Where there's a 3G/Wi-Fi/IP-connection, there's a way!

The current market drive to connect almost everything on the planet via IP is gaining momentum. Key market drivers are Smart Metering & Smart Girds, demand for M2M connectivity, deployments of Triple Play Services and the unawakened market monster; Health & Medical.

Back In 1991 GSM burst onto the world scene. What an impact it has made. Today happens to be the 20th Anniversary of the world's first GSM call (made by Finnish Prime Minister Harri Holkeri) This simple singular event changed the way we view our accessibility and privacy, how and where we do business and introduced new social courtesies and faux pas'.

Similarly, the momentum behind the IP-Connectivity of "everything" will change our lives by an unmatched exponential factor. Utilising IP-based connectivity to be able to access just about anything we want, from wherever we want, is the current revolution underway across the globe in varying degrees of advancement.

In the US there is a boom occurring in M2M connectivity and services. Based on retrieving data from a device across an IP-enabled connection (3G, EDGE, GPRS, UMTS, WAN, WiMAX, Wireless MESH Network, etc) this rapidly expanding service is creating many new challenges to traditional Mobile Network Providers some of which are network coverage, service availability, security and fraud prevention.

In Europe, because of the diverse number of countries, laws and limited choice of truly "global" coverage, M2M is a costly and sometimes disappointing deployment. Smart Metering adds another complex dimension to the subject. The EU Directive to have 80% of the Union’s electricity consumers to be connected to Smart Meters by 2020 is adding additional pressures on the demand for IP-based connectivity. This in turn places additional pressures in the M2M connectivity space .

It all adds up to a lot of IP-based connectivity usage, demand and high expectations! And that's not the end of the story.

You and I and the rest of the billions of Smart-Device addicted users on the planet still expect to be able to access our emails, surf the web, download what we want and watch or listen to what we want via Public Wi-Fi services or equivalent. It all adds up to an enormously, rapidly increasing requirement and load on Mobile Operators and Service Providers alike.

Back in the late 1990’s I was one of the few lucky professionals to be involved in building, deploying and launching GSM Mobile networks around the globe. Today, I am involved with innovative M2M, Wireless MESH and IP-based connectivity technologies. The same buzz I felt many years ago with GSM is back again in much higher doses when I think about my humble 3G/Wi-Fi/IP-connection at home, at work and on the road, and all the wonderful things that I can do across it.

So the next time you find yourself sitting at the airport, hotel lounge or cafe relaxing with a coffee whilst catching up on your emails, downloading your documents and watching the news, spare a thought for the technological revolution that was started 20 years ago that made your mobile IP-based access today possible.