There are few personal benefits from trotting around the globe for the OPLAN Foundation ‘opening minds to open networks’, but one of the them is certainly discovering and getting to know interesting individuals equally committed to OPLAN principles but coming with a deep understanding from a specialised and entirely different perspective from me.  I am no techie, so when I encounter someone who ‘is’ and who I can understand and communicate with around this topic, I am particularly excited and stimulated.

That has happened twice recently at two different events.  The first was in Stockholm where I was invited to speak at the “The Broadband Ship 2006” event organised by The Swedish Urban Network Association (Svenska Stadsnätsföreningen – SSNf).  This non-profit association was formed in 1989 to link the numerous Swedish network owners who are actively engaged in the development of local broadband infrastructure – almost all on an open access basis.  SSNf now has well in excess of a hundred members in this OPLAN-hot country.

The evening before the event was spent at a delightful restaurant called South of Siberia discovering reindeer and getting to know two special people – Jari Aho and Örjan Mattsson, both working with Acreo.  Meeting another ‘matson’ is a rare event but discovering Acreo and getting to know these two fine fellows was far more significant.  Jari and Örjan are deeply committed to the OPLAN model and are working in Acreo to develop innovative solutions to emerging problems and opportunities as they arise in communities enabled by ‘open access’ infrastructure – Sweden being rich in these.  Let no one say that all the technical running in the OPLAN game is being made in North America.  Acreo is a European hot house of technical innovation and understanding and by drawing upon its significant competences in electronics, optics and communication technology, it is making a significant technical contribution to ensuring ‘tomorrow’ is different and better than ‘yesterday’.   I look forward to working with Jari and Örjan and Acreo.

Which brings me directly to my next ‘person discovery’, someone who has articulated for me better than anyone else, how the major corporations of today use various levers of influence and affiliation to do just the opposite – slow down technological innovation in order to make ‘tomorrow’ as much like 'yesterday' as possible.  The extent to which this process mortgages the future for end users is incalculable and nowhere more so than in the communications sector where the disruptive digital technologies have been tamed through regulated deployment by state-created 'operators' working under obsolete business models.

Dr John Waclawsky is a fast talking and engaging American who is now chief software architect at Motorola and was formerly at Cisco.  John shared a platform with me at last weeks highly successful Telco2.0 event in London.   As James Enck (also speaking at the event) aptly describes in his ‘must read’  EuroTelcoBlog.

“John Waclawsky gave a compelling presentation entitled ‘From POTS to PANs,’ dealing with the migration of value and context in communication to the edge, often in unpredictable ad-hoc groupings of persons and/or devices depending on the task or subject at hand. This man is a very engaging presenter, and I think his session was among the best I saw, though the concepts and illustrations were too rich for me to do justice to here after the fact.”

I agree James!  So when I had the opportunity of chatting with John outside the conference, he kindly passed me a number of his published papers which I want to share with you.   They are now available from the OPLAN website and make an important contribution to the OPLAN argument.

I can do no more to encourage you to do this than to reference the papers and to offer a few choice quotations of John from each of them.  Motorola probably does not appreciate this gem of a man and his visionary insights into the future – but we do!  Read on while I pack my bags for Turin and India and more chance encounters with OPLAN visionaries - I hope!

'Where Do System Standards Go From Here? - The goal of any standards group should be to generate end-user value.' - (published March 2005)

"Most vendors would rather be system integrators than commodity box and part suppliers"
"The telcos and their suppliers want to “circle the wagons” against the threat of component technologies and business models"
"Incumbents use the slow pace of system standards to help protect their markets and business models"
"Market-based projects with “cookbook” outputs would help the system standards bodies remain relevant"

'Closed Architectures, Closed Systems and Closed Minds' - After OSI, how can anyone still believe in network technology innovation through system standards groupthink efforts?' - (published October 2004)

"People, including standards makers, can’t see into the future"
"The lack of flexibility in tightly-coupled architectures makes it hard to experiment"
"The market is abandoning the planned future of mobile wireless"
"In an open architecture, developers can experiment with new applications, services and technologies"

'IMS 101: What You Need To Know Now ' - Can the IP Multimedia Subsystem enable new services, converge wireless and wireline networks—and keep service providers firmly in the driver’s seat? - (published June 2005)

"IMS functions signal and track usage, but IMS doesn’t provide features or services"
"UMTS Releases are just steps in the migration toward full 3G implementation"
"The desire to monetize the Internet means some form of IMS will probably be implemented"

'IMS: A Critique of The Grand Plan'  - Here are ten reasons why the author thinks Iis a bad idea' - (published October 2005)

"The dark side of Quality Of Service (QOS) is that it can be used to limit bandwidth and functionality"
"HTTP traffic is an enormous threat to IMS, as it does not require redirection from the signaling plane"
"How to pay for the Internet’s underlying communication infrastructure is the key question"
"IMS is just a veiled attempt to prop up an aging, monopolistic, circuit-oriented business model"