Convergence of mobile telephony with the Internet is touted by the popular media as the "next big thing". The next generation wireless networks (3G) will alleviate bandwidth bottlenecks of the 2G systems in use today and fuel the growth of data applications. Despite market optimism, initial reception of  data services (with the exception of SMS) on cellular phones has been somewhat lukewarm.

Is the role of 3G networks limited to providing last hop wireless access to the Internet,  or are there fundamentally new applications that are enabled by wireless access? Which standards will eventually dominate the industry and what new infratructure elements will be needed? Will all IP based wireless networks (like Metricom) will take over the cellular business? Dices are rolling and the jury is still out.

The aim of Seer study/project group is to predict which way the dices will fall. We plan to systematically explore the standards space, identify migration and deployment issues, spot potential opportunities, and tackle the research and engineering challenges of deploying 3G services and applications.

Useful pointers:

Standards, forums, etc.

Web resources

Meeting reports