About the session
09.15 - Welcome and introduction to the conference from Peter Whale, Director of Product Marketing, Iotic-Labs Ltd, Chair of the Organising Committee
The 7th Future of Wireless International Conference makes its London debut on 23–24 June 2015 with the wireless industry facing a storm of disruption. Long-held
assumptions about growth and direction are being radically challenged. Is the industry which has been such a force for innovation since the first GSM phone call just twentyfour
years ago, now reaching an inflection point? It has become essential to the lives of nearly 5 billion people and generates trillions of dollars a year in revenue – but will it
ever look the same again?
Growth in the smartphone market is flattening, average revenue per user is declining, data usage is expanding rapidly. Competing operators share infrastructure, previously
a strategic asset, in order to manage costs. Value has moved to cloud providers with expertise in software and analytics providing innovative consumer services. There is not
enough spectrum for future growth and standards bodies seem out of touch with the pace of change and more focused on survival than real industry needs. Maybe the linear
progression model from 3G to 4G to 5G is broken, and 5G is one G too many? Is the industry that disrupted telecoms and changed the way people communicate for ever,
now past its sell by date and ripe to be disrupted in its turn?
And yet and yet…at the bleeding edge, things are in ferment. Billions of "things" will be connected using networks quite unlike the ones we use today. Many new products,
devices and appliances will be wirelessly connected, and opportunities to transform whole new industry sectors abound. More and more the default assumption is that
"everything will be connected" – and not with wires. Wireless is finding new application in the home, within government and businesses, in our hospitals, in our cars and in our
cities. In factories wireless is being used to eliminate cables on the production line, in electronic design wireless networks may be used to interconnect chips – and wireless
charging may finally break the last umbilical cord to the mains. The technology revolution has only just started. As with all revolutions, there will be unexpected changes and
new beneficiaries; existing players and structures may become obsolete or need to adapt radically.
With change comes opportunity as well as challenge. This year’s Future of Wireless International Conference will explore disruption and opportunity in the wireless industry
and challenge traditional assumptions.
