By Ingrid Silver, Partner at Dentons and President for Europe of the GTWN.
Ingrid highlights the importance of focusing on the present in this fast moving mobile century and making use of the services available to make the most of this age in all sectors such as health and education.
Dentons is a global law firm and my specialty is TMT: technology, media and telecoms, and has been for almost two decades now.
I am delighted to celebrate the launch of the GTWN’s webzine, The Mobile Century alongside representatives from the mobile operators, but also have innovators, investors, regulators, women from the entertainment sector, the technology sector, the education section, the health sector and the list goes on. Not only that, but we don’t just have representatives, say from Western Europe or North America but we have representatives here from every part of the globe. It is truly amazing.
For me the real question is, is this mobile century just about being able to work remotely and communicate with your community?
Cast your minds back to last century. I think back to the first time I held my first so called mobile phone, it really was a brick! And back then all the talk was about the future, how the networks were going to become faster, the coverage better, the devices more sophisticated. It seems to me that 20 years later, things haven’t changed terribly much. We are still talking about the next network, the next handset, the next application.
I would like to suggest that the time has come to shift mind-sets, to stop talking about the future and start focusing on present. I am not suggesting for a moment that there isn’t plenty more exciting innovation and technical evolution to come, but the fact of the matter is that, thanks to the technical evolution we have seen to date, it is possible here and now, today, to access the services we want, when we want, how we want, whether it be on a mobile or a fixed basis. I’m not just talking about being able to work remotely or communicate easily, or even be entertained, but also about things like education and health and so on. Not only have we entered a century of mobility, but in fact we are in an age, an era of ubiquity.
So as I invite you to celebrate the mobile century, I would also like to challenge you to take a step back and think about how you can make the most of this age of ubiquity, not in the future, but here and now. Perhaps a good way to start will be to network with the people who have come together to launch this exciting new initiative. Let’s see if together we can work across different disciplines, different cultures and indeed different generations to make this mobile century, this age of ubiquity, truly exciting and meaningful for all of us.
