John Wargo

There’s this big fight going on here in the US between AT&T and Verizon (the two largest wireless carriers) about who’s network is better than the other. Verizon has taken the approach that their 3G network is bigger than AT&T’s network and AT&T has taken the approach of arguing that their network is faster than Verizon’s network and allows simultaneous voice and data which Verizon’s network does not.  It’s important to note that I work for AT&T, so have to be careful what I say here.

The ads are funny and I’m not sure who’s winning but there’s an interesting point to be made here….

What normal, every day mobile user has any idea what a 3G network is? I know because I work for AT&T and used to work for Research In Motion, but what about the every day user for which these ads are targeted? They’re being inundated with all of this talk about 2G and 3G networks (not to mention the 2.5G networks [whatever those are]) – and it all just doesn’t matter since the normal consumer has truly no idea which G network they need for their smartphone. They probably think that 3G is better than 2G and 4G will be better than 3G, but they probably just don’t know why. They’re only using about 10 to 20% of the features of their smartphone, so faster speeds probably don’t mean that much to them.

The big issue here, and I intend on writing about this when I get a chance, is that no matter what network you’re on, it’s likely that it will be saturated with all this traffic being generated by all of these smartphones running all of these applications that have no respect for the network (more on that later too). As soon as the carriers upgrade to the new 4G (faster than 3G) networks, more and more smartphones and more and more network unaware applications will fill those networks too. As the processing speeds and capabilities increase on these smartphones, all they’ll do is use even more bandwidth and there’s likely no way the carriers can keep up (just my humble, personal opinion).

I've been getting a lot of emails lately from people asking for the source code for my articles on connecting to a web service from a BlackBerry application. The source code for the Domino Web Service and the BlackBerry Java application are provided at the end of each article.

Building the Domino Web Service

Building the BlackBerry Java application

Although I'm a BlackBerry guy at heart, I've always been interested in Android. As I see it (from reading analyst reports and the press) Android is going to make a very big splash in the Enterprise mobility market in 2010 and 2011. Considering Android (like BlackBerry) was built from the ground up with Enterprise Mobility in mind (unlike the iPhone) it's likely that BlackBErry and Android will become the dominant players in the enterprise by 2012 (which has been predicted by the analyst community). Being an employee of AT&T I was excited to finally see the official announcement about the Android-based phones I will have access to. See the press release.

I've been studying up on Android development in preparation for Lotusphere. I'm going to be demonstrating how to build a BlackBerry, Windows Mobile and hopefully Android rich client application (not the browser) accessing a Domino application in my session (AD114). I have a new laptop to configure and get ready for the conference, but I hope I have the time to add the Android example to my demos.

I can't wait to get one or more Android devices in my hot little hands so I can finally play with the platform at length. I'll be sure to write about it as I know more.

Back when the US FCC was auctioning off the 700 MHz specturm to mobile carriers and Google announced its intention to bid I was sure that Google was about to for a dramatic change in the wireless industry. With their building the Android platform, buying up of all that dark fiber, building data centers along river banks (for cooling and power generation) in the Dakotas and building those shipping container data centers they were supposed to put at the Internet's major access points - I was sure they were going to set themselves up to compete with the existing carriers and force a change in the way the US wireless carriers did business.

What I imagined was Google setting themselves up as a wireless provider using the 700 MHz spectrum I was sure they were going to buy then offering essentially free devices in return for the ability to run local ads across a dedicated portion of the device screen. Anyone would be able to walk into a Best Buy or WalMart, plunk down $50 or $100 and have essentially a device with free wireless network access. When they pulled out of the auction I wasn't quite sure what they were all about and I'm still not sure.

When all of that press generated a few weeks ago about the proposed Nexus One device - a mobile device Google would sell direct - I was certain it was all bunk. That they just wouldn't try to go direct like that. Well, Google made the announcement today: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2357687,00.asp. With this new device, people will be able to plunk down the full price for the device and get an unlocked device they can use on any compitable network (just like I believe you can in Europe and other parts of the world). Once I walked into a carrier sales center with a device I already owned and only had to pay a monthly fee for service (no contract) I promised myself that I'd never do anything but purchase the device at full price and use any carrier I wanted. Now Google is making it so it's very easy for me to do this. No begging your carrier to allow you to unlock it - just buy an unlocked phone directly from the manufacturer and do whatever you want with it.

It's going to be very interesting to see what impact this is going to have on the US Wireless Carrier market.