Mobile networks’ time has come

Explaining how mobile networks’ time has come.

Mobile wireless technologies are enhancing our personal and professional lives.

Let me give you an example: When a family member was hospitalized recently, I noticed how the hospital staff, patients and parents were connected. Yes, there was lots of direct face-to-face communication with hospital staff. But instead of the loudspeaker paging systems that used to broadcast “Calling Dr. Jones,” the hospital staff was equipped with mobile endpoints.

Wireless LANs permeated the facility, allowing Internet access for communication with remote family members, checking e-mail, keeping colleagues and clients informed, researching medical journals and even letting the patient play a game of Internet checkers with a remote family member. It’s this kind of professional and personal value that mobile networks are adding to every industry sector.

The mobile industry started with cellular technology providing person-to-person voice communications, but its current evolution is in access to data applications and back-end enterprise systems for mobile endpoints. The industry is moving quickly beyond simple services, such as ringing users’ mobile endpoints while they’re away from the desktop.

In November, Avaya purchased Traverse, and Cisco purchased Orative to connect enterprise IP-telephony features and functions with mobile endpoints, such as calendar synchronization, presence and other enterprise services. The barriers to mobile devices’ accessing enterprise data will be eliminated over time as wireless and wired-access technologies unite.

The trend line developing for mobile networks is huge. By 2010, 50% of Internet services will be accessed by mobile endpoints.

Desktop PC shipments will remain at about 150 million per year into 2010. At the same time, laptop shipments will continue to grow, reaching about 180 million in 2010. The super-high growth is in smart phones: Nearly 300 million will ship in 2010, up from abouty 80 million today. If you layer into these dynamics the hypergrowth of RFID tags, the number of Internet endpoints may very well hit 1 trillion in 2010, up from more than a billion today. The bottom line is, over the next five years mobile endpoints will be the preferred access method for most people and devices on the planet.

Enterprise mobility is all about productivity and increased quality of work. Just think how much more productive healthcare providers will be when all their patient instrumentation connects to a network where doctors can access patients’ vital signs, medical history, medications and so on from their smart phones while talking with patients and family members.

The quality of care will increase, and so too will patients’ and families’ confidence that they and the doctors have the right information to make the right decisions. Healthcare is just one industry segment example; mobile networking value transcends all industry segments in the global economy. (For more on this topic, as well as a series of white papers and podcasts, see >>.)

Lippis publishes the “Lippis Report” newsletter, a resource for network and IT business decision makers. Free subscriptions are available at www.lippis.com. Lippis can be reached at nick@lippis.com.