Sunlight Past The Fog

Those looking for fitting finales and murky metaphors will like this end to a lousy year. New Delhi crossed over into January under the cold, cloudy cover of fog and of war. And like its beleaguered airport ILS system, the IT industry tried to peer out into and past the fog, toward hope.

There's much to hope for. First, that government spending goes back on track in this last quarter of 2001-2. Our states want IT investors and IT usage, and have funds. Enterprise spending should step back up in April. Unless there's war.

For the people, there's big hope resting on the comms revolution. This is the new year's best gift for India: an array of next-gen comms and players, competition and lowered costs. In 2002, we now have cheap long-distance calls. Delhi-Bombay costs about what local mobile calls used to, not so long ago, while the rates of mobile calls drop further. And competition forces megaliths like BSNL and MTNL to change.

Globally, comms will be the big tech force in 2002, as mobile devices rule the planet. From voice to a hundred billion text messages to streaming media, the mobile will also become the Internet access terminal for the majority. In India, China and the world, mobile growth, including WLL and other fixed-line alternatives, will continue to far outstrip fixed-line growth. Mobile and Internet messaging will change businesses and their customer interface.

All that mobility will bump quickly into the last frontier for personal tech: the battery. 3G users will head toward longer sessions online - but today's batteries won't let them. Lithium batteries now dominate, but this year's products will try out fuel cells, solar and kinetic and thermal recharge systems.

A big standards issue for the connected world this year will be user identity. The Passport digital-ID setup, first seen at Hotmail, is a foundation of Microsoft's .Net vision of integrated Web services and subscription software. If it dominates the way Windows does, then Microsoft will rule the Net, becoming its "drivers' license issuer," as an analyst put it. But not if Sun, et al can help it. Their rival Project Liberty ("liberty from passports") has 35-odd members including AOL, GM, AmEx, Sony and Nokia. But no up-and-running tech, no 200 million Passport users. Still, I expect Liberty to take off quickly this year, and inter-operate with Passport.

For now, in India, we live a day at a time, on the edge of a war, the first between two nuclear-capable, trigger-happy neighbors. Not exactly the sort of feel-good entry into a new year that we'd have liked. But if we get past these tense few weeks, we've got a revival ahead. That's a warm feeling, in these chilling weeks.