Hey folks,
Great interview with Andrew Viterbi - the man credited with eliminating cell phone signal interference in 1966 and winner of this year's Benjamin Franklin Medal in Electrical Engineering - in today's Philadelphia Daily News.
He talks about the impact of the cellular phone in developing countries, how culture will affect the deployment of next-generation mobile technologies, and why he thinks municipal wireless projects are inherently dangerous since technnology is constantly evolving. Some key clips and a bandwidth-friendly link are below.
Cheers, Charlie Meisch
http://www.philly.com/mld/dailynews/news/local/11448384.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp
Posted on Thu, Apr. 21, 2005
Franklin winner cleared static
By MICHAEL HINKELMAN [EMAIL PROTECTED]
<snip>
Q: Are you surprised cell phones have become as widely used as they are today?
A: Yes, and that's not a technological observation as much as it is a societal observation. There's well over a billion cell phones in the world today, and they're making them smaller and smaller and more and more powerful.
Q: What's the most transformational aspect of the cell phone?
A: You can communicate with anybody, anywhere, anytime, and when I say everybody, it's everybody in the industrialized world. And in the Third World it's giving people communication they never had before.
You've heard the story of the Indian village: there is a lady who bought a cell phone for a $100 - she got a micro loan from a development bank to buy it. Now, she's a tenant. Before that, she was begging on the streets.
<snip>
Q: Can you imagine the next killer app?
A: I think it's going to depend on the national culture. In Tokyo, the typical commute is on a train and it takes one or two hours. Imagine if they could get the morning news video streamed into their cell phones. But that's probably not going to work in Los Angeles, where they have to drive to work.
There's going to be more interactive data. People want data as useful and convenient as voice.
Q: If you were the mayor of Philadelphia and wanted to get Internet access to the 42 percent of households who currently don't have it, what would your strategy be to achieve that?
A: I would probably figure out how to promote more competition in the private sector. I would not, as a mayor, invest in creating my own network.
Q: How would a mayor go about promoting more competition?
A: Lobby the Federal Communications Commission. They're the ones who regulate the airwaves. It would probably take a coalition of mayors, but the FCC, as a matter of policy, says it wants to encourage faster deployment of broadband.
Q: Philadelphia wants to build a citywide high-speed wireless network to achieve that. Private companies would build it and the city would lease the infrastructure to ISPs for a wholesale fee and they in turn would provide services to end-users for rates at dial-up prices. What do you think of the idea?
A: You're talking about creating a new, fixed wireless network. And then you're talking about technology that's constantly evolving. What happens when the network becomes outmoded and, say, it is difficult to upgrade? Generally, government doesn't do service well but if they leave that aspect up to private companies, it could be more of a success. Or it could be a total disaster. My guess is it will turn out somewhere in between. The best thing that could happen is if the municipal network helps to promote competition among carriers because [competition] will drive down price.
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