NEWS
In an enterprise context, says Edholm, this would mean 'application transparency' - or "that all of a sudden, regardless of where I am, I can have the same applications whether I'm in a nomadic location or not".
Wireless from A to Z
Click on the links below to find out more…
A is for Antivirus
B is for Bluetooth
C is for The Cloud
D is for dotMobi
E is for Email
F is for FMC
G is for GPS
H is for HSDPA
I is for i-mode
J is for Japan Air
K is for Korea
L is for LBS
M is for M2M
N is for NFC
O is for Operating systems
P is for Pubs
Q is for QoS
R is for Roaming
S is for Satellite
T is for TV
U is for UMTS
V is for Virgin
W is for WiMax
X is for XDA
Y is for Yucca
Z is for Zigbee
He told silicon.com: "In the enterprise world the big reason/driver why we'll go to WiMax is this application transparency... And that has huge impact on business. Because all of a sudden where you do business is no longer constrained."
But while being able to push work beyond the four walls of the office will offer enterprises new - and potentially lucrative - opportunities for doing business, it does present other challenges. As Edholm points out: "As people become less and less tethered to a location, finding the right person at the right time to do a business function is going to become critical."
Bringing comms and applications together to give an intelligent view of the status of a disparate workforce will therefore be increasingly important - factors such as a person's availability, location and even their velocity. For instance, he points out, if you're driving a car, you probably don't want to get a video call.
He added: "Information and interaction are coming together and it's not going to be information technology it's going to be information and interaction technology in a few years."
Gazing a little closer into the future, the next generation of wireless LAN tech - 802.11n - may be able to cut dependency on cables within buildings. Edholm said: "We think we can actually generate by 2010/2011, the capacity of building buildings without wires - which means regardless of where you are within the building you're going to get the same experience."
He added: "The interesting question is when does the 4G network provide you the same experience virtually everywhere?"
And that's a question of infrastructure investment - which is of course the biggest challenge.
Comments
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1. Martin Lukes
Yeah, right. If you're talking about basic level jobs, sure. But how are you going to get promotion in British companies if you don't suck up to your boss, get in earlier and go home later?
Lukes's Law says: Promotion is in negative proportion to technical competence and in direct proportion to sycophancy.
Try that with your boss from home and see how far you get.
2. anonymous
Duhhh! Given decent bandwidth (which he predicts!) why am I going to "walk" up to a virtual person and deal with them when I could just use desktop to desktop video using my webcam or even mobile phone camera and talk to a real person???
Oh yes, because the "virtual person" will really be an AI program that will understand and answer my questions, finally routing me to a real person when it fails to satisfy me! In your dreams! If I'm dealing with some AI based FAQ - why does it need to have the added complexity of pretending to be a person?
What is this person smoking??
3. Roger Huffadine
This looks like a big a pile of bullshit as the paperless office of the 1970s.
Economics will dictate that most of this never happens.
Mobiles capable of making video calls have been around for 5 years so where are the video call centres? Uh, nowhere - not because of the lack of technology but because of economics, infrastructure weakness and social preferences.
Now although we have mobiles capable of speech & video people often prefer to use text and shorthand to communicate.
I really can't see all this 2nd World being 2 mch of a suxess
4. anonymous
This make work in northwestern europe or USA, where personal interaction is less important than in other cultures.
5. anonymous
"This make work in northwestern europe or USA, where personal interaction is less important than in other cultures."
I think not! I deal a lot with a very technologically competent company that already uses remote working, online collaboration etc. - or at least tries to - in precisely those geographies. The one consistent comment people make is that they lack face to face interaction.
It is going to take a LONG time for this type of thing to become common and accepted - if ever! Bear in mind that "virtual worlds" have actually been around at least since 1996 when I remember demonstrating them at public events. That's 12 years so far and, for all the hype, they are hardly mainstream. "number of members" is a world of difference from "number of unique, regular users"!
Totally agree with the analogy to the "paperless office". I was around when that "arrived" and one of the sceptics who doubted it would truly occur. Instead we generate more stuff faster and turn lots of it into paper. Whatever, it has probably had a negative effect on the quality of communication!