ATLANTA – The Wall Street Journal’s Walt Mossberg & AT&T’s Ralph de La Vega Opine about the “Future of Wireless” in New MITEF-Atlanta Broadcast
In a new online broadcast available through the MIT Enterprise Forum of Atlanta, you can learn about the future of wireless while laughing at some of the off-the-cuff remarks exchanged between the technology media’s most infamous pundit and the leader of the company that helped revolutionize the industry with its distribution of the iPhone.
During the show, Walt Mossberg, Personal Technology Columnist for the Wall Street Journal, questioned Ralph de la Vega, CEO of AT&T Mobility and Consumer Markets, about everything from dropped calls to AT&T’s partnership with Apple on the iPhone, to the future of the performance of wireless networks. The two were later joined by two entrepreneurs in the space who added color and additional perspective.
A Computer that Happens to Be a Phone Needs Simpler Solutions
Much of the discussion between Mossberg and de la Vega centered around AT&T’s exclusive partnership with Apple on the iPhone. Asked how the release of the iPhone has changed their business over the last 18 – 24 months, AT&T’s de la Vega responded that the iPhone has set the bar for the industry.
“We were not just talking about a phone. It’s really a computer that just so happens to also be a phone…It really changed the game.”
De la Vega explained that the iPhone helped AT&T realize that they needed to offer faster, better and also simpler solutions to consumers. Another surprise was discovering how people use these wireless devices.
While screen size and storage may not be as optimal as a PC, that doesn’t stop consumers from using their wireless devices to download applications, surf the Internet, download videos and perform other bandwidth-demanding tasks.
AT&T has invested in and continues to expand capacity and speed on the network in anticipation of consumers’ growing demands.
Asked about the exclusivity of their agreement, which forces iPhone users to select AT&T as their wireless carrier, de la Vega responded that the partnership has been a win-win for both companies and the consumers.
He said the partnership allowed Apple and AT&T to work together to focus on maximizing performance.
He also noted that AT&T was able to subsidize the iPhone in order to allow customers to access it at the $199 price point.
Mobile TV – US Still at Less Than 1.5 percent Adoption Rate
Following the one-on-one interview, Mossberg welcomed Philip Alvelda, founder of Mobi.tv and Joy Laskar, the Schlumberger Chair in Microelectronics in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Georgia Tech. After some tough love, the discussion turned to the experts’ predictions about the future of wireless and the factors driving wireless device usage here in the US.
Mossberg pressed Alvelda as to why Mobi.tv only has 4 million subscribers while there are 290 million wireless devices in the US.
“The phone companies started off as phone companies,” Alvelda said. “AT&T is blazing new paths with Apple in making the phone a device that does other things…That was a new thing when we began.”
Industry Future: Beam, Project, Game – Wirelessly
All panelists agreed that that the old mentality of using wireless devices exclusively for voice is changing and that consumers are greatly expanding their usage. Mossberg noted, “People are using these things like laptops.” And usage is expected to grow exponentially over the coming months and years.
Asked to paint a picture of the future of wireless, the panel described a myriad of futuristic functions. Laskar pointed out that mobile Internet usage will be driven by consumer demand for high-bandwidth and rich media.
“UTube today drives as much Internet traffic as the whole Internet did in 2000,” noted Laskar. He sees a day when smart phones will have seamless interconnectivity with other technologies in the home.
Wireless-HD technology will enable mobile devices with gigabits or terabits of storage capacity to stream video to a television screen in the home. Laskar’s new company, for example, will allow for the beaming of content and games wirelessly, from device-to-device at close range, projecting screens from applications on the phone onto TV screens at home.
Discussion then revolved around the transformation of the phone into a single source for identification and banking capabilities.
Loud applause emerged from the audience as Alvelda described that the thing he most missed using his iPhone was “cut and paste” functionality.
MITEF Atlanta hosted the panel with partners Atlanta Telecommunication Professionals and the Wireless Technology Forum.
The MIT Forum will host its next exciting event on February 12, 2009, featuring Charles Phillips, President of Oracle, as the keynote speaker. For more information, visit the MIT Enterprise Forum of Atlanta website at http://www.mitforum-atlanta.org/.
To view the complete broadcast of the MIT Forum’s Wireless event see: mms://mediam1.gpb.org/np/2008/MIT2008_FutureWireless.wmv.
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