Inflikt

Introduction

Imagine a situation where you are about to make an important
Sales Presentation. You realize that you have brought the wrong
presentation slides and you call up your colleague. She
immediately emails the file to your 3G terminal and you transfer
it to your laptop. Another scenario is having video-conferencing
and sending character-based messages simultaneously with your
clients. With 3G, the possibilities for wireless applications
are numerous. For instance, imagine calling up a map in your
car, conducting a video conference over wireless phones,
checking e-mails, and browsing the web - wirelessly.

3G Defined

3G stands for the third generation of wireless communication
technology and the industry direction are to raise speeds from
9.5K to 2M bit/sec. According to 3gnewsroom.com, devices will
fall into four categories. The first category includes the basic
3G phones will be used mainly for talking and will store all
their information on the network. The second category will
support video-streaming, and will provide the user with news and
web content. More sophisticated models will be information
centres which let users download information from the Internet
and store data on the device.

A recent initiative by four leading handset
manufacturers-Ericsson, Motorola, Nokia and Siemens-plus the
messaging companies CMG, Comverse and Logica was motivated by
the launch of 3G. The companies hope to create awareness and
foster development of multimedia messaging service (MMS) by
making audio, video, photographs and other images to accessible
to handsets.

3G and the Growth of the Wireless Mobile Market

The wireless mobile market is set to explode and this will
provide fresh graduates with exciting job opportunities.
According to Will Daugherty’s The Growth of Wireless Mobile in
Business 2.0, there will be 3 waves of mobile data services. The
first wave is linked wireless access to existing information and
data applications. The current second wave takes advantage of
wireless-specific functionality. The third wave will bring rich
graphics, video, real-time multiplayer games.

Don Tapscott has been quoted “Mobile commerce is the next
stage of e-commerce, where we have the integration of the
physical world with the digital world…What we ‘re talking here
is the beginning of pervasive and ubiquitous computing where
billions and billions of inert objects become Internet
appliances - enabling the sharing of knowledge and the delivery
of a vast new array of services.”

Need more convincing and statistics?

According to the findings in Wireless Portals: the Information
Gateway to the Wireless User, by the end of 2006 there will be
close to 1 billion wireless portal users worldwide. The bulk of
these users will be wireless voice users, WAP users, 2.5G and 3G
subscribers, and other wireless device users such as those using
PDAs. Multi-modal users worldwide will stand close to 282
million in 2006.

The Reaction of 3G in America

The importance of 3G technology can also be gauged by the stance
of the National Telecommunications and Information
Administration (NTIA), an agency of the U.S. Department of
Commerce, which is the Executive Branch’s principal voice on
domestic and international telecommunications and information
technology issues. NTIA recently published a report entitled
“WIRELESS” INTERNET: What the 3G Challenge Means for U.S.
Competitiveness where it insisted that 3G is important for the
future of America’s global competitiveness amongst other things
and that the Europeans and Asians view 3G development as their
golden opportunity to beat the United States’ in the area of
telecommunications and ecommerce. The report also went further
to state that the US will remain two years behind many Asian and
European countries on 3G services.

In contrast in another report entitled “Can U.S. Wireless Firms
Ride Business Applications to Global Leadership?,” Summit
Strategies Practice Director Warren Wilson argues U.S. vendors
and service providers stand to win the strategic high ground,
first in their home markets and then internationally. “Japan and
Europe are leading the way in consumer-focused wireless
applications, but business applications will drive U.S.
markets,” Wilson says. “North American vendors and service
providers that correctly gauge which business applications to
offer, and the development and deployment models that serve
customers best cannot only catch up to global competitors, but
even turn the tables and claim leadership roles in wireless
data. It won’t be easy, but it’s far from impossible.”

The importance of 3G and Wireless collaboration with the US has
not been lost with NTT DoCoMo which understands that in order to
move towards 3G, it must persuade other carriers to follow suit.
DoCoMo’s USD$10bn investment in AT&T Wireless came with the
agreement that AT&T transferred towards W-CDMA.

I will highlight some promises provided by 3G Technology:

1)3G and Workplace Dynamics

3G Technology is an enabler of the development of the Wearable
Computing Industry. The WearTel (TM) phone, for example, uses
EyeTap technology to allow individuals to see each other’s point
of view. Therefore, the miniature laser light source inside the
WearTel eyeglass-based phone scans across the retinas of both
parties and swaps the image information, so that each person
sees what the other person is looking at.

This technology will enable the HR manager to have a better
understanding of how to motivate and reward their employees as
personal documentaries of their work-life will be shot from a
first-person perspective. HR managers can provide better advice
about handling difficult customers or closing sales. However,
the immediate benefit is that this technology can be used as a
training tool. The reason is that privacy laws have to be
reviewed and updated in order that customers are adequately
informed of this technology

2)3G and Mobile Job Interviewing

With an attached camera in a mobile device, job interviews can
be conducted as video-conferencing between the HR manager and
the potential job applicant. Initially, the job candidate can
answer basic questions like his highest qualification and salary
expectation by pressing the key-pad of the mobile device. If
successful, he can proceed to have a face-to-face interview.

3)3G and Mobile Advertising

3G technology will enable advertisers to send more sophisticated
and customized permission-based advertisements to their target
audience’s mobile devices. This will be an improvement from the
current SMS. There will be a convergence between the internet
and wireless technology as the target audience can request that
more product information be sent as email. It is unlikely that
these services will provide a sustainable advantage over the
long run but they will shape the brand perception of an operator
at the initial stage of the introduction of wireless Internet
services.

However, with the rise of m-commerce, ‘business-webs ‘will
become even more powerful as every customer will become linked
into the web. According to Keith Shank of Ericsson, wireline
operators will have to find a way to integrate with wireless by
providing a package of combined service capabilities and
transparent coverage. Demanding consumers will want convergence
of wireline, wireless and data services.

4)From E-Learning to M-Learning

The future holds a lot of promise for the E-Learning Industry.
Martyn Sloman, author of The e-learning revolution has been
quoted as saying “The pace of change in the global economy and
advances in communications technology means that there is no
debate about whether e-learning is the future or not. It clearly
is. Latest assessments indicate that competitive organisations
will soon be delivering up to a fifth of their training through
the Internet, intranets or the web.”

With the greater acceptance of e-learning, mobile learning
(m-learning) will be thrive. An example of how 3G can power
m-learning is when a student who may be late for a lecture can
view the entire proceedings through the screen of a mobile
device. It is also not far-fetched idea that the same student
can even sit for a test by entering a password through the
mobile device.

Challenges Ahead

Privacy is a huge question as in the case of m-commerce, each of
us will leave a trail of “digital crumbs”. With the increasing
likelihood of a convergence between the net and wireless
technology in many facets of social and business interactions,
each of us will leave a mirror image of ourselves as we travel
around.

Another problem that is highlighted by Eric Schonfeld of
eCompany is getting developers interested in creating the
applications that 3G phones can run. Currently developers tend
to ignore markets with fewer than 1 million customers and
concurrently, demanding customers insist that 3G phones should
have lots of new applications to hold their attention.

Lastly, as sourced from the University of California’s Berkeley
School of Information Management and System (SIMS) report “How
Much Information?” Professors Hal Varian and Peter Lyman
analysed industry and governmental reports for production of
information in terms of paper, film, optical and magnetic data.
Among some of their findings:

The direct accessible “surface” Web consists of about 2.5bn
documents and is growing at a rate of 7.3m pages per day.

Counting the “surface” Web with the “deep” Web of connected
databases, intranet sites and dynamic pages, there are about
550bn documents, and 95% is publicly accessible.

These findings show that we are already taking in a lot of
information even before the introduction of wireless
communication through 3G. Will there be further information
overload or will mobile devices help us manage our daily affairs
better?

The concluding 2 sections will provide some pointers:

1)Towards An Information Society

In the Foresight Project, an initiative led by New Zealand’s
Ministry of Research, Science and Technology has stated that in
an information society, individuals who are well-educated,
self-motivated, and linked into information networks, are the
most likely to live prosperous and fulfilling lives. Enterprises
that are attuned to their customers’ requirements, employ
educated workers, encourage innovation through their workplace
organization and, and know more and learn faster than their
competitors, are the most likely to succeed and grow.

Reinforcing this point, according to Peter Drucker, there is the
discipline of innovation. This is translated into having a clear
mission and defining the measurement of results. In the event
that there are no results, the organization should abandon the
idea and then continue to seek for new and unique opportunities.

2)Future Challenges of a Knowledge-Economy

According to Dr Johari Mat, Secretary General Ministry of
Education (Malaysia) at the First SEAMEO Education Congress, a
Knowledge Economy Index developed using selected key elements
required to drive a K-economy such as computer infrastructure,
infrastructure, education and training, research and development
and technology shows that most countries in this region lag
behind developed and newly industrialized countries in terms of
readiness to become a K-economy. For instance, the Knowledge
Economy Index is 3877 for Singapore, 2460 for Malaysia, 1705 for
Indonesia, and 1648 for Thailand while the Index is 6650 for
USA, 5908 for Japan, 4901 for Australia, 4686 for UK, and 3912
for Korea, thus, to make a transition to the K-economy,
countries in this region face the daunting task of putting in
place and strengthening the core elements required to support
the K-economy. Efforts need to be accelerated in the priority
areas of human resource development, science and technology,
research and development (R&D), ICT, and lifelong learning.

To conclude, 3G is definitely here to stay despite the early
glitches. The opportunity of being truly wireless and mobile is
just too enticing.