Vodafone Ireland CEO Charles Butterworth says the pace of mobile innovation must now be matched by industry working together on the fixed line side to ensure that fibre infrastructure investment takes place to boost the economy.
While walking around the GSM Association’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona recently it was impossible not to be wowed by the scale and sophistication of the mobile industry.
Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s words were ringing in my ears: firstly, because of the super-fast speeds mobile networks will carry in the future, the days of being tied to a desktop are over; and, secondly, 60,000 Google Android devices are shipping on a daily basis.
By midnight last Friday there were 120,000 pre-orders for Apple’s iPad tablet computer, which comes out in the US on 3 April, while Microsoft will very soon release its new generation of Windows 7 smart phones to the world. The year 2010 will be the dawn of a new era in mobile – ubiquitous computing.
This fact was drummed into my head again when Vodafone’s new networks director for Ireland, Santiago Tenorio Sanz, showed me HD 1080p videos at speeds of between 14Mbps to 16Mbps over the forthcoming HSPA+ 3.5G mobile networks due to go live in September nationwide. Ireland is set to be in the vanguard of the ubiquitous computing revolution.
By John Kennedy
Read more of Ubiquitous broadband future may be closer than you think at Digital 21.
Photo: It’s time for the Irish telecoms industry to start pulling together, says Vodafone’s Charles Butterworth
