While many carriers don’t like the idea of open anything, it’s an evolution that is far from threatening for them, as new applications drive data revenue and traffic for service providers. “If we build this and it takes off, it’s a whole new market for goods, services, the long tail — you end up making money not because you have a big piece of the cake, but because the cake is just huge,” explains Tim Berners-Lee, director of the World Wide Web Consortium, in his keynote address at November’s inaugural Mobile Internet World (MIW), which drew close to 2,000 attendees.
Rich Miner, vice president of wireless strategy at Google, said during a lunch discussion at MIW that an open approach still leaves carriers plenty of real estate and opportunities for differentiation, particularly in management and customer care. Trying to judge the gestalt to stay ahead of what consumers want, however, is a losing proposition. “About 80 percent of the content you want is never going to be the pre-edited content that’s available on the handset,” he noted. “So the goal now is taking this message of openness and making it heard and accepted.”
The possibilities are exponential. “There will be a huge number of applications that we can’t even imagine now,” said Berners-Lee. “This may provide a way for scientists to remotely collaborate on curing AIDS or cancer. We must provide a blank sheet of paper [referring to the need for non-carrier-locked open access], because what is built on top of the Internet is far more important than the Internet itself.” Later he added, “No one knows what will take off — but the opportunity for someone to come along with a bright idea to create the next Amazon.com, Skype or iTunes — that’s powerful, and a rich new vein for innovation.”
Berners-Lee also speculated that a pervasive Internet cloud will allow the manipulation of content in new ways. As more pixel screens are deployed in any number of settings, the possibility arises for running content seamlessly between the television, PC, phone, the tops of taxi cabs, pixelboards in Times Square, screens at restaurants, and so on. A rental model for screens could arise, with the ability to pull content over the air to wherever you need it to be, for instance. It could make the loading of PowerPoint presentations at conferences, for example, much easier.
