Slashdot Mirror


Disruptive Technologies For Next 5 Years

prostoalex writes "America's Network magazine, the publication serving to telecom industry, takes a look at the disruptive technologies over the next five years. Disruptive, naturally, for telecom industry. Virtual keyboards, DWDM, broadband connections using powerlines, wearable computers, free-space optics, low-power devices, UltraWideBand, voice over 802.11b and numerous others are discussed, as well as their potential for development over the next five years."

7 of 94 comments (clear)

  1. Can't wait for VOIP as alternative to telco. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I can't wait for VOIP to be a viable solution.

    As someone who had a feud with the local phone company and refused to pay the outrageous bill that I wasn't responsible for (~ $750, defrauded by a roommate.. long story, phone was in his name, and he switched it to mine with a huge balance), I can no longer get service from them, and my credit is so screwed that the deposit on a cell phone is huge.

    It seems that I'll get phone service in 7 years or when VOIP becomes viable, whichever comes first.

    1. Re:Can't wait for VOIP as alternative to telco. by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 3, Interesting
      Vonage works reasonably well for me, but I can't count on all of the routers between my home and them observing quality-of-service indications in the IP packet. This expecially since I don't pay my internet provider for any voice-grade quality-of-service. VOIP will work well when it is a direct service of your internet provider and they have an incentive to make the transport work correctly.

      It happens, however, that most of the problems that come up are on the first hop between my site and my internet provider's, and I can control them. I can't guarantee that this will always be the case.

      Bruce

  2. excellent by middle · · Score: 3, Interesting

    we'd continue this way, in 5 years a boss will be able to disrupt the Wi-Fi TV on the bedroom of an employee, saturday night, just to ask if everything is f*****g wired for tomorrow's presentation...

  3. In other words by TerryAtWork · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The entire system will fly even more out of control of the courts, lawyers, suits, VPs in charge of things even more so then it is now.

    People will be running encrypted private channels to each other all over hell's half acre and sending mp3s, videos, and pr0n everywhere and no one will even know its happening.

    Creativity no one could possibly imagine will explode even more so than now.

    The politically incorrect will run their annoying but harmless web sites much to the caterwauling of certain loud people, and, yes, the kiddy porners will run their kiddy porn and the cops will have a hard but not impossible time tracking them down.

    People will be taking advantage and other people HATE when that happens.

    The call will ring out for a crackdown, but the only place it's easy being a policeman is in a police state and that's what we will be moving AWAY from with these new disruptive technologies

    Then, one day, it will all come to a head.

    The whole net in the USA goes through a few choke points (more ever day but still only a few)

    By sizing these few points, banning cryptography (except for their friends the credit card companies of course) and implementing Total Information Awareness the US government can ALMOST control the whole net. They can certainly screw it up real good.

    Then, treating censorship as damage, the world's data flow will go AROUND the USA and America will have lost the net.

    Who does the net belong to? The users or the suits?

    This matter will get bigger and bigger, approaching critical mass.

    And then, one way or the other, it will tip.

    --
    It's Christmas everyday with BitTorrent.
  4. Scared of anything new by silas_moeckel · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Am I the only one that looks at this like the list of things that will stop the telcos from making gobs of money (and of course hiding it all) DWDM works it works well and realy it's a good application of resources. Once it's in place adding circuts is easy and has not realy month to month cost just an initial cost to buy linecards and you can get a dedicated peice of fiber for less that the local loop of a DS3. It's all about the distance the in state media length runs that are the bread and butter of your average telo may go away. T1's are getting replaced by wireless and open laser for the short runs like main office to satalite office in a city etc. And lets face it DWDM lets one very important thing be done use ethernet for the connection. I can get a DWDM setup from CT to NYC in a building that has 30 IPS's or so (The old port authority building) that one run will cost me less than the local loop on a DS3. I can provition it as 100bt ethernet so each end can go to a switch and get agrigated up to the router or go to a virtual router interface on the switch itself just like a common rack and bandwith customer. Thats a cheaper connection for each side. Now I can also go to any of the 30 other IPS's and get bandwith from them the same way I get the advantages of cheaper line cards on my router they can use there existing line cards for customer access. I am also not stuck with a single provider or long buildout times to get to a new provider some fiber in the building is easy to get installed and often can be setup in days not weeks or months.

    What does this boil down to getting rid of the metered bandwith middle man that the telcos are mostly because they have relied on time division muxing for so long. DWDM changes that once a single circut is provisioned you can pretty much keep adding channels as needed. This could lead to lots of mini naps being formed where carriers get some fiber into it and cross patch with customers and the funny thing is the telcos could be the perfect place they allready have buildings on nearly all the fiber runs and definatly a building every 70km or so for cheaper optics and lasers to be used. Last mile fiber could become a reality just plug your intermediate reach gbic in and get a provider on the other end a flat 100 bucks per megabit average and pay the telco for the fiber.

    --
    No sir I dont like it.
  5. Re:Google is your friend. ...So is dict.org by silicon1 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    http://www.dict.org/bin/Dict?Form=Dict2&Database=* &Query=DWDM

  6. Disruptive? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I think some rag editor is in love with buzz words. Nothing in the artical qualifies as disruptive technology for the telecom industry. Some might think wearable devices are, but they are not for two reasons. First they are not anything more then extensions of what we have today. Second, they are not a technology. They are the result of multiple technologies. For them to be disruptive ( other then causing traffic accidents) they will need something else. That something else would be considered the disruptive technology, because it will also change a lot of other things. Two examples: The domestication of the dog was truley disruptive, while the development of herd guard dogs was just an advancment. Cell phones are not a disruptive technology; spread spectrum communication techniques are, and have disrupted more things then just the way we use phones.