The Wireless Explosion (Can you see the FMC?)

Wireless Technology Positioning

Actually the FMC (Fixed / Mobile Convergence) term is a bit of a misnomer when applied to wireless , which implies some degree of mobility anyway, but here it is used to talk about the merging of cellular mobile technology with wired networks via the same wireless networks we now use in our homes.I like this diagram from Andrew VonNagy's blog that clarifies where they all sit in relation to each other.



It's been a while since FMC  first edged its ways into the crowded masses of TLAs (Three Letter Acronyms!), around 2004 actually  –  but like the girl in the Pantene ad once said,  "it won't happen overnight – bit it WILL happen".

Part of the reason has been the inexorable rise of the smartphone (from 2% of the mobile market in 2009 to a forecast 62% in 2015) with attendant rise in bandwidth demand.

Unlike wired (and fibre) media, wireless bandwidth suffers from interference issues that make it scale inefficiently (for similar collision reasons as ethernet, but that didnt stop that from defeating supposedly superior technologies). You see each wireless device never knows how many devices it will be expected to talk to at once; and when that happens, collisions result in lost data and retransmissions, lowering bandwidth exponentially.

However ease of deployment is one reason why those drawbacks haven't stopped the charge – like for example in South Korea, where penetration has just hit 100% 

Its not hard to see why smartphones are so popular - look at what they can do (and replace):

Mobile Phone, Email, Web browser, backup device, Camera, Music player, Flash Drive, IPTV, Playstation,

.

Rationalised Wireless Networks

Diary



And with the announcement of  multi-gigabit wireless, bandwidth just keeps increasing to cope

looking at the above chart does rather beg the quesion of why so many alternative wireless technologies. Can a case not be made for a simplified hierarchy consisting of just NFC, Wifi  and 4G technologies? With telcos now trialling 4G(LTE) upgrades that will scale to 100+mb speeds, plus a lack of handset support, Wimax is looking shaky. Bluetooth is also under threat for all but simple devices, as WiFI Direct is turning up on smartphones as an alternative faster technology that is backward compatible (with firmware upgrades).

That doesn't mean that fibre isn't capable of delivering ever more realistic gaming , on demand tv and all that great stuff – but elsewhere, on current trends, the future doesnt have any wires.