| Chapter 1: | A Global, Low-Cost Network Thrives |
This future scenario really won only qualified agreement. A majority of those who chose to “agree” did so while expressing some reservations about parts of the scenario. Some pointed out the probability of government and/or corporate control that limits some types of access in certain parts of the world, and others noted a likely lack of “perfected” interoperability in a world of changing technology. Those who supported all or most of this scenario noted the rapid accelera-tion of technology innovation in their answers.
“The advances in wireless technologies are pretty much a natural consequence of Moore’s law,” wrote Christian Huitema, a longtime Internet Society leader and a pioneering Internet engineer. “Better computers mean more advanced signal processing, and the possibility to harness higher frequencies. More frequencies mean an abundant ‘primary resource,’ thus natural competition increasing service availability and driving down prices.”
Bob Metcalfe—Internet pioneer, founder of 3Com, and inventor of Ethernet, now of Polaris Venture Partners—chose to reflect on the arrival of “IP on everything,” the idea that networked sensors and other devices using an Internet protocol (IP) will proliferate. “The Internet will have gone beyond personal communications” by 2020, he wrote. “Many more of today’s 10 billion new embedded micros per year will be on the Internet.”
—Richard Yee, competitive intelligence analyst, AT&T
Louis Nauges, president of Microcost, a French information technology firm, sees mobile devices at the forefront. “Mobile Internet will be dominant,” he explained. “By 2020, most mobile networks will pro-vide 1-gigabit-per-second- minimum speed, anywhere, anytime. Dominant access tools will be mobile, with powerful infrastructure characteristics (memory, processing power, access tools), but zero applications; all applications will come from the Net.”