Think see and move are the revolutions in telecom: Huber

ATLANTA--The communications industry is sluggish now, but it’s part of the series of revolutions that drive innovation, said Peter Huber, senior partner with Kellog, Huber, Hansen, Todd & Evans, at the Supercomm closing keynote Thursday. 

Huber outlined three revolutions, classified as Think, See and Move. The Think revolution occurred years ago as computing power came to be. The See revolution is what we’re in now, Huber said. Graphical user interfaces and web browsers are examples of this, but additional advancements are in the works and will further propel the See revolution. 

“That is the wave we’re living through now,” Huber said. “I’m utterly confident in this wave we will sell more--more processors, flat-panel displays, storage, bandwidth and hardware to process the bandwidth--to implement the See layer of the network  than we’ve spent in all of computing so far. The See layer requires more computing power than the Think revolution.” 

Seeing is more than just television, and it will lead to the Move revolution, he continued. “And my Move, I’m talking about atoms. I mean things you can drop on your foot.” 

Most items that Move use mechanical and hydraulic links, what Huber dubs, “click, click, bang, bang” technology. Some items such as wristwatches and telephony switches once used that technology, but have shifted to Move, where computing processors handle most of the once-mechanical functions. 

“In the next decade we’ll begin to move to bring similar changes to be centered in [communications] technologies,” he said. To go beyond the See revolution, engineers must understand processor technologies and power efficiencies. 

The Move revolution will make intelligent, automated decisions that will be electrically activated, he said. A car, for example, will be able to sense an upcoming pothole and lift up the wheel to ensure a smooth ride. These types of technologies today are used in Air Force jets and in submarines, but mass market applications are still many years away, he said. 

“The performance payoffs are huge,” Huber said. “This is the next wave of clients...that this Move space, this technology and this industry will move into.” 

Each shift, he added, is predicated by malaise on Wall Street. “This industry goes through convulsive spasms of growth followed by a period of quiet,” Huber said. “Wall Street overreacts to the quiet interludes just as it overreacts to the crescendos.” 

That could account for the current poor economy, but Huber is unfazed. “This has been a very good industry to be in for the last five or 10 years. The herd rushed in last year and made a lot of bets. You lose on most of them, but you don’t have to win on all of them, you just have to win big on one. I thank the pessimists for giving us the opportunity to buy.”
Susan Biagi is editor in chief of Telephony. She can be reached at sbiagi@intertec.com.