LTE : Open Technology

One fine evening I was browsing through books in shopping mall. I saw this book called "What Would Google Do?" . I already knew about this, so i picked up a copy and started reading it. I am half way through. Amazon link here

Its an amazing book written by Jeff Jarvis. The book talks of google as a platform, as an elegant organization, as a paradigm shift to many. I totally agree with it. As I read the book I started comparing LTE to Google. Sounds strange but yes I started doing it.

Lets start with Google. Google started as a search engine crawling millions of sites. Slowly google became a platform to so many things. Google shared it revenue with its user by AdSense. Google very intelligently directs the users to their destination. Google takes inputs from users and gets better with every click. Google gave out the APIs to the developers to write applications over it. Google started to become a converging point.

So google is an open technology and every one is making money out of it.

Long Term Evolution. The vision of LTE is convergence. Single global standard for mobile communication. LTE is providing a platform for all the technologies to coexist and converge. Mark Zuckerberg of Face book once said "Communities already exists. They are looking for a platform to communicate better. Its a foolish thought to start/control a community". Facebook later opened to developer who wrote numerous applications over it thus increasing the popularity of facebook. This has made lot of money not only to Facebook but also to the developers. Same is the case with IPhone. So many apps over IPhone and apple is benefitting so are developers. These all are open technologies/platforms where every one is benefitted.

Similar to this LTE is giving a platform to 2G/3G Wimax, Wlan networks to converge. Thus helping user move from one technology to other seamlessly. I would say LTE is a open technology not controlled by single entity. Its becoming a platform for all the techonolgies/users/companies/developers. With high speeds are emerging devices. With emerging devices are emerging applications. With applications, developers are emerging. In this process a lot of money is flowing. So every one is earning. More and more people are opening up. The one who doesnt open up are gone. For example yahoo. Yahoo tried to control the media for a long and now its going no where.

When I started reading LTE 8 months back I found no technical information about it in the internet except for the 3GPP specs. Then I decided to start a blog and write about how LTE works. I am not an expert but I try to publish what I read. Later I saw people reading the blog and posting their comments. Now, people working on LTE are already there. My blog is just providing a way to communicate. So blog is an open platform. If I start controlling the platform I will loose my readers.

The future is Open. Ajit Jaokar of Open Gardens writes a lot about Open technologies and systems. I encourage you to read the blog regularly.

To conclude, get hold of the above book. Read it and try to see if your business fits in that line.

Comments are greatly welcome