March 2009 – Creative Connectivity

ZigBee and the evil radios

Ten years ago, Bluetooth, 802.11 and HomeRF were engaged in an acrimonious battle for supremacy over leadership as the short range radio standard. HomeRF died, and in the following years Bluetooth and 802.11 found their areas of application and now coexist together, to the extent of joining forces in the new Bluetooth 3.0 specification. Today a new and ferocious fight is taking place for the role of ultra low power radio champion. This time, there is likely to be just one winner.

In the two main corners of the ring are ZigBee PRO and Bluetooth low energy (previously known as Wibree). Alongside them, throwing lighter punches, are an array of lesser contenders, including Z-Wave, ANT, Wavenis, and Wireless M-Bus. What is at stake is the prize of becoming the standard for connecting low power consumer products to the next generation of mobile phones and enabling smart energy devices within the home.

Will App Stores castrate the Mobile Operators?

Apple’s App Store is the flavour of the month in the mobile world. Everyone in mobile wants to have their own. At the Mobile World Congress operators and manufacturers were all jumping on the bandwagon and announcing their individual flavour of App Store, coming soon to a phone near you.

What wasn’t mentioned is how the App Store is redefining the relationships between the customer, the handset manufacturer and the network operator. I believe that it has the potential to drastically change the balance, with the network operator being emasculated and facing a future of becoming the dreaded “dumb pipe”. There may be a way out for them, but it will involve their thinking along very different and radical lines.

Could Assisted Living provide Life after Financial Services?

At some point in the future, we’re going to come out of recession. What’s almost certain is that the economic landscape will have changed. One of the changes is likely to be a major reduction in the size and strength of the financial services sector. There’s a strong possibility that it will not be the economic powerhouse that it has been over the previous decade. Which raises the question of what will take its place?

One of the candidates being talked about is healthcare. We are entering recession with a population that is ageing. Politicians are talking about the need to reform healthcare systems to cope with this demographic change, as well as with the rising levels of long term, chronic conditions within the population at large. In most of the Western world healthcare currently accounts for around 10% of GDP, rising to almost 20% in the US. It could be that heaIthcare will become the focus for the next major service development.

Over the next few weeks in the UK, conferences are taking place that look at the structure and needs of Assisted Living, as well as the funding that is available. These include a themed networking event at de Montfort University (which is free to attend) and an in-depth, two day conference run by the IET in London. In the same fortnight, at least three other smaller scale conferences are running at other venues in the UK. The interest level is definitely rising.

Healthcare needs to change and evolve. If innovators rise to the challenge we may see Assisted Living and eHealth move from their current position of “poor cousins” to become as mainstream and as important to our economies as other services have been in the past. I’ll be speaking and posting reports from these conferences to indicate the temperature. I hope to meet some of you there.