Computers: Just another commodity?
Published: 03 Oct 2003 10:54 BST
The beauty of Wi-Fi is nobody has to buy spectrum -- it's public, open, available spectrum.
There is one thing I think is totally right on with the Wi-Fi model -- nobody has to buy spectrum. In the 1980s, the government was selling spectrum and carriers had to pay huge amounts of money for it. The beauty of Wi-Fi is nobody has to buy spectrum -- it's public, open, available spectrum. It is a much better model for innovation, because the focus then is on lots of people creating things that would be impossible for any one company to try to dream up. For example, in the computer industry, the best applications really came from entrepreneurs who became real innovators. These kinds of applications didn't come from the big established companies. I would suspect the same thing will happen to Wi-Fi, or the descendents of Wi-Fi. The chance for entrepreneurs and innovators to create new things will probably come from start-ups, not from giant corporations.
On the software side of Wi-Fi, where will be the potential beyond VPNs and security?
I believe that the first phase of really commercialising Wi-Fi will be moving into application areas that are already being served in a tethered world. But they can be served even better when you have highly reliable, high-quality services that are secured for everything from health care to financial services to business processes.
The addition of domain expertise and the recognition that technologies are often developed faster than you can change people's behaviour to adopt them have to be put into the equation. So, while a lot of technical brilliance will be focused on improving the technologies, I think there will have to be parallel tracks on developing the domain expertise, as well as developing the ways of making consumers motivated to want to use these kinds of products. So, the user interface will be just as important in the mobile communications world as the user interface has been in the personal computer industry for the last 25 years.
As an investor and partner with Sculley Brothers, what areas are capturing your attention?
We actually have been harvesting some investments...I am personally interested in the whole area of high-definition television, so we're doing some experimental development at a very, very early stage. There are some possibilities there, but only time will tell whether that will actually turn into a commercial opportunity.
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