The Geek Shall Inherit the Unwired Earth

The Economic Times/The Times Group
By Chidanand Rajghatta
June 6, 2005

There are some annual events that form a predictable part of a journalist's calendar. For some of us in the US, if it is September, it is New York for the UN General Assembly session, where leaders of India and Pakistan speak soft or harsh depending on how things are going back home. April brings a slew of US government report on issues such as human rights, religious freedom etc which few take seriously these days. You know why.

Lately, in my calendar, I've set a reminder to check out the US spelling Bee finals held in Washington every June. It is an event that is of endless fascination to me not because I'm a wordophile, but for the remarkable performance of kids of Indian origin in the competition. Indian-American kids have now won the title five times in the last seven years, including the 78th edition last week.

Away from Washington last week during this year's final, I found myself in San Diego, California, attending the Brew 2005 conference, which is not a congregation of liquor manufacturers, but a talk shop of geeks dedicated to a wireless platform promoted by Qualcomm. There were enough gaps in wireless telephony knowledge that the hosts allowed me to play around with one of those nifty contraptions, which seem to be able to do everything except brew coffee.

So there I was cruising cyberspace on a brew-enabled cell phone, following the spelling bee event in Washington amid the drone of conference speakers warbling about CDMA, GSM, BREW, EV- Do, UiOne, FLO and sundry other acronyms. When it came down to the last ten spelling bee competitors and I saw five Indian kids among them, I slipped out of the conference hall to go up to my hotel room and watch the last tense moments o ESPN, which was telecasting it live.

But from what Manish Jha, Sr veep of ESPN Mobile and others said at the conference. I neednt be doing that. The excitement in wireless telephony now is not about voi9ce (which is old talk) but about data, which is where qualcomms money and the mouth is. Talk, they say, is cheap (especially in India, which has the lowest call rates in the world). The moolah is in the message, and the jazzier and snazzier it is (wallpapers, ringtones, movie and sports clips), more the revenues.

It seems the world is at the cusp of a mobile entertainment revolution that will turn us into watching- talking zombies. We will be downloading clips of morning maha-ara this en route to work (too late for puja after a night out on the tiles). Virendar Sehwags fours and sixers at work (phone beeps at a meeting every time he thwacks one), and Hollywood item numbers on the drive back. A Mumbai company, Nazara Technologies, has already nailed a deal with sachin Tandulkar for this wireless rights, including a soon to be launched cell phone game named after him. Better late than never, I say.

Tech-gurus and wireless wizards at the conference, including Qualcomm CEO-elect Paul Jacobs, say the cell phone is on the money to becoming the all- in one convergence device. Its your portable phone, rolodex, computer, music system, TV and video game player, two way radio etc, Japanese and Koreans genexers have already taken the lead in this and the wireless world cant wait till the china and India, the worlds largest cell phone markets volume-wise, get their teeth into the new applications and turn it into revenue.

Amid this blizzard of news about the entertainment that is being threatened on us through wireless devices, I asked if there was any money in directing some education or knowledge-based services through the cell phone (money talks, you see). Of course, said Peggy Johnson, Qualcomms president for Internet services, her son was preparing for SAT using some of the services offered by wireless telephony.

The next morning, the san Diego Union Tribune had a massive front-page story on Anurag kashyap under a single-world headline CHAMP. The story described how he practiced spelling online with other spellers. Soon, he will be doing this while mobile, on mobile. Too young for cell phone? NO worry, they are making kiddie phones. He can also download past clips from ESPN and that it seems will just be the beginning.

By Friday morning, Qualcomm India President Kanwalinder Singh was mulling about applications aimed at the IIT-JEE aspirants and the army of collegiate who strive to crack various exams each yearhow about graded questions that will get tougher as you crack them on your cell phone and pushes you to higher levels?

Truly, it seems the geek shall inherit the earth.