The secret to the success of any new service or application delivered over a wireless network is to hide the complexity of that network from the user. Require more than two manual steps, and you've blown it. Operators have shown they are becoming more adept at hiding complexity. But there is a new age of wireless coming, according to Andrew Lippman, head of the Media Lab's Viral Communications program at MIT. To those in his intellectual league, the vision may be one of simplicity, but it sounds to those of us still in the minor leagues like there will be a lot of complexity to hide.

In the October issue of Scientific American, Lippman described an age of wireless — not so far from now — where broadcast radio spectrum will become open and accessible everywhere by everything. He wrote of a new discipline, called network coding, that turns push-to-talk on its head and replaces it with a push-to-listen scenario that brings back the old party-line concept (sort of) where several transmissions are combined in a broadcast, and several user devices may be used to relay those transmissions to where they need to go.

Radios, he said, will cooperatively sense one another's proximity, use one another to economize radiated energy and battery life and make remote regions of spectrum available for personal use. The mobile phone itself will become a mere program that can be loaded into any physical radio-enabled engine. Lippman said, “No matter what you think of the wireless devices you have today, you ain't seen nothing yet. Radio is just getting interesting.”

The average user comprehends the four bars explanation of why they don't have a good connection. How will future network operators simplify the concept of a “molecular account” that uses other phones and building interference as re-transmitters of party-line broadcasts? Good luck.

COMMUNICATION SERVICE PROVIDER IPTV MARKET SHARE BY SUBSCRIBERS, FIRST HALF OF 2006

16% Other

19% PCCW

17% Free Telecom

10% Fastweb SpA

10% France Telecom

7% Telefonica

6% Softbank Yahoo Broadband

5% Chunghwa Telecom

3% Atlas Interactive

2% Qwest

2% Hong Kong Broadband

2% Manitoba Telecom

1% SaskTel

Source: OSS Observer