what telecoms and computing can learn from each other carney

Comms at the Crossroads: Bruce Carney & John Forsyth, March 2009

- 1 -

Comms at the crossroads: What Telecoms and Computing Should Know

About Each Other and How We Can Take the

Best from Both Worlds.

Bruce Carney, March 2009

Intuitively everyone in this room realises that the computer and telecoms world

are converging.

As personal example, I celebrated my sons birthday last Sunday and his 78 year

old grandparents, in Australia, helped sing happy birthday and watch him blow

out the candles on his cake using Skype on a Wi-Fi/Webcam enabled netbook.

Even though it took me 30mins to set up using VNC to remotely access my

fathers machine……That certainly is convergence at .

Equally, I could have been video streaming via mobile phone using technology

such as QIK and/or doing a video telephone call via the 3G network. Certainly for

us early adopters we are all interchangeably talking, emailing, twittering and web

surfing between our computer and smart phones.

As we move to a world of “convergence”, and the “converged device”, there is a

classic paradox at the play, the “unstoppable force of the computer industry


- 2 -

meeting the immovable obstacle of the telecoms industry”. I intend to talk about

how Symbian Foundation, whom I am representing today will solve this paradox.


- 3 -

SOME OBSERVATIONS ON CONVERGENCE

Some observations on convergence

Intuitive:- The telecoms world is full of pre-historic traditions and control points.

- The computing world is more open and innovative.

Counter-intuitive:- Practices in the computing world won’t meet mobile consumer expectations.- The telecoms world knows how to reach further and wider.

Thesis:- The computing and telecoms world are the way they are because that was

the best adapted solution for their environment…

- We’re entering a new environment. DNA from both will drive growth.

Intuitively we view:

The telecoms as being full of pre-historic traditions and control points.

� Massive multinational corporations, with implicitly high barriers to entry;

slow moving and equally slow to adapt to change.

The computing world is more open and innovative

� Countless garage developers have taken bright ideas, wrapped innovative

business models around them and created multinational corporations

delivering enormous value. In the computer industry nowadays there

almost no barriers to entry and almost no incremental costs to scale…all

the value is in the ideas and eyeballs.


- 4 -

Counter intuitively:

The computer world does not meet the needs of consumers.

� Consumers are forced to adapt to learn computers and their

idiosyncrasies. It is a one-size-fits-all approach and most non technical

people I know are engaged in an ongoing fight to keep their computer

operational.

The telecoms world knows how to reach further and wider

� The telecoms industry has been able to address mass market consumers,

simply. It is a tremendous challenge to simplify telecoms networks to the

level that most people are completely oblivious to it’s operation.

� And by mass market I mean big, really big and diverse. As an example, I

can pretty much roam anywhere in the world accessing data services and

make/send receive calls, sending an SMS to anywhere else in the world,

all the while why everything else is maintained in the background for me.

All need to do is charge my phone and pay my bills.

The thesis is that convergence is best understood as something where there’s a

lot to learn from both sides. Each is actually well-adapted to its environment, but

we are entering a new environment. The DNA from both is required to fuel the

growth and will present the future opportunities


- 5 -

Telecoms

Walled gardens for applications

Network-by-network acceptance

Ancient platforms

IP ‘fortresses’

Device fragmentation

Lead times from hell



Ancient platforms

IP ‘fortresses’



Computing

Productive programming

environments

Published interfaces

Free and open standards

Amazing pace of SW innovation


environments




Relentless hardware innovation

Power discipline

Built-in-billing

Consumer electronics

expectations

Products as fashion statements

Highly segmented product


Power discipline

Built-in-billing


expectations



Consumers are our beta-testers

Lack of HW product choice

Complexity of SW distribution and

discovery




discovery

The good, the bad and the ugly?

So now based on the origin-of-our-differing-species we can understand that

certain reflexes, patterns and behaviours are inherent in how things are currently

implemented.

In telecoms

� Trust is essential as every action = a financial transaction, a call, an SMS,

a data packet

� Thinking is naturally towards security, scalability safety.

� walled gardens made sense, protect consumers to maintain trust and

simplicity (and revenue)

� Devices and anything from outside our network need to be tested/certified

on a per network basis. And there are a lot of networks around the world.

� Backward/forward compatibility = although, a phone i bought in 1950 is

still going to work on the fixed line network

� Simplicity: technology adapts to the person (the complexity of the network

is managed and hidden)

� Robustness: i drop my mobile phone it survives (or for those following the

news this week a phone was found in a fish and was still working?)


- 6 -

However, this interestingly what is also happening in mobile telecoms are rapid

changes:

� Relentless hardware and mechanical engineering innovation, adding more

cpus, radios, audio paths on a device.

� Orders of magnitude improvements in power usage to drive every nano-

amp of battery life (to the point that an e71 has 10hours talk time and 17

days standby time)

� Differentiated products: age, gender, locale, interests, pricepoints…etc

� The mobile phone has become the “personal computer”, everything about

it is personalised and it never more than a few feet away from it’s owner

Telecoms



Ancient platforms

IP ‘fortresses’





Ancient platforms

IP ‘fortresses’



Computing


environments





environments





Power discipline

Built-in-billing


expectations




Power discipline

Built-in-billing


expectations






discovery




discovery

The good, the bad and the ugly?

Equally, computers have been wonderful for enterprises and developers. Their

evolution has been driven almost exclusively by the needs of these groups...as

such

� There are multitude of programming environments, where there is the

luxury of

o Virtually infinite computational resources;

o Always on power..


- 7 -

o Mean that you can spend more time building out functionality than

worrying about

o New systems and functionality can be built and deployed fast.

� Interfaces are published and well documented

� Standards are actually standard!, becoming universally/globally adopted

or at least they battle it out until one dominates and the rest follow.

� Openness fuels innovation.

However, areas where computers haven’t been so great are

� Exposing users to viruses, spyware, phishing, fraud, spam, denial of

service attacks….

� Consumers feel like they are being used as beta testers. And in many

cases they are!!!

� Sw distribution and discovery is complex and for many consumers they do

not purchase, know about or in many cases are afraid to install apps.


- 8 -

Not to force the point

Not to force the point…

The PC in 2002 The PC in 2009

The phone in 2002 The phone in 2009

In reality, and especially viewed from the vantage of a mass market consumer.

Most life changing innovation for this decade is occurring is actually in the mobile

telecoms space.


- 9 -

What we’re trying to do different

What we’re trying to do different

Quality of product

Diversity of product design

Enable global, segmented product

portfolios

Clear long-term roadmaps

Quality of product

Diversity of product design

Enable global, segmented product

portfolios

Clear long-term roadmaps

Rich web runtime

Designed as a platform for 3rd party apps

Collaborative software development

Community-led innovation

Open devices, open networks

Rich web runtime

Designed as a platform for 3rd party apps

Collaborative software development

Community-led innovation

Open devices, open networks

Symbian was founded in 1998 and its founders set it with a vision to create an

open operating system for mobile phones. Whilst the term “open” is becoming

very much clichéd nowadays,

One thing is certain symbian is battled hardened and has been at the center of

this convergence; working at the center of with oems, carriersand developers to

create an ecosystem to provide open mobile devices

Then in a move that is best described as “if you love, something set it free” on

the 10th anniversary, an industry changing announcement was made to open

source symbian os and all user interfaces S60, UIQ and MOAP (in japan)

…………….a billion dollar asset put into the public domain…………

This game changing decision by symbian’s shareholders, to create the symbian

foundation, provides the computer and telecom industry an environment to

leverage each others strengths in a level playing field.


- 10 -

Here you have a low power, efficient, robust, scalable, secure operating

system….. Already shipped in more than 250 million devices globally… Set free

to drive grow faster…

In short…… To accelerate innovation …

By taking all the advantages of the development models from the computer

industry whilst …

� Allowing the member community full access source code,

o To influence the platform,

o To competitively differentiate and segment

o And lead innovation in their specialist areas.

� Quality, packaging and testing.

� Maintaining long term roadmaps for review and comment

� Including more common run time environments, such as webkit, but also

supporting the further development of commercial and open source

developer environments.


- 11 -

Symbian foundation platform plan (open for contribution)

Symbian Foundation Platform PlanOpen for contribution

SF

2

SF

3

SF

1

2010 20112009

Symbian Foundation 3

To be defined according to community process


• Support for multiple form factors, resolutions and input methods

• Customisable home screen supporting embedded widgets and other personal content


• Support for composition of hardware accelerated content seamlessly into UI• High performance communications architecture enabling fixed internet level of

performance

Available on “Day 1”:•SDK based on Forum Nokia SDK 5th Edition, compatible with Symbian OS v9.x and S60 5th

Edition

•Source code for SF1 release available to members

With an reshaped vision, it remains non trivial to take a billion dollar asset and

move into a new governance model, i will touch briefly on how we see this

transitioning to the future

To start with nothing changes, the current S60 5th edition on Symbian OS

becomes the basis for future Symbian Foundation releases.

The yellow arrow depicts the Symbian foundation Codeline and release ‘blobs’.

The foundation intends to complete a release once every six 6 months and

contributions are encouraged in all stages of all releases –

For releases so called, SF1 and SF2- a few top line features are introduced to

continue the momentum that Symbian platform already has, as well as to build a

theme around each release.

SF3 is left intentionally blank to highlight that that roadmap will actually created

by the member community and that dialogue is about to start.


- 12 -

Come and join us

Thank you. (Come and join us.) @ www.symbian.org

Membership is now open as we ramp up for an operational launch later this half.

Symbian foundation is a intended to be a meritocracy and this is a real

opportunity to create the environment for telecoms and computer industries to

work with each other, learn from each other and create the future of an internet

without wires…the mobile internet.

Thankyou for listening….more details on membership and the Symbian

Foundation from www.symbian.org.

what telecoms and computing can learn from each other carney

Business

telecoms world

computer world

world of convergence

computing world wont

telecoms networks

widerthe telecoms industry

computer industry comms

bruce carney john forsyth