F2C Speaker Sascha Meinrath Interviewed
Lee S. Dryburgh interviewed F2C Speaker Sascha Meinrath on Spectrum 2.0, Battling the Incumbents and Future Telecom Networks. The audio interview is downloadable, and the transcript is available.
Well into the interview, Dryburgh asks:
What do you see as the future of telecommunications infrastructure? What will it look like and how will we get from where we are today, to there?
Meinrath answers:
The future is absolutely going to be a hybrid infrastructure. You will have fiber connectivity. You want the fiber because it has capacity and reliability, but it will also be this hybrid with a wireless communication system, which will provide cost efficiencies and mobility. Together, they will hopefully look like a seamless roaming between these different media – wireline and wireless – seamless roaming across multiple, different systems and networks. They might go from EVDO to cellular, to Wi-Fi, to a wire line plug-in, depending on what’s most effective for your needs. All of this is predicated upon an open networking system where interoperability is paramount and where users are empowered to jump amongst multiple, different networks. That’s really, where these battles are going to be fought. The telco incumbents really want to be sure that their users stay on their network and really don’t like the notion of freeing up users to jump to whatever is most effective for end users.
If I were to point to the future of communications, it is in this tension between end-user empowerment, edge-to-edge networking and command-and-control infrastructures that attempt to lock down users and networks and keep you on a specific network.
F2C ‘09 is centered around the theme of Plugging Into the Internet Economy. The changes described above will change the nature of how we do business on the Internet. Will the FCC be part of this change? Will our Congress? The media? How is the Obama Administration facing this change? Join us for the discussion at F2C to learn more!
