Friday February 18, 2011
Friday Reflections - By B.K. Sidhu
THERE are 20 things you should do when in Barcelona from eating paella to tapas, sipping Spanish wine and feasting the delicious chocolates.
The city has breathtaking architecture, loads of museums to visit and value-for-money shopping be it leather or cotton products.
The Gaudi's fairytale architecture, the breathtaking Sagrada Familia and grotesque Gothic cathedral is a must, so are Picasso and Salvador Dali's works.
But wherever you go, keep your eyes to your belongings as snatch theft is rampant here. And if you are, like me, hoping to catch Leo Messi on the streets, you'd be disappointed.
This week, Barcelona was home to nearly 50,000 people from the mobile world as this is where the Mobile World Congress (MWC) was held. Moving from Cannes, Barcelona seems to have the stickiness other cities do not offer as MWC has been held here every February for nearly a decade.
Participants gather around the Google Android stand at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, Thursday. - AP
Eight halls were filled with people, equipment and solutions. Malaysia was represented by its regulator and the many service providers. There were officials from Telekom Malaysia Bhd, Maxis Bhd, Axiata Bhd, Time dotcom Bhd and even Asiaspace.
Those from the vendor industry made their impact with big and colourful booths. Ericsson, Huawei, Nokia Siemens, Alcatel-Lucent, Cisco and Samsung they were all there. So were the content providers there were small companies from all over the world but only one from South-East Asia and it was from Singapore, not Malaysia. Wonder what happened to all the big talk about innovation and creativity.
MWC is a place where buyers and sellers look out for trends and set trends. This year's event focused on several topics. But the way forward is smartphones they will rule and those which are user-friendly will see top sales. That is why HTC has a special button for Facebook in its latest creation.
Sony Ericsson's Xperia range comes with Bravia technology and the company has unveiled a PlayStation phone that is set to change the way people play games.
Tablet will be the game changer in the way you eat, entertain and work, and maybe, eat, love and pray. If vendors are not creating tablets now, they will be left out of the explosive growth.
Data traffic is growing exponentially and LTE is the next-generation technology being promoted to be able to efficiently use spectrum. There are nearly 200 rollouts to pilots conducted globally. The big boys China Mobile (the biggest globally in terms of subscriber base, with 600 million users), India's Bharti Airtel, Google and Japan's Softbank are backing LTE.
Android is the operating system of the future even though Nokia went against the grain to opt for Microsoft Windows Phone 7 platform.
Mobile TV that is what some say will be the last frontier to video viewing. But one expert poured buckets of cold water on this belief. To him, the old way of watching TV on big screens will never fade; no one can watch TV for hours on small screens.
From the congress, it is clear that the vendors are hoping for greater capital expenditure by operators, who in turn hope to get a bigger slice of content business, leaving the content creators will little share of the market.
A clear message from the congress is that operators cannot remain suppliers of dumb pipes; they need to monetise the pipes but first, they need to listen to customers.
A big issue raised was how some service providers are coining the word 4G to advertise their products when the speed and capacity they provide is far from what a real 4G network should be. There is a big misconception of what 4G can actually deliver.
The regulators were told to stop “auto-pilot” and let players compete. Those players, which also do not subscribe to open access of networks, should close shop as the only way forward is by opening up networks and allowing competition.
The way spectrum is dished out in some countries was critised as regulators should know that spectrum is a rare commodity no single party should get a large chunk of it and telcos should not just sit on it.
The crux of it all is about reinventing oneself be it regulators or service providers to ride on the explosion in data and allow consumers to have the lifestyle that the world is ready to embrace. Can operators and regulators in Malaysia risk that?
Deputy news editor B.K. Sidhu can't seem to get enough of the delicious Spanish paella.
http://biz.thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2011/2/18/business/8088958&sec=business
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