Socio-Technical Evolution

Once passed the 3GSM World Congress, I had to think deep on the (near) future of the sector evolution. One of the main conclusions I got from this deep thoughts (Not deep throats XD) was that technology has a "natural" evolution that mainly goes in the line of Citius, Altius, Fortius, i.e. Further, higher, stronger. That's the way Personal Computers have evolved in the past decades and almost all the digital technologies, more powerful processors, bigger space, broader network connections... In a different particular way, Mobile Technology does it in two dimensions. One is that called "natural" but also in another one, called Versatility or Conceptual, that is more related with the multi-purpose objectives cellular telephones are used nowadays, i.e. MP3 players, camera, mailbox, payment tokens... this continous "re-inventing" is really characteristic of this technology not by its nature, that also appears in other industries-areas of technical development, but for its strength in the technology and importance in present society. Cell phones have become a personal companion almost indispensable from the early times it was a simple telephone to be used in the car.

Mobile phones are condemned to become the personal token for communication, but also as a wallet, home and card keys, information and document library... almost any use we give to anything we carry along with us in the present times.

It's interesting how the MSc. has changed my views of technology and its evolutions. Also in relation to society is changed my view point. It has professionalized my analysis and gave me a way to underpin systematically every contact I have with the technological world.

Convergence

A lot has been written, and advertised, on convergence in the last times. Convergence has multiple meanings, as the disambiguation page at wikipedia shows, but in this "2.0" world we are living today sometimes concepts must have a fuzzy meaning and be ambiguos to be successful.

From the marketing department point of view convergence is the possibility to offer one bill for all the services. That provides the company with the possibility to offer bundle offers like TV-Phone Calls-Internet and try to get a bigger market share. And is share the important issue in a mature market where there is a huge penetration and customer figures can not be increased just through new adopters of the technology.

To achieve this goal of convergence, strategical issues arise. For instance, one can not become a just product aggregator because margins in mature technologies are really low and corporate image depends on the QoS (Quality of Service) offered to the customer and it depends a lot on the control one has over the production. Because that we have seen a lot of fusions and aquisitions in the recent times. That is what convergence is for the board of the company.

For the content provider convergence is the possibility to produce a content and deliver it over any platform available. This is the dream of developing a game, produce information or entertainment content and reach the widest audience possible, even if is accessing through a mobile device or a living-room TV instead of a desktop computer.

From the technical point of view, convergence has to do with Technological Convergence, e.g. how different solutions are integrated to act as only one, or at least to seem as only one. We are talking on VoIP as a high level layer over heterogenic networks, or other kind of protocols used to give independence of the carrier in service offering.

Finally, convergence from the researcher and developer point of view is a dark concept that has not to do with any of the physical realities he or she faces every day but with a way of planning, designing and deploying the final product. It is hard to realize of this reality and one must have in mind the multiples meanings of the word when using it in this environment.

As an image is worth a thousand words, some links on telecomunications convergence:

Vodafone crea una división de convergencia móvil-IP
UMA, Motor de Convergencia
Microsoft y Vodafone colaboran en la convergencia de la informática y las telecomunicaciones. Trabajan en la estandarización de servicios web para móviles
Convergencia de medios
Convergencia, guerra por el paquete
Telefónica lidera convergencia de redes con el nodo doméstico
AGENDA FORO IBEROAMERICANO DE CONVERGENCIA
Convergencia...¿qué es la convergencia? (1)