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1. The Wireless Industry Cinematographic Future
(disponible en español)
Posted by Jorge Guzman Olaya on Sep 10, 2013 9:26:51 AM
My Last Contribution to the SP Mobility Community
My career has taken a sudden change for the good, and for the last two months I have
been focusing on mastering a totally new set of skills, situation that has left me with
almost no time to write contributions for the community. To write for this space has been
enriching at so many levels of my life that is with a sense of loss that I write this last
entry. I want to thank all the people that read my blog entries and have left comments
and questions, all of you helped me to become a little better in something I never
thought I could do. From December 2011 to September 2013 I have addressed many
aspects of the wireless industry, a field that not only makes my living, but also is my
passion and my hobby.
For this last entry I wanted to let go a little bit the restrictions I impose myself on the
sources and scope of the content, to envision the wireless industry of the future, ahead
15 to 20 years; for sure, without hard restrictions this landscape is shaped more to my
desires and expectations on the field, but it also includes concepts; like current and past
industry evolution trends, current emerging technologies and normal service demands
from the user, aspects that I have identified over my years of experience working in the
industry. So here are nine aspects of the wireless industry of the future:
Image courtesy of Paola Buelvas (papolareina@yahoo.es)

2. 1. The Terminal
As today, several wireless devices will be used, but let’s talk about those which we will
carry on at every moment. The multi-tool device or device set integrated with our
anthropomorphism may be the norm in the future. Today’s smart glasses and smart
watches fuel my expectation for the terminal of the future, my idea is that the user will
have two main devices one “hands free” device maybe in the form of glasses and one
“handheld” device in the form of a “bracelet”, both used together through Enhanced
reality technology will extend the capabilities of the user interface making possible to
have an enhanced virtual display without the need of a physical one. Each one also can
work independently based on user needs, the bracelet will count with its own display
made of flexible materials making it practical to wear and use. The set will be
complemented by optional body sensors implanted or mounted on the human skin
controlled by one or the two main devices.
2. The Subscription
“Democratization” will be the concept ruling user subscriptions; users consume
connectivity (access to service) and services per se, connectivity would be based on the
type of service demanded by the user, meaning that one access provider will not always
be chosen to deliver all services on that can run on top of the connectivity, for example
the user may select one carrier provider for video streaming and another one for VoIP,
the selection process will be heavily influenced by QoX (Quality of service or
experience) that carrier provider can deliver for specific services, this doesn’t mean that
the user will have to switch between providers each time he or she needs to use a
service, but it means that the user will be able to, and will have its preference when it
comes to each kind of specific service. This will change the user databases structure of
the wireless industry and the charging mode. The main idea is to count with a global
subscriber database (to ease the roaming service as well), which will be consulted by
carrier and service providers (both providers will be needed), each time a subscriber
attach to a carrier provider, the service profile of this user will be downloaded from the
global database. Services will be added from various service providers depending on
user’s needs, like so carrier providers will charge based on time and amount of
connectivity demanded and service providers will charge based on agreed service.
3. The Providers
As mentioned above, users will be more obviously seduced by two types of providers
than today; those who will let you connect, and those who will provide the final service, I
don’t infer that a company cannot provide both (which will be pose a regulation
challenge since there’s no way to foresee network neutrality in such scenario), but my
intention is to highlight that user will not “belong” to any carrier provider, he/she will be
able to choose among the available providers based on many factors, forcing carriers
to fiercely compete in terms of presence, quality, options to deploy innovative services,
information about mass behaviors of wireless users (Big Data) to construct those

3. innovative services, among others. Service providers will benefit from the fact that their
service can be delivered by multiple networks and can foster new business models
based on Carrier-Service interactions. Finally taking into account the options available
today to construct service from Network capability abstraction platforms, I think that
users in the future will become protagonist in the production of new services that other
users will subscribe to.
4. The Usage habits
The concept of “Transparence of the service”. The idea behind this concept is that you
can transfer your ongoing service or subscription details among your devices on the go,
in real time, for example, if the user has a communication session going on his wireless
device set, while walking to his car from the office, when entering the car the on-board
system set identifies a communication session going and asks the customer if a
transference to the on-board system is required, if the customer decides to transfer the
session it will resume from the car system, if such session last long enough up to the
user final destination, when at home the TV set or the home conference system will
execute a similar procedure to ask permission to the customer to transfer the session to
a more convenient communication set depending on user situational context. This will
require the development of heavy coordination features and architectures covering,
Radio Access Types, Networks, Devices and others.
5. The Wireless Access Network
The “Multiple Layers” concept will be pervasive in the wireless access, massive
numbers of small cells within small cells, the separation of cells for uplink and downlink
will be possible; an optimized control plane will enable to handle the coordination of the
multiple layers and modes of the RAN, additionally this coordination will include the
interworking with various RAT (Radio Access Technologies, i.e. WiFi) to ensure
seamless mobility of the user, capabilities like SON (Self Organizing Networks) and
integration of the Cloud concept to the handling of resources (Pool-like) will be common.
Specific new applicability scenarios superseding M2M/MTC/D2D will emerge requiring
the development of new access technologies, Adhoc mesh networks using vehicles and
user devices will be mature adding flexibility and capacity to the RAN, so practical
download speeds around 1Gb per user may be realizable. Last but not least, energy
efficiency for the access network will become so important that national regulation
bodies will consider this aspect as a priority.
6. The Wireless Core Network
The core of the network will function mainly with the objective of provide quality of
experience to the user, this means the core must be able to implement, identify,
communicate, modify, control, report, provide matching and translation capabilities
between different inter domains of the core network, of quality service parameters to
realize the service; the core will also include context inference platforms that will

4. aggregate real time environment and social sensor information to identify the situational
context of the user to provide the right type of quality and services under the specific
usage contexts. Virtualization and Cloud concepts will also become common for core
network structures, another concept that will grow into the future will be the production
(and maybe commercialization) of Big Data models information taking advantage of the
data aggregation platforms receiving information from all the sensors and MTC that will
be functioning in the network. Finally the network will have very mature Self-service
composition engines, based on the concept of today network abstraction layers; these
engines will give the user the power to create services from other services and network
capabilities without the need of deep technical knowledge of telecom networks or
software developing skills.
7. The security
Security breaches will grow exponentially accompanying the growth of the wireless
industry, new business models will emerge founded in the premise of provide security
not only at corporate level but at an individual user level as well, the wireless user will
be 5 to 10 times more exposed than today to digital threats due to the proliferation of
devices, new usage habits, multiple network connection options and many other
aspects. Many security regulations and guidelines will be produced, but such
dispositions will also be quickly outdated and overruled by the cyber criminals.
Unfortunately I don´t see a brighter panorama for this topic.
8. The Spectrum
The infamous scarce resource. New chunks of spectrum will be included to the mobile
broadband usable resource both for the upper and lower extremes, techniques of
spectrum exploitation like shared spectrum, secondary usage through dynamic
cognitive radio and probably new techniques will be common and will be implemented in
several markets, at the same time the line that divides unlicensed and licensed
spectrum for the cellular service provider will fade to become a common pool. Global
harmonization process will be well ahead in the majority of big markets. And yes… it will
continue to be referred as a scarce resource.
9. The Regulation bodies
As commented above and to summarize, the national regulation bodies’ main items in
their agenda will be: Network power efficiency, Network neutrality, Harmonization of the
spectrum resources, protection of the user against cybercrime, and regulation of
electromagnetic emissions and the human health.
So there you have it, my final blog post for the community about my vision of
the future wireless industry.

5. For more, follow me on Twitter, @jomaguo
For all blog posts written by Jorge Guzman Olaya, please visit his Community Profile
Read this post in Spanish
For more discussions and topics around SP Mobility, please visit our Mobility Community:
http://cisco.com/go/mobilitycommunity