Wake Up Retailers! Dial Up Coke Is The Real Thing
Sydney Morning Herald
Tuesday April 17, 2001
Third generation technology has arrived and with it a business revolution.
For a couple of years now one of the favourite examples people have used to illustrate the consequences of the mobile phone revolution has been the ability to dial up a drink vending machine and have it deliver you a can of Coke, charged to your phone account.
This sort of thing has long been possible in Finland, where mobile phones have penetrated more than anywhere else. Finland is the home of Nokia, the world's biggest mobile phone company, and is apparently populated by people with little better to do with their time. Already the Finns have more mobile phones than wristwatches.
Now this wonderful thing is possible in Australia. Telstra and Coca-Cola have installed vending machines throughout Sydney's Central Station that allow you to dial up a Coke. We have truly entered the 21st century.
It is a trivial example of course, and it is just a trial. But it is important because it indicates the direction we are headed. There is no logical or technological reason why this sort of application could not be extended to any range of transactions. It requires cooperation between retailers and telecommunications companies, of course, but that is a contractual rather than a technical issue. The fact is that this sort of application is possible with current technology. What will be possible with some of the new mobile technologies that are just around the corner? The retail world will soon undergo a revolution as comprehensive as that which occurred when consumer credit cards became widespread nearly 30 years ago.
There are two key technologies that will drive this revolution. The first is Bluetooth, which I have written about in this column on a number of occasions. Bluetooth is a high bandwidth but short distance wireless technology that allows devices such as mobile phones, computers (including personal organisers) and cash registers to easily ``talk" to each other.
Instead of dialling up the coke machine, your mere presence in its vicinity will allow you to activate Bluetooth-enabled device to have it disgorge its contents on demand. Billing will go back through your credit card, which will be linked to your device.
The other nascent technology which is really a number of technologies is the so-called 3G mobile phone. You have probably heard a bit about this lately, perhaps through the Federal Government's predictably inept handling of the recent auction of the 3G radio spectrum. It hoped to raise $2.6 billion, and managed less than half that. Not a problem, says our ever-smirking Treasurer, who has rewritten history to claim he never expected the money in the first place.
3G stands for ``third generation". The first generation of mobile phones were analogue, the second generation is the digital phones we are using now. The third generation will also be digital, but it will have a much higher bandwidth. This will make Internet connection easier, which opens the door to a range of applications that we can only begin to imagine today.
The path to 3G will be a long and rocky one. The high prices paid by European telcos for 3G bandwidth leaves them with little money left in the short term to build the infrastructure, and in the US the bandwidth is being hogged by TV companies who refuse to budge from their lucrative patch of the ether. But the technology is there, and the financial and procedural issues will in time work themselves out.
Within five or 10 years we will live in a world where our mobile phones are connected to the Internet and to our bank accounts. We will not even think of them as phones, as they will be our primary means of running our lives.
The will not only incorporate our diaries and organisers, but also our credit cards, which will cease to exist as separate units. Cash will not disappear, but it will become unusual for most transactions.
These devices will, I believe, stop looking like phones. It seems logical that we will wear them, either on our wrists, Dick Tracy-like, or as integrated headsets. You already see people wandering around talking to themselves this will become an increasingly common phenomenon. Implants cannot be far off.
The current slowdown in the technology markets is unrelated to the onward march of technology. The so-called ``enabling technologies" high bandwidth wireless communications, small high resolution screens, voice recognition, artificial intelligence proceed apace.
So do the systems that derive from this technology, most particularly the seamless integration of the financial community, which will allow all transactions, no matter how small, to be part of the same global electronic trading house.
geepee@philipson.com.au
© 2001 Sydney Morning Herald
