The 'U' word: is it fundamentally in the interest of the networking community to develop an all-things-to-all-men approach?

Semantics (as much as anything else) seems to drive innovation these days. State something, and hey presto, you might just have a major concept. Thinking along these lines, I recently discovered 'Ubiquitous Networking'. Now, there's a word: unusually, it has three 'u's, although, come to think of it, so does 'unusually'. But spelling of strange English words apart, it may be an unwieldy word for a clever concept. Ubiquitous networking brings together just about everything and anything the user could possibly want telecom-wise everywhere--a true Internet of everything.

On this model, all applications should be portable to any device, any user, in any location. It essentially brings together computing and networking, mobility, and mixes with broadband, entertainment, and somewhere in there are microscopic devices capable of giving 'things' intelligence.

Does this all-embracing concept drive a new potential business model for the industry? Perhaps. But it does tend to lump technologies and behaviours that may have quite different positioning and origins. Take wireless, for example. Under ubiquitous networking, mobile cellular and everything else without wires is simply seen as part of a continuum, regardless of technical or application specifications like bandwidth, range, power, and so on.

Now this is interesting because I suspect most of the corporate drivers for these do not see themselves in co-existence, particularly when it comes to getting revenues from these things. Rather, they see themselves as dominating a niche in its entirety and maybe even competitively displacing other activities. And herein lies a problem. Is it fundamentally in the interest of the networking community to develop an all-things-to-all-men approach?

Deliverability--another interesting word--is also an arguable point. Past efforts in this direction do not fill one with unbridled optimism, although (to be fair) were on a much more modest and limited scale. We seem to be having some difficulty with convergence--another curious if now overplayed word. I've never even used unified messaging, but maybe I'm nor a good consumer.

Rationally, you might indeed expect that individual stuff does 'want' to relate to each other in some sense. Indeed the radio spectrum itself represents some sort of continuum on which to base this. But in my view, we need to be thinking about scale along with flexibility and simplification. This means that it has to be both manageable and cheap, a tall order in the telecom industry. Even the proponents of this sort of concept acknowledge that it has to be sensibly motivated by business models that make sense. And it's the business mode aspect that raises most questions: these capabilities if they are tariffed at all, are tariffed in very different ways to each other Expect an economic dislocation sometime soon.

Ubiquity of access throws up some knotty policy problems There is already intense focus about possible invasions of privacy, being driven by the likes of RFID The industry is clearly watching carefully To see if the consumer ends up hostile and supersensitised by tagging issues. Computer users seem to accept spyware and cookies without too much complaint, but visible physical tagging and scare stories might throw some unexpected and difficult curves

Still, we're making progress: awareness of possible public as well as business issues shows the industry is trying To grapple with the bigger picture--and that's probably a First in itself. And, in the end, to crudely paraphrase Churchill, we'll probably get the right solution after trying all the wrong ones. But meanwhile, to be cynical--yet another good word in this industry--I've got a sneaking suspicion that we'll be using those separate, highly non-U devices for sometime yet. Irritatingly, markets would be just fine if it wasn't for those pesky consumers, wouldn't they?

Stephen McClelland, editorial director, Telecommunications[R] International

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