The Essence of “Ubiquitous”

The West generally knows little about the ubiquitous wave that has swept into Korean and Japanese information and telecom technology with a lot of energy and enthusiasm. In some measure Westerners are hampered by a perplexing language issue.

Korea and Japan both attest to having passed from the e-era to the u-era. Is this just buzz?

Our new report U-Essence is yet another attempt to get to grips with the core of the ubiquitous. In the report we search for the essence and future of the u-era.

In general, computers have evolved from detached uncommunicative beasts to being vital to human communication. Computers, no longer detached, now control much of our everyday reality. The revolution in radio communication has made short range radio quite affordable. This technology opens up for ad hoc networks set up automatically by intelligent devices. The ubiquitous is part of these overall trends, and also a driving force.

The u-era demands ever increasing mobile networking capacity. It drives the mobile telephony networks towards becoming generic media suppliers where telephony is a side effect.

A true mark of the u-era is communicating things outnumbering people, creating the Internet of things. There is a “device big bang”. Imagine, for instance, your u-home: The refrigerator, the heating and lighting systems and many other things communicate with you wherever you are. In this case we see the need for a new infrastructure. The mobile phone has its network, personal computing has its Internet, but your refrigerator does not yet have something to plug into. Until there are widely accepted standards this need will most likely be met by proprietary solutions.

These trends, even individually, have the potential to upset current business models. Enterprises in the IT and telecom business will face intricate choices. Customers will probably meet rapidly changing offers.

See the download area for this and other reports