Well respectfully I think you are wrong. For a number of reasons actually.
Dave, you need to have a little vision. I never said it would happen tomorrow, but it will happen. Perhaps it's just the sci-fi fan in me, perhaps it's more than 20 years in IT, but it will happen. It's happening already, and business actually here is leading the way with cloud.
Well maybe if that great sci-fi compensation for physics of sub space communications happens. Conventional RF communications though is constrained by real physical issues.
In the end the only way to get higher data rates is to up the transmit frequency. Higher frequency implies more limited coverage eventually leading to line of site only communications. In the context of mobile this sucks and can be seen in how AT&T had to lower the transmit frequency in cities with poor coverage on it's 3G network.
Bandwidth is an issue we will deal with - look at what's happened in just the last 10 years. In my home in 10 years I've gone from 56k dial up to 20Mb dedicated line.
There are massive differences between wired and RF connections. With a wired connection you can deliver data at the rate your electronics can handle to multiple customers. RF communications have to deal with not only the physical issues but also policy issues. For example do we force TV stations to give up even more bandwidth so that we can have better RF data coverage. It isn't just TV either as the spectrum is allocated to a number of users.
The issues really aren't even comparable between wired and RF.
To make statements like it is unlikely to *ever* happen is just ignoring what *is currently* happening and more importantly, it ignore the concept of technological progress.
You may not believe this but I was taking in to account progress including near term improvements and things farther out like 60GHz systems. You will of course get better data rates with such systems but at the same time end up with a host of other issues. These issues would make such services difficult at best for mobile users.
This is more than wishful thinking, it is happening already. Not as quickly as I'd like, but it is happening. You can't deny it, and to say it's just wishful thinking ignores everything going on today, and everything we can deliver tomorrow.
I'm not ignoreing anything here. Rather I'd like to think that I'm in the loop a little bit with what is happening in the labs today. Plus I see the telcoms industry practically in a panic looking for more spectrum because they already know they can't deliver the coverage that some of these cloud based ideas imply.
Frankly I'd be surprised to find that more than one percent of the population is making heavy use of RF data services at anyone time. What if that goes to five or ten percent. By heavy I mean streaming content, video phone service or things like movie downloads.
In effect these sorts of services, to mobile devices, require the bandwidth close to that of a personal TV station. If you accept that that is close enough then you should realize that not everybody can have their own transmitter without interference. Now one may say that is OK as the spectrum is shared and not everybody is using it at once.
To this I have to say that is exactly what cell communications is all about. The problem comes up when you start to have services streaming very large files over a very long period of time. With respect to 3G or 4G how many YouTube clients can the average cell tower handle? We have to already deal with reduced bit rates here when compared to WiFi.
I know many like to bash AT&T here like everything is their fault. But it isn't all AT&Ts fault. For a given RF bandwidth you can only push so much data. The problems are seen by every cell provider when user demand goes up such as at tech conferences or airports that get shut down in the middle of winter. Now think about a population where instead of one percent we have 50% of the people in the country making heavy use of data services. Where does the bandwidth come from.
In any event I still see cloud storage of music, videos and other content as pretty stupid. Especially music where repetition is often common. Similarly streaming music from the cloud is like having your personal FM station. Beyound the waste of energy here does it otherwise make sense?
I've rambled on here and didn't even Touch business issues. The point is though that we have a host of issues that makes cloud based media distribution questionable. It is so bad that I eventually see the government stepping in to heavily requlate the spectrum again. What is most bothersome is that of repetive streaming of content which is nothing but a waste of that limited bandwidth.
Dave
