Telstra's official corporate blog featuring informed commentary and an exchange of views on Telstra, the Australian telecommunications industry and broader technology issues.
The Mobile World Congress, held every February in Barcelona since 2006 (when it outgrew its previous home in Cannes), is truly an event of global significance. It is hard to imagine a country in the world that does not have some stake in the mobile industry and most of them – from the richest to the poorest – seem to attend.
With about 2/3 of the world’s population now using a mobile phone (the number of subscriptions is estimated at about 4.6bn globally), the focus of the discussion at Barcelona was dominated by 2 themes – (a) Mobile Broadband and (b) the Mobile Internet. What is the difference, I hear you say? Well, Mobile Broadband is about the provision of broadband pipes to mobile users, many of whom use laptops or netbooks to access the Internet on the move. The Mobile Internet, on the other hand, is about users accessing Internet resources from the device that is always with them, namely their handset. Most of the world’s population will be accessing the Internet by the end of the decade, but they will be doing it from their handsets not computers. Even in developed (aka “rich”) countries, while most people will still have a computer to access the Internet (using both fixed and wireless broadband), we shall also be using the mobile Internet while we are out and about. As the experience improves (in the way I discuss below), many people may choose to make this their primary form of Internet access.
At this year’s ad:tech conference in Sydney, I am moderating the session ‘What is the Impact of Social Content on e-Commerce?’
With the majority of businesses working out what their connection between social content and e-Commerce is, I suspect the most valuable session outcome will be the diverse points of view offered through the presentations and the Q&A.
So to kick off the discussion, I’d like to float out the idea that you can’t discuss the impact between social content and e-Commerce without first recognising where the connection exists.
Working at Telstra, I get to see a lot of innovation, where people have great technology and great ideas but they struggle to get these to market. So I decided to formalise a process where we could work with the best innovations we could find and help these get to market and strengthen the engagement we have with the R&D community in Australia.
In undertaking this process it made me rethink on what is innovation, and how can a corporate best do R&D engagement.
This week I decided to increase my musical instrument collection and purchase a ukulele. Don’t adjust your screen. You read correctly. A ukulele.
Why a ukulele? Isn’t that something limited to the Hawaiian Islands or Tiny Tim? Do people actually play them? Aren’t they a toy? A poor person’s guitar?
Since October 2008, Telstra has been active in supporting customers in the social media network called Twitter.
For those that aren’t familiar with our team, during the work week we connect with BigPond and Telstra customers and anyone else who is seeking support or information about Telstra products and services.
