Creative Connectivity

ZigBee and the evil radios

Ten years ago, Bluetooth, 802.11 and HomeRF were engaged in an acrimonious battle for supremacy over leadership as the short range radio standard. HomeRF died, and in the following years Bluetooth and 802.11 found their areas of application and now coexist together, to the extent of joining forces in the new Bluetooth 3.0 specification. Today a new and ferocious fight is taking place for the role of ultra low power radio champion. This time, there is likely to be just one winner.

In the two main corners of the ring are ZigBee PRO and Bluetooth low energy (previously known as Wibree). Alongside them, throwing lighter punches, are an array of lesser contenders, including Z-Wave, ANT, Wavenis, and Wireless M-Bus. What is at stake is the prize of becoming the standard for connecting low power consumer products to the next generation of mobile phones and enabling smart energy devices within the home.

Will App Stores castrate the Mobile Operators?

Apple’s App Store is the flavour of the month in the mobile world. Everyone in mobile wants to have their own. At the Mobile World Congress operators and manufacturers were all jumping on the bandwagon and announcing their individual flavour of App Store, coming soon to a phone near you.

What wasn’t mentioned is how the App Store is redefining the relationships between the customer, the handset manufacturer and the network operator. I believe that it has the potential to drastically change the balance, with the network operator being emasculated and facing a future of becoming the dreaded “dumb pipe”. There may be a way out for them, but it will involve their thinking along very different and radical lines.

Could Assisted Living provide Life after Financial Services?

At some point in the future, we’re going to come out of recession. What’s almost certain is that the economic landscape will have changed. One of the changes is likely to be a major reduction in the size and strength of the financial services sector. There’s a strong possibility that it will not be the economic powerhouse that it has been over the previous decade. Which raises the question of what will take its place?

One of the candidates being talked about is healthcare. We are entering recession with a population that is ageing. Politicians are talking about the need to reform healthcare systems to cope with this demographic change, as well as with the rising levels of long term, chronic conditions within the population at large. In most of the Western world healthcare currently accounts for around 10% of GDP, rising to almost 20% in the US. It could be that heaIthcare will become the focus for the next major service development.

Over the next few weeks in the UK, conferences are taking place that look at the structure and needs of Assisted Living, as well as the funding that is available. These include a themed networking event at de Montfort University (which is free to attend) and an in-depth, two day conference run by the IET in London. In the same fortnight, at least three other smaller scale conferences are running at other venues in the UK. The interest level is definitely rising.

Healthcare needs to change and evolve. If innovators rise to the challenge we may see Assisted Living and eHealth move from their current position of “poor cousins” to become as mainstream and as important to our economies as other services have been in the past. I’ll be speaking and posting reports from these conferences to indicate the temperature. I hope to meet some of you there.

The Doctor in your Pocket

The Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, meeting place of all that is new and shiny in the mobile business, gave unexpected attention to the subject of mobile healthcare. As well as announcements by the GSMA Development Fund and UN Foundation on the progress that is happening in the developing world, the GSM Association also hosted a panel session on mHealth, which I was fortunate enough to moderate.

Alongside me were David Neale of Telus and Brian O’Connor of the European Connected Health Campus. Both are pioneers in mobile health and excellent advocates for the subject. The biggest question we all had, which we posed to the networks and service providers is “why aren’t you doing it?” The examples shown by the GSMA’s “Doctor in your Pocket” report show that mobile phones can play a persuasive part in healthcare. Yet network operators in the West constantly reject health applications in favour of content. It doesn’t need to be like that.

mHealth – will the Developing World get there first?

Today has been a good day for mHealth. At the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, both the GSM Association and the combined UN and Vodafone Foundations have made major commitments to the development and support of mHealth. For those unfamiliar with the word, mHealth is the use of a mobile phone to deliver healthcare.

The White Paper that the GSM Association has produced in conjunction with its announcement explains it well – it’s all about “The Doctor in your Pocket”. It surveys four countries that already have established remote healthcare schemes – a mix of both private and government initiatives, and concludes that not only does it work, but that it has the potential to bring significant improvements to the lives of people who have the greatest difficulty in accessing healthcare provision.

Four billion mobile subscribers. But is the vision slowing?

Just in time for the annual Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, the GSM Association has published a new milestone – the number of mobile subscribers in the world has just passed the four billion mark. That’s a pretty amazing number – equivalent to almost 60% of the world’s population. It seems that the demand for mobile connectivity is unstoppable. The same report predicts that the number of subscriptions will rise to six billion in 2013. That’s one phone for every person over the age of ten.

With numbers as spectacular as these it’s easy to sit back, smile smugly and give ourselves a well deserved pat on the back. But there’s another school of thought that says is six billion just being complacent? The insatiable desire for personal connectivity will almost certainly deliver the six billion, but what about the market for mobile subscriptions for machines. M2M has always been touted as the next great marketplace for mobile connectivity. The GSM Association acknowledges this with a new initiative. But if we look at numbers of machines, they’re an order of magnitude greater than people. Some years back Deloitte suggested that there would be 60 billion machines in existence by 202. If just a small percentage of these are connected, then the six billion target begins to look decidedly unambitious.