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Disruptive Technologies For Next 5 Years 94

Posted by CowboyNeal from the gazing-into-the-future dept.
prostoalex writes "America's Network magazine, the publication serving to telecom industry, takes a look at the disruptive technologies over the next five years. Disruptive, naturally, for telecom industry. Virtual keyboards, DWDM, broadband connections using powerlines, wearable computers, free-space optics, low-power devices, UltraWideBand, voice over 802.11b and numerous others are discussed, as well as their potential for development over the next five years."
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Disruptive Technologies For Next 5 Years More

Disruptive Technologies For Next 5 Years

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  • "Virtual keyboards, DWDM, broadband connections using powerlines, wearable computers, free-space optics, low-power devices, UltraWideBand, voice over 802.11b"

    anyways, back to all these technologies being overkill...
  • I heard rumors that the computer technology used in Minority Report exists and is usable but it just hasn't been phased into the mainstream yet. Probably not a big enough target audience or something.

    It sure would be nice to just swipe the pr0n off the screen whenever anyone walked into the room ;)
    • That "technology" exists today: Esc Ctrl-C Alt+F4
    • You're referring to this [bizjournals.com].
    • Glass computers? Cerial boxes with video? Floaty holograms?

      Asside from display technology, the only diffrence between the computers they had and the ones we have is that you could hook psychics up to their computers and see the future.

      I don't think we have that yet..
    • Some of it could be done. I was very unimpressed with the video scrubing stuff that Cruise was doing (to decipher the precogs visions). He was wearing gloves that emitted lights. Using merely 2 cameras (but probably more), it would be EASY, even trivial, to determine where the hands are in space and how they are oriented by tracking the lights on the gloves. That could be done TODAY, and is done today in motion capture (MOCAP) setups for special effects work. One MOCAP company, Vicon [vicon.com], does something similar, using white ping-pong balls on black outfits and an array of cameras.

      But fifty years in the future, even 10 years hence for some cases, one would not need special gloves or such obvious markers. Computer vision should certainly be able to track subtle hand movements in 3-D space, as well as facial expressions.

      The rest of the video scrubing stuff just looked like advanced Avid nonlinear editing software. Now, the AI in Blade Runner and 2001 is still way, way cutting edge, perhaps beyond our lifetimes, assuming average body mileage.

  • You can include slashdotting (Score:5, Funny)

    by xyote ( 598794 ) on Saturday December 21, 2002 @11:43AM (#4936359)
    as a disruptive technology.

  • Can't wait for VOIP as alternative to telco. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 21, 2002 @11:46AM (#4936371)
    I can't wait for VOIP to be a viable solution.

    As someone who had a feud with the local phone company and refused to pay the outrageous bill that I wasn't responsible for (~ $750, defrauded by a roommate.. long story, phone was in his name, and he switched it to mine with a huge balance), I can no longer get service from them, and my credit is so screwed that the deposit on a cell phone is huge.

    It seems that I'll get phone service in 7 years or when VOIP becomes viable, whichever comes first.
    • Vonage works reasonably well for me, but I can't count on all of the routers between my home and them observing quality-of-service indications in the IP packet. This expecially since I don't pay my internet provider for any voice-grade quality-of-service. VOIP will work well when it is a direct service of your internet provider and they have an incentive to make the transport work correctly.

      It happens, however, that most of the problems that come up are on the first hop between my site and my internet provider's, and I can control them. I can't guarantee that this will always be the case.

      Bruce

    • It's allreadby being tried =D

      My ISP, Sonera, here in finland has just recently started offering a 'Internet Phone' system, you can call within the system, out from the system to normal phones (and cells ofc) and from normal phones to it =) they give you normal phone number and all.
      costs around 6euros/month, and then there are joining & opening costs also...
      call to normal phones is 4euro cents/min.
      From normal phone to that is 8,21snt/call + 0,5snt/min.

      So if you'd live in Finland you could get it allready, although i don't know do they require you to get your internet access from them also...

  • Disrupt business? Only if you're stupid. (Score:5, Informative)

    by bigberk ( 547360 ) <bigberk@users.pc9.org> on Saturday December 21, 2002 @11:51AM (#4936396)

    The technologies mentioned are, I think tremendously exciting! DWDM is something I've always thought of ever since I got into computer engineering; a natural use for fiber. And the electrical power line broadband --- this can truly extend broadband to the far reaches of the globe in areas where the power distribution system allows it.

    But note the negative tone in the article - "Here are the technologies ... that are coming to disrupt your business". Am I misunderstanding the meaning of "disrupt"?

    I think there's something wrong if our business leaders are looking at technology advancements as problems. Adapt, you stupid sh*ts! Get off your lazy asses, hire competent people in the new fields, and make a fortune.

    There was an article in the December 2002 issue of IEEE Spectrum ("Paving the Last Mile With Glass") that talked about phone companies struggling to match cable companies in offering services via fiber optic connections in homes. Same idea. The phone companies that adapt to this technology advanacement remain. The others ("oooh no, it's disruptive, I'm scared!") disappear.

    • Re:Disrupt business? Only if you're stupid. (Score:4, Informative)

      by athakur999 ( 44340 ) on Saturday December 21, 2002 @12:16PM (#4936485) Journal
      "Disruptive technology" more or less means something that'll change the way business is done. It means, as you said, that companies will have to adapt and find new ways to make money. It doesn't mean anything negative.
    • "Disruptive" to a business is something that threatens to force existing businesses to change what they're doing. The Internet has already done this to many catalog merchants... those who did not sucessfully adapt their prine catalog into a web site are no longer with us, meanwhile Amazon.com who never had a print catalog is now one of the top mail-order firms out there.

      The two options for how to react to a disruptive technology is to either embrace it or to try to stomp it down. Embracing a flawed technology (or a flawed implementation of that technology) can bring down the company, but so can a failed attempt to ignore a technology.
    • DWDM is a technology that has been around for many used. Not only has it been around for a long time, it is heavly used by the telecom industry. It is a great way to increase throughput without more fiber. The disruptive technology in the telecom industry will be a number of technlogies that are either here already or just aonrd the corner. In the case of DWDM, highly integrated modules and widely tunable laser source would bring the cost of high speed transmission way down. In the metro area CWDM (Coarse WDM) is expected to bring WDM to masses so to speak. CWDM does require the same expensive laser sources, as well as passive components, as DWDM. Should be the next big thing for short haul commnications.

    • Re:Disrupt business? Only if you're stupid. (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Dude, "disruptive technologies" is an idiom. It means something other than what you think it means. Geez. Easy on the coffee.

  • article (Score:4, Funny)

    by naChoZ ( 61273 ) on Saturday December 21, 2002 @11:56AM (#4936412) Homepage Journal
    geez, 10 minutes after posting: Could not connect to JRun Server

    Do they talk about cable infrastructure did anyone catch?

    Forthcoming improvements to cable technology might be considered disruptive. There's stuff pretty close to market that uses 860 to 1000Mhz for up and downstream, split right down the middle. Supposedly capable of a whopping 100Mbps. Problem is that the bulk of cable plants in the country are only capable of frequencies up to 750Mhz and some of the real backwoods mom-and-pop's only something like 360Mhz.

    • No but I can :)

      I have been covering this subject for about two week swith the advent of a set box on achip coming out and the decision by TV amanufacturers and cable providers to ask the FCC for approval to allow set boxes on a chip to be installe din all HDTVs..

      Maybe slashdot shoud be reading my weblog?

      I think realistically as new money flows in from HDTV-iTV/DTV to those in the know- that this money will be used by big cable providders to buy up mom and pops and build out their systems to implement technology using the new higher speeds..

      Rigth now everyone is awitng for the next revemue influsx to allow them to do exactly that step..
      • that this money will be used by big cable providders to buy up mom and pops and build out their systems to implement technology using the new higher speeds

        Not as easy as you might think. You just wouldn't believe what a phenomenal PITA it is to for a town to change cable providers. It's almost literally an alignment of the stars and moon and crap. It's ridiculous and often takes a year at the earliest. The legalese is voluminous beyond belief. Delays are numerous and sometimes the towns can get downright demanding in want they want from the cable company, too. Like saying they want the cable company to implement and manage a fiber ring between all their town offices and crazy shit like that.

  • excellent (Score:3, Interesting)

    by middle ( 628908 ) on Saturday December 21, 2002 @11:58AM (#4936420)
    we'd continue this way, in 5 years a boss will be able to disrupt the Wi-Fi TV on the bedroom of an employee, saturday night, just to ask if everything is f*****g wired for tomorrow's presentation...
    • we'd continue this way, in 5 years a boss will be able to disrupt the Wi-Fi TV on the bedroom of an employee, saturday night, just to ask if everything is f*****g wired for tomorrow's presentation...


      Sounds like something out of Back to the Future II:

      Marty gets up. Behind him, a Japanese man appears on the screen. It's Marty's boss, Iko Fujitsu - aka the JITZ!

      Jitz: McFly!

      Jennifer jumps at this. Marty turns around to see his boss.

      Marty: Oh! Fujitsu-san! Konnichi wa! (this means "Hello Mr Fujitsu" more or less)

      Jitz: McFly! I was monitoring that scan you just interfaced. You are terminated!

      Marty: Terminated! No, no! It wasn't my fault sir, it was Needles, Needles was behind the whole thing!

      Jitz: And you co-operated!

      Marty: No I didn't! It was a sting operation! I was setting him up!

      Jitz: McFly, read my fax!

      The words You're Fired appear on screen, and the Jitz walks away.

      Marty: Please no, I can't be fired - I'm fired!

      Fax machines throughout the house print off You're Fired as well. One is near Jennifer. She takes it and look at it, horrified.

      Welcome to the future Gentlemen. All your Wi-Fi interfaces are belong to us. Lets hope they have better encryption by 2015. :-)

  • JRun Connector Protocol Error (Score:4, Funny)

    by NWT ( 540003 ) on Saturday December 21, 2002 @11:59AM (#4936425) Homepage
    hope that technology isn't on the list ...
  • Bad Technology for telcos = Good Technology for us?

  • Except that some of these are already dead (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Bruce Perens ( 3872 ) <bruce@perens.com> on Saturday December 21, 2002 @12:00PM (#4936431) Homepage Journal
    Except that some of these "disruptive" technologies are already dead.

    Powerline networking. It's sort of like one of those bad movie monsters that you just can't kill. Every few years, another sequel. It has tremendous promise if you can just work out those little technical problems. But you can't. Too much noise, and they radiate, and have all sorts of reactances along the way to mess up your signal with attenuation and reflections. The best proposal for powerline networking I've seen has been to use long-distance power lines to duct microwave transmissions. But that's not broadband to the home, it's a cheap backbone with medium speed, and imagine how much better it would work if they just put a fiber along the same right-of-way.

    Ultra wideband for low power, local devices is going to lose because the other transports for those devices, like bluetooth and 802.11, won't be more expensive and have fewer problems. Maybe UWB will have a few uses, but it's not going to be a big deal.

    Virtual keyboards?!?! Disruptive, right.

    Folks, take all of this with a big grain of salt.

    Bruce

    • I don't know if I am arguing with you or supporting you or what, but I believe there was an article a while back on slashdot that talked about technology that used optical fibre as the structural core for last-mile power cables. I thought it was neat and appeared to be doable because fibres are light and strong, and would have a dual purpose. As it stands, last mile power cables are currently made of a steel core wound with aluminum. Imagine the savings and benefits (granted, not for the steel companies) of using optical fibre as the core, or even using stronger composite fibres (think carbon fibre/nanotubes) as the structure mixed with optical fibre for data.
    • Bruce, I realize you're trolling here in an attempt to upset others, but I'll go ahead and reply anyway.

      Powerline networking. It has tremendous promise if you can just work out those little technical problems. But you can't.

      My company has been using this for the better part of the last decade and have optimized it such that all of your "impossible, altering side effects" no longer exist. You're right that's it's not just plug 'n play with this stuff, but don't confuse your own personal misgivings and proof that something is "impossible".
      • Well, I use X-10 in my home, but I don't use it for my networking backbone. And if it's not just plug-and-play, we're not talking consumer equipment, are we? For all I know, you could work for a power company and could be talking about 200 kHz signalling. Tell me what particular powerline networking you are using.

        Bruce

      • I thought about what you said a bit more. Am I trolling? No, I sincerely believe that these technologies are going to be losers for the applications for which they are promised. If I had a friend who was invested in either one, I'd tell that friend to cash out quickly. I also feel that the promises being made to investors in the name of both of these technologies border on fraud. Remember that when we talk to investors, we're not supposed to be talking about what is possible, but what is going to be practical. You can lose a lot of money on the merely possible.

        Bruce

    • You obviously are not familiar with UWB.

      WiFi and eventually 802.11a are lousy portable technologies due to power consumption.

      UWB is a very power efficient scheme and _inherently_ less expensive.

      UWB will make a difference if the FCC will let it - and they are showing a lot of signs of moving in that direction.

      It's biggest hurdle is the installed infrastructure problem. WiFi will be so pervasive it may be hard for UWB to become widely used for some time.
      • The US military has just decided it doesn't like 802.11a as it will interefere with their systems. Apparently. http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/59/28639.html
      • No, I am familiar with UWB. I am just not drinking the UWB kool-aid. The price of UWB vs. more conventional spread-spectrum wireless equipment is dependent on how much of the communications system you can pack into a single, inexpensive integrated circuit. At some point both systems converge on a sub-$1 component. We're very close to that point for bluetooth, and we don't have similar UWB components ready for use in consumer devices.

        Power utilization improvement vs. bluetooth isn't very convincing.

        Regarding 802.11a, when you arrive at the right trade off of power vs. bandwidth vs. processing gain vs. range, I'm not convinced that you will be able to demonstrate tremendously better power utilization in practice vs. a spread-spectrum system with similar characteristics.

        Bruce

        • I'm not convinced that you will be able to demonstrate tremendously better power utilization in practice vs. a spread-spectrum system with similar characteristics.

          Huh?

          You're not trolling me are you ? There is a very clear AND appreciable difference and the differences are rooted in communications theory. For similar data rates UWB has a dinstinct power advantage for multiple reasons which include the back-end processing. In other words the digital circuitry which handles the data is simpler and so there is a structural advantage. I guess we'll have to define "trememndously". As much as batteries still suck, I define trememendously as may be a 3x or 4x improvement, i.e. I claim that a 10Mbit/s radio which needs 1W, like 802.11B for instance, will only need .25 - .3W. And that's very conservative.

          I do agree that there is plenty of hype to go around on the UWB front and one should always be skeptical. The fact is that the hardware is significantly simpler than other radios and that includes bluetooth. So it will always maintain a cost advantage. Now if that advantage is $0.5 then yeah - who cares.

          And remember that Bluetooth had a lot of kool-aid associated with it. So far it is failing to deliver spectacularly, at least in the states.

    • Powerline networking.

      I've always thought the the great thing about networking along powerlines is that you can run a bundle of fiber alongside the power cables fairly cheaply and not have to worry about interference. As a bonus, you can power signal amplifiers pretty easily.

      Now, running bits through a 10Kv line, that's just crazy.

      • Actually, I'm currently working with a guy who supervised the running of fiber around DC. This was still pretty new, so his lead engineer said just bundle it with the 375k(357k?, I forget) line (the big towers). He asked, what happens if we get a lightning strike? "Ah, donno." So he made them run separated orange tubing (a good foot separation from any other conductor) with fiber inside so it wouldn't suffer arcing damage.

        So running fiber around high voltage is not crazy, as long as you plan it before-hand.

  • -1: Flamebait (Score:1, Flamebait)

    by kisrael ( 134664 )
    Hate to say it, but I think the disruptive "technology" for the next 5 years (to the telecom industry, and every other) is going to be a suitcase nuke, dirty bomb, or biological agent.
    • Just in case you do not know the term disruptive technologies [disruptive...logies.com] has a well defined meaning, as per the Havard Professor Clayton Christensen that coined the verbage.
      • "Disruptive Technologies" has a well defined meaning, yeah, but it also has a conventional meaning, and in the non-technical sense, I think these lowend technologies will cause more disruptions to our lives and industries than some cool new cellphone device.

  • In other words (Score:5, Interesting)

    by TerryAtWork ( 598364 ) <research@aceretail.com> on Saturday December 21, 2002 @12:04PM (#4936441)
    The entire system will fly even more out of control of the courts, lawyers, suits, VPs in charge of things even more so then it is now.

    People will be running encrypted private channels to each other all over hell's half acre and sending mp3s, videos, and pr0n everywhere and no one will even know its happening.

    Creativity no one could possibly imagine will explode even more so than now.

    The politically incorrect will run their annoying but harmless web sites much to the caterwauling of certain loud people, and, yes, the kiddy porners will run their kiddy porn and the cops will have a hard but not impossible time tracking them down.

    People will be taking advantage and other people HATE when that happens.

    The call will ring out for a crackdown, but the only place it's easy being a policeman is in a police state and that's what we will be moving AWAY from with these new disruptive technologies

    Then, one day, it will all come to a head.

    The whole net in the USA goes through a few choke points (more ever day but still only a few)

    By sizing these few points, banning cryptography (except for their friends the credit card companies of course) and implementing Total Information Awareness the US government can ALMOST control the whole net. They can certainly screw it up real good.

    Then, treating censorship as damage, the world's data flow will go AROUND the USA and America will have lost the net.

    Who does the net belong to? The users or the suits?

    This matter will get bigger and bigger, approaching critical mass.

    And then, one way or the other, it will tip.

  • D-something Wave Division Multiplexing? The site has been slashdotted to hell. what does DWDM stand for?
    • Dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) is a technology that puts data from different sources together on an optical fiber, with each signal carried at the same time on its own separate light wavelength. Using DWDM, up to 80 (and theoretically more) separate wavelengths or channels of data can be multiplexed into a lightstream transmitted on a single optical fiber. Each channel carries a time division multiplexed (TDM) signal. In a system with each channel carrying 2.5 Gbps (billion bits per second), up to 200 billion bits can be delivered a second by the optical fiber. DWDM is also sometimes called wave division multiplexing (WDM).

      Since each channel is demultiplexed at the end of the transmission back into the original source, different data formats being transmitted at different data rates can be transmitted together. Specifically, Internet (IP) data, Synchronous Optical Network data (SONET), and asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) data can all be travelling at the same time within the optical fiber.

      DWDM promises to solve the "fiber exhaust" problem and is expected to be the central technology in the all-optical networks of the future.
    • Dense Wave Division Multiplexing, as contrasted with CWDM, Coarse Wave Division Multiplexing. CWDM involves putting ~2 frequencies of light on the same fiber - DWDM can be 64 frequencies and up.
    • Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing. A way to send many wavelengths down an optical fibre. Can be used with fibre already in the ground to increase its capacity manyfold as the upgrade is in the transmitter and the receiver and basically involves better filtering.

  • Scared of anything new (Score:5, Interesting)

    by silas_moeckel ( 234313 ) <silas AT dsminc-corp DOT com> on Saturday December 21, 2002 @12:14PM (#4936478) Homepage
    Am I the only one that looks at this like the list of things that will stop the telcos from making gobs of money (and of course hiding it all) DWDM works it works well and realy it's a good application of resources. Once it's in place adding circuts is easy and has not realy month to month cost just an initial cost to buy linecards and you can get a dedicated peice of fiber for less that the local loop of a DS3. It's all about the distance the in state media length runs that are the bread and butter of your average telo may go away. T1's are getting replaced by wireless and open laser for the short runs like main office to satalite office in a city etc. And lets face it DWDM lets one very important thing be done use ethernet for the connection. I can get a DWDM setup from CT to NYC in a building that has 30 IPS's or so (The old port authority building) that one run will cost me less than the local loop on a DS3. I can provition it as 100bt ethernet so each end can go to a switch and get agrigated up to the router or go to a virtual router interface on the switch itself just like a common rack and bandwith customer. Thats a cheaper connection for each side. Now I can also go to any of the 30 other IPS's and get bandwith from them the same way I get the advantages of cheaper line cards on my router they can use there existing line cards for customer access. I am also not stuck with a single provider or long buildout times to get to a new provider some fiber in the building is easy to get installed and often can be setup in days not weeks or months.

    What does this boil down to getting rid of the metered bandwith middle man that the telcos are mostly because they have relied on time division muxing for so long. DWDM changes that once a single circut is provisioned you can pretty much keep adding channels as needed. This could lead to lots of mini naps being formed where carriers get some fiber into it and cross patch with customers and the funny thing is the telcos could be the perfect place they allready have buildings on nearly all the fiber runs and definatly a building every 70km or so for cheaper optics and lasers to be used. Last mile fiber could become a reality just plug your intermediate reach gbic in and get a provider on the other end a flat 100 bucks per megabit average and pay the telco for the fiber.
    • Am I the only one that looks at this like the list of things that will stop the telcos from making gobs of money

      What does this boil down to getting rid of the metered bandwith middle man that the telcos are mostly because they have relied on time division muxing for so long. DWDM changes that once a single circut is provisioned you can pretty much keep adding channels as needed.

      As long as the telco owns the fibre, you're screwed. Expect collusion between run owners to prevent you from attaching and configuring your own equipment at the termination points of the fibre. You want to add another channel? Sure, it'll only cost the telco tech labor for 5 minutes to change the line card configuration, but they're going to charge you per month. Don't think of this as disruptive to telco revenues, think of this as a massive increase to telco margins.
      • Actualy there are a lot of companies out there that own / lease the fiber and are more than willing to get it to your location. Telcos have to lease to them at telco rates that are pretty cheap. These guys are also looking for 5 10 and 20 year commitments thats great for businesees but horid for even a home owner.
        • These guys are also looking for 5 10 and 20 year commitments thats great for businesees but horid for even a home owner.

          That's no different from leasing a line from your local telco. Usually you pick a duration and you get the apropriate discount and if you cancel early you just pay the difference between what your discount was and what it should have been.

          I would think a homeowner is more likely to stay put for five years than a business, but the business would be better able to pay the cancelation fee...

  • One more (Score:1, Redundant)

    by Wolfier ( 94144 )
    Slashdotting (tm) 2.

    The original Sladotting, while disrupts the service of a web site with a 60% success rate, often fails to disrupt larger, more powerful sites, like Google, for example.

    Not for a new generation of this technology - based on real-time analysis of how much bandwidth a web server has, Slashdotting 2 will apply an adaptive function the clicks to a site. For example, for a site as powerful as Google, the function will likely be 50^x.

    "Undoubtedly," says user #534452, "This new generation of technology will take the Slashdotting experience to a completely new level. We're all very exited".

    "Better, Stronger, Slower! We can't wait for it!" says another user.

    Sites with high bandwidths such as New York Times, Google, and Yahoo declined to comment.
  • Actually I think the most disruptive thing is going to be the telcos themselves. They'll do anything to maintain their precious area based monopolies.

    Look at the example of how they behaved and are still behaving with regard to DSL provisioning.
  • Problem with European mobile networks is that they spent far far too much money on 3G network licenses and the technology. Now it seems they still haven't a killer app for it nor a delivery system outside of a lab. Even the almighty Ericsson and Nokia are struggling to get a transmitter out at a reasonable price. Across Europe, networks continually pull out of 3G network agreements (read up on the decline of BT to see a company have to pay a default twice on a 50% stake in 2 weeks - ouch).

    The reason Vodafone still has its triple-A credit rating, for those interested, is that it generally offers stocks in payment (or it has for the last couple of years)- thereby incurring no actual cash loss on its balance sheet. Since it continues to post a profit, banks will be happy to accept them for quite some time to come, I suspect. Neato, huh?

    BT ofc has now pulled back into Britain only- quite ironic when you consider its strategy in the 80s of becoming the world's dominant telco! Major losses in mobile comms and its loss of position as the only telco in the UK have contributed too but even so BT is really something of an embarassment to me (as a UK resident)- a lot of poor decisions and some bad luck were looking to cripple it and almost succeeded.

    Ah well, 4G will save us. Right, guys?
    • Or, to quote a BT engineer to me in 1992 "Our videophone is about to be released and in just a few years every phone in the country will have video."

      Poor decisions: Deciding to go with internal strategic ideas.

      Bad luck: strategic ideas were totally unrealistic.

  • My list of Disruptive tech (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    1. 250 GB hard drives - Now you can store 10 more gigs of media! Kind of makes you take a step back and say "Whoa! that changes everything!"

    2. Pentium 4 4.1 Ghz released - never before has this amount of processing power been on the desktop. Watch out of industry wide transformation.

    3. Even more media buttons available on the keyboard. The extra buttons will boost media usability from yawn to wow-tastic!

    4. 60x CD-R. Whereas the old 48x CD-R's were still slow, 60x CD-R will be such a vast improvement, it'll be like owning a new PC.

    5. Windows XP Security Patch Q2938193857 - this patch will make your PC more secure. Watch out for complete trustworthy, open computing after this patch.

    6. New $79 Palm device that has even less memory and fewer programs. This new black and white LCD device breaks yet another price barrier! This is change, baby!

  • They aughta put virgin on the list (Score:3, Informative)

    by jcsehak ( 559709 ) on Saturday December 21, 2002 @01:13PM (#4936691) Homepage
    You can get a cell phone from Virgin [virginmobile.com] for $60. Talk time is 25 cents a minute for the first 10 minutes, and 10 cents after that. What's so great about that? NO PLAN. You just buy these cards with extra minutes on them whenever you need more time to talk. Why should I spend $38 a month on home phone service? I rarely talk on the phone. Even if I make one 4-minute call each day, it'll still only add up to $30 a month. For the young single person, these are perfect.
    • That's been out in the UK for more than 2 years (maybe 3), I have a home phone because I have ADSL, and you can't unbundle the phone.

      I only use it for outbound and an answer phone, it doesn't even ring.

      Contract (or with plan) schemes are popular for heavier phone users.
      I currently hace a non-contract phone, and spend about $80 every couple of months. Calls are between 8 cents and 25 cents a minute depending which operator I'm calling.

      It's not disrupted the contact mobile phones but it does mean most of my friends don't have a land-line

    • Re:They aughta put virgin on the list (Score:3, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      For the young single person, these are perfect.

      Only if the person in question is a guy, and that guy does not have a girlfriend who wants to talk his ear off every frickin night telling him about her day and all her problems that she can't solve by her own frickin self. And who wants to share the same frickin stories about her other female coworkers and what sluts they are because of the clothes they wore that day, oh - and let me tell you about those clothes in extruciating detail - other than that... I'd guess I agree.
  • by extending optical Ethernet into the carrier network
    Ethernet is a local area network technology. The main advantage of Ethernet is the extreme simplicity of deployment with spanning tree protocol (SPP) taking care of proper frame forwarding. SPP is terribly unstable in a WAN environment, it has substandard QoS support and most implementations lack the proper management tools.
    There is absolutely no advantage of expanding Ethernet into the backbone. In the backbone you really need a layer 3 protocol such as IP or MPLS. Only reason I can think of is to invent a new technology and calling it Ethernet for marketing purposes.

  • Not PLC again (Score:2, Insightful)

    by mobileone ( 615808 )
    just plug in using a PLC adapter and you're ready to go.
    Come on. Power companies have talked about this for years. Everybody has had their trials.
    When you work out the business case it turns out that a radio modem is cheaper to produce and install than a PLC modem.
    Also electricity wires are terribly bad as communication media, with very low channel capacity (just ask Shannon). You can not transmit through transformers, or even between phases in multiphase installations.

  • Disruptive? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I think some rag editor is in love with buzz words. Nothing in the artical qualifies as disruptive technology for the telecom industry. Some might think wearable devices are, but they are not for two reasons. First they are not anything more then extensions of what we have today. Second, they are not a technology. They are the result of multiple technologies. For them to be disruptive ( other then causing traffic accidents) they will need something else. That something else would be considered the disruptive technology, because it will also change a lot of other things. Two examples: The domestication of the dog was truley disruptive, while the development of herd guard dogs was just an advancment. Cell phones are not a disruptive technology; spread spectrum communication techniques are, and have disrupted more things then just the way we use phones.

  • The most important characteristic of a disruptive technology, is that you don't recognize that it's coming until it's (almost?) too late.

    Technology improvements aren't necessarily disruptive. Not even big ones. If you can see them coming from 5 years away they don't qualify. (At least not if you can take them seriously.) This doesn't even mean that you can do anything about it. The sun going nova would be disruptive, but if we could predict that it would happen in five years... well, the technology to make the prediction might well qualify as disruptive. The explosion itself wouldn't (despite the fact that any plain reading of the words would call it such).

    A disruptive technology has certain characteristics:
    1) you can't see it coming until it's (almost?) too late
    2) it implies huge changes in the ways that you do things
    3) At some point you will need to take a loss. If you do it at the right time, your benefit will eventually surpass the loss, but picking the time is a gamble, and you need to comit yourself before the evidence appears. If you wait until it's clear, someone else will have taken the benefit, and you will probably go bankrupt (you may be able to recoup, but it will cost you.)
    4) It doesn't just change one small part of things. Changes happen across the board. (This effect, however, can be dispersed through time. Consider the personal computer.)

  • I loved the bit about... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Mac Degger ( 576336 ) on Saturday December 21, 2002 @06:29PM (#4937887) Journal
    ...the virtual keyboard...projected using infrared light. Now that's so usefull; a keyboard you can't see!
  • I can't imagine enjoying trying to type on something I can't feel.
  • Back in the early 60's, touch tone phones only had 10 buttons. Some
    military versions had 16, while the 12 button jobs were used only by people
    who had "diva" (digital inquiry, voice answerback) systems -- mainly banks.
    Since in those days, only Western Electric made "data sets" (modems) the
    problems of terminology were all Bell System. We used to struggle with
    written descriptions of dial pads that were unfamiliar to most people
    (most phones were rotary then.) Partly in jest, some AT&T engineering
    types (there was no marketing in the good old days, which is why they were
    the good old days) made up the term "octalthorpe" (note spelling) to denote
    the "pound sign." Presumably because it has 8 points sticking out. It
    never really caught on.

    - this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...

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