Mobile at a distance
@ Keskiviikko, 15. Maalis, 2006 - 11:02:15
Very few technological innovations have penetrated the market so effectively or as fast as mobile telephony. Today, at least in Europe, there is little correlation between mobile phone ownership, nationality, income or education. The number of mobile phone owners is growing continuously creating a vast potential market for mobile services in general.
There are attempts to provides an extended look at the future of mobile work and mobile workplaces composed from the collective knowledge of experts available in the field.
They are results from iterative, highly interactive and strategic processes involving the relevant industry, research and policy partners. They have been looking at and identified the most relevant trends & developments in society, industry and technology related to mobile work and mobile workplaces.
The result is an integrated roadmap for mobile work that visualizes future strategic paths: what are the most relevant trends, developments and challenges as well as the associated milestones (in terms of core competencies and technologies) to accelerate innovation in mobile worker support environments in Europe.
The roadmap focusses on different aspects of mobile work and workplaces:
• Social aspects
• Legal aspects
• Mobility and work settings
• Mobile applications
• Human interaction with mobile applications,
• Mobile service platforms and context-awareness support, and
• Mobile access technology.
We have been involved for years in processes trying to understand the possibilities of distance work, social collaboration and expert level networking on a global scale.
Year 2004 did lead to the introduction in Europe of 3G mobile phones based on UMTS technology. The "Universal Mobile Telecommunications System" (UMTS) is a “third generation” cellular communication system that builds on the “second generation” GSM standard.
UMTS has been standardized by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI). As well as offering voice telephony, UMTS offers a range of innovative services that it is impossible to provide over current-generation GSM networks, in particular IP-based multimedia data services, video-telephony and mobile videoconferencing.
Wi-Fi (wireless fidelity) is a logo, created by the "Wi-Fi Alliance", which guarantees that a radio device is compatible with the IEEE 802.11b or IEEE 802.11g wireless Ethernet standards.
Standardization has made it possible to create extremely low cost equipment both for terminals (where Wi-Fi capabilities can be provided on-chip) and for access stations. IEEE 802.11g standard supports data rates of up to 54 Mb/s over ranges of 100-300
metres.
This means that Wi-Fi technology can be used not only to create wireless local area networks (e.g. on university campuses, in the office or at home) but also so-called hot spots, providing mobile workers with an easy way to connect to the Internet from locations such as airports, hotels, hotels, Internet points and conference centres.
Wi-Fi is almost certainly the fastest growing commercial telecommunications technology today. At the end of 2003, the number of publicly accessible Wi-Fi "hot spots," worldwide amounted to roughly 45,000, compared to 20,000 at the end of 2002. Just over 24,000 of those were in Asia, with slightly over 10,000 each in Europe and North America. Pyramid Research estimated that, by early 2005, the number of global hot spots will exceed 100,000.
Although most European regulators restrict the provision of Wi-Fi services in public spaces, emerging practices in the USA and Canada demonstrate that Wi-Fi can be used as the basis for “Community networks” providing free or very low cost public access to the
Internet.
Similar technologies are being deployed in office spaces and university campuses worldwide. This makes Wi-Fi an ideal technology for mobile learning.
No comments:
Post a Comment