If we had to bet on just one of these three platforms surviving as the strategic mobility platform for businesses, we'd bet on direct successors of 3G. The rationale: Cellular carriers are the incumbents, and it's always difficult to unseat an incumbent. Competitors will need to offer better service or better value.
The good news is, it's highly likely that more than one of these technologies, and perhaps all three, will survive, maybe even prosper. Demand for mobile data services will increase rapidly in the next five years, and technical breakthroughs may let engineers overcome many limitations. This will increase market competition and lower costs, though our appetite for bandwidth may mean that we'll pay more for services. IT managers projecting that the slice of their budget spent on wide-area wireless services will diminish in coming years will probably be disappointed.
Monday Morning Quarterback
MOBILE & WIRELESS
Looking back on our projections from last year's Survivor Guide, we don't feel ourselves blushing too red. Yes, we were probably a bit too optimistic about the growth of enterprise Wi-Fi and the prospects for wireless VoIP and 802.11n, but there's little question that the proportion of enterprises thinking about Wi-Fi in strategic rather than tactical terms increased. Outside the protected walls of the enterprise, where unlicensed spectrum reigns, we predicted aggressive build-out of 3G services by all the major carriers. Sprint has been more aggressive than its competitors, but, combined, the providers have spent billions for system upgrades and new spectrum.
Pending 6GHz spectrum availability, faster speeds, and private wireless access use drive FWA forward.
The new HPE Aruba 730 series Wi-Fi 7 access points tout high performance, enhanced security, location tracking capabilities, and more.
Verizon is demoing crowd analytics technology that uses 5G along with AI and mobile edge computing to give stadium operators insights into the flow of fans throughout a venue.
