The future of wireless technology

I was recently asked by a colleague (thanks Richard) if I could be the CDEM Groups' rep at this Ministry of Economic Development seminar. I thought cool... imagine going to the Sydney car show with the very latest in cool cars... all shiny and beaming, draped with appropriately attired support staff, big bangers alongside hybrids and the quirkiness of future transportation. Now put this in a tech setting - routers, mobile phones, convergent tech, gadgets and gizmos galore!

Now put on your very best Clarkson face... how wrong I was! Imagine instead a room full of mechanical engineers drooling over progress towards the flux capacitor, thermo-coupled double doofterised over-head underhangers and drive-by-wire architecture.

In real terms, my expectation of finding out about the consumer end of wireless technology developments was stretched well beyond even my comfort zone. Where we talk about web 2.o, these guys talk about web 4.0 (there are no wiki results for this), where we talk about a wireless router, these guys talk about MiMO, and where we speak English, these guys (and girls) speak an entirely different language. I did enjoy the surfer surfing the net though!

I thought I might learn a bit about the APCO 25, satellite stuff with IPSTAR and BGAN and possibly software to provide cross-band connectivity. Instead, we covered cognitive radio, the move of TV frequencies, SASRATS, WiMAX, frequency selective surfaces and much, much more - WOW!

Although there was no talk about BGAN, and femtocell was passed off as just a fad, the day was interesting and assured me that there are people thinking about not just tomorrow but 10-15 years into the future and putting policies in place and doing research we will be the beneficiaries of. It is nice to know that we are out performing the Aussies in this area at the moment too!

Video and presentations from this day will be available on the RSM web site in the near future