What is MOBS About? The Year of the Onslaught

Internally and externally, people have been asking me about MOBS and what it means.

MOBS stands for Mobile Omnipresent Business Solutions, and it's a conference I am putting together for mid-July on the West Coast.

The event’s focus will be still be on Inbuilding but will also encompass the evolving use of mobile throughout retail enterprises, health care, hospitality, public safety, university campuses, and more. It will bring together integrators, international and domestic carriers, professionals in WiMax, LTE, HSPA+, applications developers for Android, iPhone and more. It will also bring together entrepreneurs starting their own companies or managing existing companies that focus primarily on commerce for the mobile devices.

This is an evolving definition, since 2010 is the Year of the Onslaught. This is a year where we will see so many new devices and where behavior of the users of these devices will radically shape the way enterprises are run. If you are interested in being a part of this forum, you can leave a comment on this blog and I will get back to you.

Speaker Updates

It's that time of the production cycle when I let you all in on the fabulous companies that have come on board as speakers and supporters of the forum.

Here's a list of companies that will be supporting the Mobile Omnipresent Business Solutions forum with their speakers:

Reliance Communications (India)
Sprint Nextel
Mobients
T-Mobile
AT&T
Effective UI
Health Hero
Mobifoundry
Apisphere
TomTom (China)
WiMax Italia (Italy)
Tishman Technologies
Raytheon
Motorola
Federal Office for High Performance Green Buildings -- U.S. General Services Administration
Vornado Realty Trust
CTO from Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group
Quantum Networks
K-Edge Networks
MobileTribe
Sintnow
ProvenPowerful
RF Wise
Engineer for Cisco Systems
ABI Research
CIO from VA Health System VISN 20 Health Care
CTO of Alcatel-Lucent
IIT
InBuilding Wireless Alliance


I will be adding to this throughout the day and throughout the holidays into 2010. Keep in mind that we do have some room on our quickly filling panels. If you want to be considered for a slot and you can:

*Discuss strategy for using mobile for business
*Provide insights into telecoms operations, pricing and development of the inbuilding and data spectrums
*Talk about your enterprise's use of mobile as a business tool
*Consider the pros and cons of wireless hospital infrastructure

We want to hear from you. Please send me an email at dcrets [at] iirusa [dot] com. I am happy to talk with you in detail about the agenda, and send you a version of it.

Friday Tidbyte: The Usual Suspects, Mass Communicators

Every once in a while, I sit down and try to mull over what are the dominant and enticing thoughts that have dominated the Inbuilding Wireless Solutions market. Here's what I've come up with for this Friday's Tidbytes:

Cell phones used to be for the super rich. "What's that? AT&T at 42.50? Buy, you worm! Buy, buy, buy!"

But now, I don't think you can step into a subway car in Manhattan without seeing a cell phone or an iPhone in someone's hand.

And have you ever visited India?

Personal story: In the earlier hours of the morning, a driver picked me up to take me from New Delhi to the Taj Mahal in Agra, India, a good four or five hour drive away. Along the way, the four-wheel drive truck would swerve around donkeys, cattle, wagons filled to the sky with hay, as well as formers up to their dhotis in mud as they walked through the rice fields.

As we pulled up to the railroad crossing to enter into Agra, we were met by several men selling... mobile phones, calling cards, and other things. They had it figured out, boy. What's the first thing you are going to do when you see the beautiful Taj Mahal? Call your mother!

Great pitch!

The most beautiful mausoleum in the world, and a great place for taking cell phone pictures

And though it was not respectful to use phones to make calls inside the tomb, I did see people using phones to take pictures. Outside, looking over the Ganges River, an editor at Platts who attended the tour with us was using her phone to call someone.

The same thing is true at Angkor Wat. Everyone, and I mean everyone leading tour groups through the compound at Angkor Wat in Cambodia had a small Motorola phone in his or her hand. Tourists would snap pictures with their phones. I saw a man get hit by a truck and as he was being rushed to the clinic, his friend was sitting with him in the back of the same truck calling the medics on the phone while they sped away, honking the horn like a panicked lamb.

What does this mean?Mobile phone use is not only easy and affordable, it's becoming pervasive. It's used everywhere. Everywhere. If Rick Blaine in Casablanca had had a mobile phone, he would have been using it all the time in his club, and so would Renault. There would never be any of this having to telephone from the police station, "Round up the usual suspects!"