Smart Cities Are Mobile Cities – Part I

By Bradley Smith

The last decade has brought about a huge changes in mobility, and the way we use a mobile devices. Having been an employee in 2 of Australia’s mobile phone companies for more than 20 years, I’ve seen the changes filter through to the work place through gadgets and devices that are significantly changing the traditional method of doing things – and with 5G and NB-IoT in the “here and now”, the pace of change is about to ramp up even more.

2G and Before …

I started in Sydney during the first years of the 2G “digital rollout” in 1994 with Optus getting into the spirit of delivering the first 100 sites. They continued to build and were able to celebrate by way of their marketing department producing a (private) video of the Optus 500th Site – which has appeared on YouTube many years after it was produced; a parody of the way all Telco’s have traditionally looked for mobile communications towers. (I hope no one got sued over that video.)

Telstra’s mobile “analogue” (ok, let’s call it 1G) was around back then, and Optus made its first $50M on the back of reselling the analogue network the first year or so. That was big money for the Telco, not knowing exactly if mobile was going to be profitable or not, because the mindset at the time was still firmly rooted in copper to the home. It was a “gamble” that has since paid off handsomely, albeit that there’s been some heart-stopping moments in the Board Rooms since that time. But at the time, the race to dominate the “fixed” market (along with the super-league fiasco and Telstra cable) meant that Optus jumped in with Channel 7 to get Optus Vision cable to as many premises as possible, before the Government’s horizon clause ban on the stringing of the infamous grey cable across power poles was to take effect. Eventually Optus bought out 7’s shares and became a 100% owned company, but not without it’s ups and downs.

3G and Beyond

The 3G mobile networks kicked off here in Australia around 2003 and were fully in play by 2006, with the main players being the Telco’s that introduced their own platforms to handle the “mobile data revolution”. I cringe now thinking about the Optus Zoo package on my trusty Nokia handset, that wanted me to confirm with a click on the popup “yes” confirmation for each time I requested to use my data allowance on the phone. I guess at $20 a Meg they really wanted to protect their customers from bill shock – but for me it proved to be more of a nuisance than a help.

It wasn’t until 2007 that Apple essentially kicked off the mobility revolution with the introduction of the iPhone; mobile touch screen interfaces radicalised the way we interact with our phones. Until then, the handsets had not so user friendly interfaces that put us through hoops to interact with basic things such as email and the internet.

This birthed the “mobile internet revolution”, leading to a huge change in the way Google sorted their index, introducing a range of penalties for websites that were not “mobile friendly” at the end of that decade. Slowly most sites have been updated to avoid the “pinch and zoom” functionality that we had become accustomed to with on our new-fangled smart phone touch screens. Now in 2017 about 10% of websites remain as old-school traditional HTML style design, as the search engines push for a better customer experience to cater for mobility in their search algorithms.

And then there was 4G

The 4G network rollouts started to gain momentum early this decade, with all three Carriers jumping on board to deliver super-fast mobile broadband speeds that are faster than the NBN. Well the NBN wasn’t even around then, so I shouldn’t really compare, but even now as we move into the era of 4.5G over the next 3 years or so we can expect data speeds to triple under the “Gigabit sites” that are rolling out now.

This is all good news for customers, who can demand much larger data usage allowances at lower cost. Now the NBN has introduced data services for our country folk that can be delivered more quickly than ripping up the streets, simply by installing “traditional” mobile phone towers around the landscape. I haven’t speed tested it, but word on the street is suggesting that NBN wireless is faster than NBN wired :)

At this point in time, both Optus and Telstra have said “bye-bye” to their 2G networks, which has enabled Telstra to roll out 4G on the 900 MHz band to complement their other LTE low-band offerings. Vodafone will switch off 2G next year, allowing for people on any 2G device the extra time to migrate and upgrade their phones.

5G and the future …

The mobile landscape is changing rapidly to allow for the introduction of 5G technology, which Telstra and Optus are hoping to release by March 2018 in time for the Gold Coast Commonwealth Games. This new technology isn’t simply a faster edition of the 3G and 4G services, but allows for a diversity of different services that enable mobility to be incorporated into just about every device.

Even now the introduction of NB-IoT promises to change the way we live and work significantly – with data measurement devices that have low battery usage for remote monitoring services claiming to be able to last 10 years or longer.

So now we’re hooked on mobility, it’s time to discuss how this is going to shape our community and see where this is all heading. That’s the discussion for my next article. Stay tuned !

Coming soon: Smart Cities are Mobile Cities, Part II