Mobile Broadband: Redefining Internet Access and Empowering Individuals

Abstract

WILLIAM BOLD WILLIAM DAVIDSON Qualcomm With more than 6 billion connections worldwide and US$1.3 trillion in annual revenue,1 mobile telephony has become the largest information and communication technology (ICT) in history. Mobile connects four times as many people as landline telephony because of its better reach, convenience, and functionality and its lower costs.2 Mobile telephony also surpasses the landline Internet by more than 3.5 billion users,3 while driving economic growth and important societal benefits, as documented in the World Economic Forum’s Global Information Technology Report 2008–2009: Mobility in a Networked World and other research. While the global scale of mobile telephony and its economic impacts are well understood by ICT industry participants and governments today, we envision that mobile broadband—with its ability to connect people to the Internet in an ultra-personal and pervasive manner— will have a far greater impact. Mobile broadband, or high-speed access to the Internet and other data services over mobile networks, is already changing the way people across the globe access the Internet. It promises to drive even stronger economic growth than mobile telephony alone and to fundamentally change the way in which we live, learn, work, and collaborate. This in turn is driving seismic shifts across the communications and computing industries. Perhaps most importantly, it provides unprecedented opportunities to empower individuals across all socioeconomic classes. In this chapter, we will discuss this view within the framework of two fundamental shifts, or tipping points, and related trends that underscore how mobile broadband is changing the way people access the Internet and, in turn, how the Internet itself is changing. We will also explore some of the transformative opportunities these shifts create in areas such as healthcare and education, as well as some key steps stakeholders can take to both enable and take advantage of these new possibilities.