The ‘Negroponte Switch’ rightly describes the interchange of roles that wireless and wired connectivity play as mobility in telephony takes the center stage today. As a consequence, telephony has gone mobile and is using radio bandwidth that was hitherto used for wireless television broadcasts. As the focus moves from voice to data, the mobile radio networks get crowded with high demand for the already scarce bandwidth and hence the switch has thrown up enormous challenges for AT&T and other carriers across the world.
John Donovon, the Chief Technology Officer of AT&T, talks to Tim O’Reilly, the founder and CEO of O’Reilly Media, about mobile networks in the recently held Web 2.0 summit. They discuss the role and evolution of mobile networks in the ever changing landscape of mobile devices. The advent of smartphones and the software ecosystems around them that develop data hungry applications has led to a steep surge in demand for mobile data in recent years. As networks improve capacity by upgrading from 3G to 4G, the demand for data also continues to grow with VoIP based applications and video calling achieving widespread adoption.
The perennial debate on net neutrality and network congestion management gets only louder as the ecosystem turns complex with multiple stakeholders like device manufactures, network operators and third party application developers competing for their fair share of the available bandwidth. Notwithstanding the challenges, the changes in the mobile industry in recent years have opened new avenues like carrier billing for revenue sharing among carriers and handset vendors.
Donovon also talks to Tim about the importance of research and the work at AT&T Labs. He discusses evolving concepts like NFC (Near Field Communication) and Mobile Wallets, and why they require collaboration among carriers for making seamless interoperability and scaling possible.
John Donovan is chief technology officer for AT&T. He previously was the executive vice president of product, sales, marketing and operations at VeriSign, Inc., a technology company that provides Internet infrastructure services. Prior to joining VeriSign, he was the chairman and CEO of inCode Telecom Group Inc. and was a partner with Deloitte Consulting, where he was the Americas Industry Practice director for telecom. He is chairman of the board of the Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions (ATIS) and is a director on the board of The Wholesale Applications Community (WAC). He has co-authored two books, "The Value Enterprise," published in January 1998, and "Value Creating Growth," published in 1999. Donovan received a B.S.E.E. from the University of Notre Dame and earned an M.B.A. in finance from the University of Minnesota.
Tim O’Reilly is the founder and CEO of O’Reilly Media, Inc., one of the well-known computer book publishers in the world. O’Reilly Media also hosts conferences on technology topics, including the O’Reilly Open Source Convention, the Web 2.0 Summit, Strata: The Business of Data, and many others. O’Reilly’s Make: magazine and Maker Faire has been compared to the West Coast Computer Faire, which launched the personal computer revolution. Tim’s blog, O’Reilly Radar, “watches the alpha geeks” to determine emerging technology trends, and serves as a platform for advocacy about issues of importance to the technical community. Tim is also a partner at O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures, O’Reilly’s early stage venture firm, and is on the board of Safari Books Online.
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