Christian Oliver’s digital thoughts

Yesterday I went to the MIT Forum’s Future of Wireless Event.

The audience was mostly suits from the telecommunications industry and the usual Atlanta networking crowd.

The forum itself was very TV like since it was being transmitted live to 26 other locations around the US.

Here are some of my notes. Nothing really groundbreaking or new was said though.

According to De La Vega, AT&T Invested an additional $500M in the 3G network just to compensate for the increased expectation of demand due to the release of the iPhone 3G.

RDLV: “We’re the one subsidizing the iPhone to really get it to the masses”. On why AT&T deserves part of the credit for the iPhone’s success.

On wireless bandwidth: Todays technology can go up to 14.4 MPBS. Already purchased the spectum for 4G. Will use LTE which can go to up to 100 MBPS.

Average per user bandwidth usage is decreasing as mass market adoption of the iPhone increases. First adopters had higher per user bandwidth usage.

World is drifting to LTE although some are stickin to Wimax.

Verizon is also going to LTE.

At AT&T 3G is being lunched also on 850mhz spectrum to improve the reach.

RDLV on Wifi: believe that Wifi is the unifiying force. Just purchased Wayport. Idea is to allow users to switch seamlessly from cellphone data to WiFi.

RDLV: Close to 290 million phones in the US

A whole world of machine to machine communications is comming. Sensor that allow them to know where they are and when to interact with each other. RDLV

RDLV: Would start a company to help devices network with each other and become temporary peripherals.

Many opportunities in emerging markets.

Retail channels are becoming “experience stores”, what they can’t get online.

Loopt is the killer app according to RDLV but Loopt+Twitter would be even better.

Yesterday I received my new MacBook. It’s meant to replace the MacBook Pro I’ve had for more than 2 years now. It’s not that that MacBook Pro really needed replacing as it works great. I’m most surprised at how long I was able to keep my old MacBook Pro and how well it still performs. That NEVER happened to me while I used Windows based PCs. I think my record for keeping a laptop might have been a year and a half at MOST.

I’m still impressed at how quickly one can be operational on a new Mac. It would normally take me days to have a Windows machine fully operational with all my software and settings properly adjusted.

Here are some pictures of my unboxing and I placed a video in YouTube which has been surprisingly commented. Watch it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VU73tOt4GHY

Yesterday was the release of Google’s first Android based phone, better known as the G1. The hardware is from HTC and it is tied to T-Mobile in the US. True availability will be by the end of October.

I was excited about this but now I must admit I’m a bit disappointed. The G1 is no iPhone killer, at least not as it is now. I get the feeling Google and T-Mobile rushed into releasing something but it’s flaws could really hurt it’s long term prospects.

To me the main flaws are:

- No standard headphone jack! If people complained about the original iPhone’s recessed headphone jack, imagine how absurd it is to not even have a true headphone jack. I guess this phone decided not to be an iPod. But then why build an Amazon MP3 store into it?

- No video playback whatsoever. The argument is that third party developers will create this soon but come on!

- No built-in storage. You HAVE to have a MicroSD card to store anything on the phone. So, don’t forget to buy one at the time of purchase or you won’t be able to do much with the G1.

- No desktop synching options. Again, supposed to be developed by third parties. To make things worse, there is no Exchange support either. So, you are forced to live with Google Apps, which is not that bad but having no alternatives is not good enough.

- As restricted as the iPhone in terms of modem tethering.

There are many other smaller details and certainly there are good things about it. Most of all, it’s Open Source which promises a lot for the future. Nevertheless, I’m sure the adoption rates won’t be even near those of the iPhone, after all, I haven’t even talked about the cool factor.

The question is, how difficult is it to port apps from the iPhone to Android and vice versa. Right now it’s clear that if you are a mobile developer, developing for the iPhone should be the wisest business decision.