Artificial intelligence is, in a sense, like a UFO. Until it lands and submits for inspection, you’re free to assign to it whatever characteristics you find interesting. Network operations staff have only recently been facing an AI “landing” and so they’re only starting to assign specific characteristics to it, from which they can derive an…
Facing the Future of Tech, or Creating It
What is the future of tech? A lot of Wall Street professionals and a lot of investors are asking that question, given the NASDAQ correction. The problem with using stock prices as a measure of a market is that short-selling behavior can induce a slump just as easily as real market conditions. That obviously doesn’t…
The Street View of Cloud and Network Unification
No matter how complex a technology, you can always reduce it to dollars and cents, which is what Wall Street tends to do. Note, though, that while “cents” and “sense” have the same sound, focus on the former doesn’t always involve the latter. You can’t discount Street insight, but you can’t depend on it entirely….
Paths to the Edge: Metaverse Models or Metro Mesh?
Most experts I talk with, either on the enterprise side or among their vendors/operators, have been telling me for almost a decade that they truly believe that edge computing will be driven by some flavor of “augmented” or “virtual” reality. The “metaverse” concept we’re hearing so much about today is (IMHO) simply a variation on…
Building Bridges, Building Edges
Let’s say that you wanted to justify building a bridge between Lubec, Maine and Canada’s Westport, Nova Scotia, crossing the Bay of Fundy. It would be fair to say that such a bridge would be enabling for those who wanted to drive between the points quickly. Our new bridge would be about 50 miles long….
How’s the “Everything is Software” Trend Going?
Software, so they say, is taking over the world. I actually agree with this, and with a related premise that “hardware” and “network” companies have to not only think like software companies, but actually become one. These points raise the obvious question of how well everyone is doing, and fortunately there’s some Street research that…
Are Operators Considering a New Millimeter-Wave Option?
The more operators are confined to being access players, the more they have to worry about the cost of supporting connections. We all have to worry about that, in fact, because the division of the Internet ecosystem into plumbing and gold-plated toilet seats (so to speak) means that there’s a risk that the value we…
The Impact of a Shift Away From Ad Sponsorship
Our culture is replete with references to the importance of the path that money and value follow in commercial exchanges. “Follow the money” and “Show me the money” are two examples. As I pointed out last week in a blog, there are really two payment models in the world of Internet and tech today—the direct…
Amazon Extends Sidewalk from Neighbors to Smart Cities
If you need evidence that operators’ reluctance to deploy carrier cloud has far-reaching consequences, you only need to look at Amazon’s Sidewalk evolution for a proof point. Sidewalk, in its original form, was a strategy for sharing WiFi between homeowners and businesses to allow for better connection and control of IoT elements. Now, Amazon is…
Let’s Consider a Tech New-Year’s Resolution
New Year’s Resolutions are popular, perhaps in part because we know that we don’t usually keep them. Still, we feel better making them, so every year I look for some inspiration for my own. This year, I got it from, of all places, our legal system. Everyone will likely have their own take on the…