Future of Wireless International Conference: Day 1 Overview

“We are going to want products that give us back some control over our appetite for information,” said Tim Rundle, Design Director, Conran and Partners. “We need products that enable us to cure our tech inflicted nervous twitches, our incessant downswiping to refresh and constant pocket-ward glances in the hope of new notifications.”

In his presentation, Rundle pointed to studies that show UK businesses loose around 105m work days to stress related absences, equating to a loss of around £1.24bn. “There’s little doubt that constant internet access and the expectation of constant contact-ability contributes to heightened work related stress,” said Rundle. “As producers, makers and designers we set out to create products and services that address a need or solve a problem; but we’ve now succeeded in making products and services that have created a new need. Can technology solve the problem it has created? Absolutely, in fact technology is the only thing that can save us from itself.”

Jeffrey Ju, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Wireless Communication, MediaTek, traced the smartphone back to 1994, but believes the best is yet to come.

“Smartphone innovation has already changed our lifestyles and disrupted other industries, from navigation to photography and gaming,” said Ju. “Consumers are now putting design and usability first, presenting the challenge of delivering high performance and innovative multimedia, with larger displays, slim designs and power efficiency for longer battery life. And with photo taking having established itself as a key feature for most smart phone users, manufacturers will need to offer DSLR-like experiences plus other advanced vision processing to support exciting new applications from non-contact heart rate detection to identifying unknown objects.”

Jeffrey Ju also pointed to the increasing role of the IoT. “The phone will play a major role in the smart home of the future, but it also won’t need to be at the centre of everything. Instead, we will see seamless hardware and software access and sharing between different devices from cameras and lights to TVs and kitchen appliances.”

In his presentation, Tim Whitley, Managing Director Research & Innovation at BT looked at how the industry was meeting the ever growing demand for mobile data driven by the smartphone. “Disruption and innovation have been the driving force of telecommunications for over 170 years, from the early days of telegraphy to the current race for bandwidth,” said Whitley.  

“We are seeing an underlying common technology evolution that is allowing mobile networks to deliver bandwidths previously thought to be the preserve of fixed networks, core optical networks to advance to multi-terabit capability and copper access systems to offer speeds of 500Mbit/s or greater. Innovation at the line coding level, powered by Moore’s Law, is driving these remarkable performance shifts and will help to support an increasingly connected world.”

Organised by Cambridge Wireless, an industry leading network for companies involved in the development and application of wireless technologies with over 400 members, the 7th Future of Wireless International Conference is taking place at the Emirates Stadium in London.

Day one of the conference also featured five specialist parallel track sessions covering wireless urban design, spectrum allocation and the issues around Internet protocol stack redesign, as well as a potential shake up of the semiconductor and network infrastructure industries. The Innovation Hothouse saw UK and international start-ups exhibit an impressive array of technologies, apps, solutions and gadgets.

Cambridge Wireless is partnering with UK Trade and Investment, while sponsors of The Future of Wireless International Conference include; MediaTek, Accenture, The KTN, CSR, ANSYS UK, Rohde & Schwarz, TTP, Cambridge Consultants, IC Resources, NEC Corporation, PA Consulting, S-Tech Insurance, InterDigital Europe, Microlease and Keysight Technologies, u-blox, BSI, Anite and Microwave Marketing.