Mobile Topics

I’ve spent a lot of time supporting; watching and monitoring operators roll out a variety of programs and services lately – new app stores, new networks, APIs, new and improved developer programs.  It got me thinking:  Is 99.999% (.99999) or ‘five-nines’ an outdated goal for operators?  I think it might be.

Five-nines is the standard for measuring the network availability, which is pretty close to always on, never down.  It equates to about 5 minutes and 15 seconds of downtime per year.  According to Tomi Ahonenand some banter we had on twitter this week:  “mobile phone network serving millions cannot go down for half a minute per year, unacceptable.. hence five nines needed”.

The fact is a network down or a dropped call is already a reality.  Rogers was down for an afternoon in Vancouver last week; and if you travel to London, New York, San Francisco you expect to have a few calls that won’t connect; and SMSs that go nowhere.   Interestingly, consumers have already accepted...

I had the pleasure of being asked to speak again to the NGMN Industry Conference, this one was held in Shanghai from June 2-4, 2010 at the Shanghai World Financial Center.  The last conference was held in June of 2008 in Frankfurt.  Both times I was asked to bring the developer perspective.

For those who don't know, the NGMN or Next Generation in Mobile Networks is one of the most significant organizations in our industry.  Their mission is to: to complement and support the work within standardisation bodies by providing a coherent view of what the operator community is going to require in the decade beyond 2010.   It is a C-suite group that decided that LTE IS the next generation mobile network the industry will use.  I am always flattered to get the opportunity to present to this group, which also included presentations by the likes of Jianzhou Wang, Chairman and CEO, China Mobile.  I am also impressed that they have made the effort to think about the developer perspective at...