internet device yielding the greatest revenue to all access providers. Domination could be defined by the class of device placing the largest demands on the Internet, or the class producing the most traffic, most flows and so on.

Also, when we say dominated, do we mean a condition that remains true once reached? That is, could the mobile device dominate the Internet at one point in time, then loose ground to fixed devices again?

Some predictions by Googlaureats back in early naughties pegged the number of MIDs (mobile Internet devices) to cross the wired already by now… or at least by 2010. So why hasn’t it happened yet?

As China starts to ramp up, it has created a significant factor in this equation. Also, the high price of a vacation to Europe with the iPhone switched on has slowed things down a bit. Ok, to be a little teensy bit more fair, data roaming plans are not yet cheap on any phone. For example going back to the China connection, wired access is much more affordable. And don’t you love these plans that say ‘unlimited data’ but really mean ‘unlimited only if you are not serious about your Internet use.’ Speaking of serious, the industry is still working on getting wireless speeds up to the point where it’s not noticeable if you are wired or wireless. So there are some of the many reasons why MIDs aren’t yet dominating.