TECH TITANS: Bell sounds the next step

Tech Titans is a weekly column that examines the movements of the industry's biggest players. To read previous stories go to our Tech Titans page.

Alcatel-Lucent partner Dr Eshwar Pittampalli dedicates his life to the next technology revolution. Today he tells Technology Spectator that increased connectivity has set the scene for a crucial change that will drive technological advances for the consumer like never before.

And he predicts the industries that are set to be revolutionalised.

In development terms, where time moves a lot faster, the consumerisation of technology is set to be joined by the “the next exciting step,” where consumers go from communicating with machines to machines communicating with each other and then interacting with people.

“By 2020, 50 billion units will be connected to broadband networks. So the time is right for machine-to-machine-to-human (M2M2H), and it is going to happen, because it's going to enrich human life,” Dr Pittampalli told Technology Spectator.

Dr Pittampalli envisages a world where every last one of those 50 billion devices has an IP address. Consumers will rightly be concerned that we're headed towards a world where we're more easily monitored but Pittampalli says: “there is always an evolution when it comes to new technologies”.

“If we look back only a decade ago, there were concerns about using plastic cards for purchases online. At the beginning there was hesitation, suspicion. But the confidence has since built. I think this pattern is reflected for most technological change.”

The consumerisation of technology will help facilitate this change, with increasingly connected intuitive devices interacting with increasingly connected and intuitive machines. “With broadband, it will come down to the services and the devices, which will need to be self-helping, self-provisioning, so that people just have to press a button to use them and access the relevant service. If devices in the future can provision themselves, acceptance will be universal,” Dr Pittampalli says.

“Broadband is a means to get to the final destination, which is the enrichment of our lives. Sure there is a cost to these investments but people need to know and understand the returns and the benefits to their lives.

He nominates ten industries that are set to benefit from increased broadband connectivity – lifestyle, security, healthcare (most important), energy, environment, cars, transportation, utilities, retail and municipalities.

But will consumers pay for these wild ideas? Let's take his example with cars. The road toll is a problem in any country with cars. If you crash your car on a quiet road in the middle of the night and get knocked out, your chances rest almost entirely on someone driving past and noticing the hole in the fence, or morning breaking.

“Your safety is the main priority for yourself and your family at home, what if your car can call for emergency services” he asks. “You can't beat that. How much would you like to pay for that? These sorts of possibilities are priceless.”

Dr Pittampalli is a consulting partner at Alcatel-Lucent and one of around 200 Bell Lab Fellows, an exclusive list at the research and development powerhouse. Visionary and passionate, he is brimming with ideas about how M2M2H will eliminate certain problems, with the technical know-how to evaluate what's feasible and desirable. Sitting in a third-floor office overlooking Melbourne's Spring Street, he didn't require much prompting at all to offer an example of how increased connectivity could enhance the lives of the people waiting at the tram stop beneath us, or the Orica workers in the building opposite.

He lists off endless examples of looming productivity improvements, but one which resonates particularly well.

Dr Pittampalli cites the example of a business executive who goes to print notes for an upcoming meeting but the printer is out of toner, rendering him more of a bystander in the meeting and less of an active, productive participant.

“What if the printer alerted maintenance two days prior to the cartridge becoming empty so they can change it in advance?”

This scenario happened to this writer not two hours before meeting Dr Pittampalli and I had to wonder (in jest) whether he'd acquired the IP address of the security cameras in the Technology Spectator office. In seriousness though, this simple solution is already being widely adopted.

If suspicion doesn't stop people adopting a new technology, the reason is laziness, or as Dr Pittampalli calls it, consumer inertia. He's all too aware of consumer stubbornness, using the unsuccessful attempt by his home country, the United States, to introduce the metric system.

“It was so difficult for people to think of 120 as kilometres per hour rather than 120 miles per hour. Even an educated society like that had significant inertia to change their habits,” he said.

But the point of the consumerisation of technology is to make once-complex processes easier, which will be enhanced by the increased connectivity of the servers they're interacting with.

But at what cost? On this crucial question he believes that if the returns are explained to consumers “there will be no reason to opposition to the idea of broadband.”

With obvious implications for the Coalition's calls for a cost-benefit analysis on our own NBN, Dr Pittampalli couldn't be drawn on local politics.

“I am a supporter of broadband generally. The decisions about how it is delivered is not my area, but I would say that I see huge benefit in broadband for the world and for the human race.”