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Entertainment Goes Wireless, While Wireless Goes Entertainment. Anybody See Any Symmetry Here?

June 9, 2015

By Ernest Worthman —

June 11, 2015 — As the 5G fog starts to lift, the industry is starting to see how some of this is coming together. One thing that is emerging is that the wireless landscape of the future is going to be a fusion of a number of platforms; small and large cells, network functions virtualization (NFV), software defined networks (SDN), Cloud-RAN and just plain “C” (the cloud, of course).

Once this gets traction, there will be a wave of new connected devices, both wired and wireless. Advances will come in the connected home initiatives, automated automobiles, and smart cities, as core drivers for the Internet of Everything cloud.

The brave new interconnected world will rely on big data and analytics to handle the significant increase in data traveling across networks. It will also require advanced automation to remove human-related intervention that will interminably slow down the pipeline.

These connectivity challenges will also require planned advances in network technology, which for the wireless space, will be centered on 5G. The IoE won’t work without it, and the IoE will be what will enable this next generation of connectivity. An interesting conundrum; each needs the other, and neither will work without the other.

Well, at least we know what the future will look like. The trick will be to figure ways to make it happen, cooperatively.

The entertainment industry goes wireless, and the wireless industry goes entertainment.
A long title for a topic but this is a revelation and may be the beginning of a conglomeration of content providers that will truly make everything available to everyone, anywhere.

First T-Mobile is in merger talks with satellite TV provider Dish Networks. Why one might ask? Because it is a match made in heaven. Dish can now offer T-Mobile a strong multimedia portfolio, including entertainment, sports and other content. Dish is salivating all over this because it does not have a wireless service of its own. And, T-Mobile will be able to get its hands on more spectrum. Dish has wireless airwaves licenses worth $50 billion, which are required by the networks to operate. AND, now T-Mobile can stream multimedia to wireless customers. Anybody not see a win-win for them? The same scenario is playing out with AT&T and DirecTV.

It is a bit early to try to dissect what all the pros and cons might be and how the deals will affect the user. At this point, there isn’t a lot of noise by anyone. And, from a high-level flyover, it seems like it might just be a win-win for the consumer to. However, let’s not get too excited…just too early in the game to put one’s reputation on the line.

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