The Future’s So Bright… Until My Signal Fades

Even for those of us who expect every online video to be high definition, and to be able to make out our Puggles in our backyards when we look at online satellite images, the modern smart phone is awe inspiring. Each year the new versions have mind-blowing features that are leaps and bounds ahead of the preceding models. However, a recent experience brought to light the reality that, even with these incredible devices, the bold expectations we have for the future of mobile data are not likely to become reality in the immediate future.

At a recent AT&T analyst conference, Mr. John Donovan, CTO of AT&T, delivered a spectacular presentation addressing the future of communications technology, and he opened the presentation by looking back. Mr. Donovan played some AT&T television spots from the early ‘90s that you all probably remember, and if you are like me, remember wondering why they were advertising things that didn’t exist. In the ad, the voice over asked the viewer, “Have you ever attended a meeting in your bare feet?" while showing a shot of a man conducting a collaborative video conference from an open cabana. Another ad asked, “Have you ever sent a fax from the beach?" while someone in a beach chair sent handwritten notes from a tablet that looked strikingly similar to a clunky iPad. Sure, they were off on the fax part, and a few other ideas, but they hit the nail on the head with many others, like video on demand, satellite navigation, ebooks, EZpass and countless other applications that we now consider commonplace.

With the crowd fairly convinced that AT&T could see the future, Mr. Donovan could have claimed that we will all have digital implants in 20 years, and a good number may well have believed him, but instead he gave a very thoughtful and concise prediction about of just how the vague (and painfully named) “cloud computing" evolution would shape hardware and the user experience. The primary concepts were familiar but he painted an effective, broad-stroke picture of the ways in which commonplace interactions will change, and how new interactions will be introduced. The core principle was that the device itself will not matter. In fact the smart device, as we now know it, may not play a part at all. Since everything now stored on devices, including applications, content, and even basic settings, will be housed in the cloud, any dumb device can instantly give the user access to everything he has now, and more: If everything is already housed in the cloud, device interconnection becomes simplified. Thus, when the time comes that everything from your electric car to your toaster has wireless connectivity, information on any device, location, or event could be 100-percent available at all times.

It was a solid presentation based on a solid premise that may not be new to those of us inside the dugout, but the fact that the CTO of one of the companies with sufficient influence to drive the industry toward this model is a believer in this model is a strong indicator of the pathway his firm wishes to pursue. And why not? In the battle of where the apps reside – in the network or in your phone/tablet – network owners have good reason to pursue this end. And, truth be told, I agree with Mr. Donovan on nearly every point he made. Countless users already employ services that are completely, or largely, hosted. The idea that more and more of what we do with our devices will not actually be done on the devices, but rather in a virtual environment for which the device serves as a portal, is at the heart of the cloud computing hype.

But, there’s always a “but." Shortly after I left the conference I found myself on the Newark Airport AirTran, and in need of a hotel room for the night, and a little Microsoft-inspired voice in my head said “turn to the cloud." I pulled out two brand new smart phones, each one on a different tier 1 wireless network, and set to work booking my room. I knew the hotel, location, etc., so on one I went directly to the hotel website, and to double-check rates I went to a discount travel site. I tried to progress through the booking screens, and within minutes both had reached a dead end; one because of a network issue, and one because the site was apparently not compatible with the browser. So I switched the destination of each phone and tried again … and then I tried different travel sites. According to the Newark Airport site, the travel time from the rental car drop-off station to the hotel shuttle station is about 13 minutes, and by the time I reached my destination I still had not managed to book my room. So, I guess it’s not the future just yet.

While the cloud revolution is under way, and much more of what we do will be through hosted applications, the vision of everything we now keep in our devices existing exclusively, or even primarily, in the cloud is still a long way away.  Ignoring the copious security concerns, the simple matter of connectivity, and a device needing to download any time it does anything are limiting factors that centralized-model naysayers have been talking about for ages – the bandwidth just isn’t there. I don’t particularly fault the carriers in my little empirical experiment; in many cases it was the devices, browsers or sites that were the points of failure, but the point remains the same. If I can’t do something so simple, while only miles from one of the largest cities in the world and working on brand-new devices across two networks, I can’t begin to consider putting my entire digital life into this so called cloud just yet – even if I want to.

Fedor Smith is president of ATLANTIC-ACM, a provider of strategy research, consulting and benchmarking services to telecommunications and information industry companies. An expert in niche- and channel-based marketing and operations management, Smith specializes in customer satisfaction and benchmarking projects for ATLANTIC-ACM, where he oversees proprietary projects as well as the firm's Carrier Report Card series, which serves as the telecommunications industry's principle source of benchmarking tools.