Tuesday, February 13, 2007

One Internet or Several?


An issue clearly emerging in the wireless business is its need to figure out a way to unify the "wireline accessed" Internet and the "wireless accessed" Internet, including the latest generation of participatory Web 2.0 applications, says The Yankee Group analyst Matthew Hatton. Of course, that is going to raise a question mobile operators might not want to answer. The question is transparent access to such apps on the same basis users would have if they were using their fixed connections.

That's an issue because mobile historically has been among the most walled of walled gardens. Of course, there was a time when AOL's controlled experience seemed to be "the Internet" for lots of users, and we can see how that all turned out. This isn't going to be an easy tension to overcome, though there's no question it must be surmounted if a seamless Web experience, transparent to devices and networks, is to be obtained.

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