Living A Mobile Life: The future is now

Living a mobile life has quickly moved from what was once considered a luxury to become a basic every day necessity.  As each hour passes, another business or service is shifting their focus from brick and mortar to full scale mobile connectivity.  The numbers are staggering.  According to the latest report from the GSMA, total mobile ecosystem revenues account for 2.2% of global GDP or, to be more specific, a whopping $1.6 trillion.

Corporations are not only the only ones profiting from this seismic communications shift. Regular, everyday people from all across the globe and socio-economic spectrum are getting the opportunity to live a more mobile life, one that is not confined by class, caste, or even arbitrary borders.  

Over 3.2 billion people, nearly half the world’s total population, are now mobile subscribers. The GSMA expects this number to hit an overwhelming majority of about 80% among adults and teens by 2018.  That means 80% of the world will rely on mobile technology in their work, education and personal communication as well as a wide variety of business, informational, and entertainment needs.

This astronomical growth in usage, which includes the exponential rise in data traffic, creates an equal or greater need to improve on existing networks as well as to build newer, faster ones.  Phones, tablets, and computers will only function if they operate on reliable networks. This means products like mobile video encoders will need to offer even greater flexibility, strength, and affordability.  

The task ahead is in no way easy or even guaranteed. There will be numerous roadblocks along the way as mobile society evolves, some technical, some economic, some regulatory. It will take herculean efforts on the part of businesses and governments to make living a truly mobile life a sustainable reality for  the large majority of the world’s population.

Mathematics and Broadcast Technology

Video technology is expanding rapidly and revolutionizing the way we do business.  With the advent of smartphones, tablets, and e-readers, innovations like Netflix and Hulu, and every other mode in which we absorb video, we can now watch our news, movies, or other entertainment from devices in the convenient location of our pockets and purses and with several new and interesting services.  Those of us in the broadcast and television industries are quickly realizing that these technologies and innovations are the way forward.  Our youth, particularly, are more readily adopting and participating in this emerging culture of varied video options– it’s new, exciting, and increasingly ubiquitous.

To sustain and build upon these technologies, however, we need to channel that energy and excitement for new technology into education that provides for its sustenance – namely STEM education.  April was national Mathematics Awareness Month, and we at Telairity want to do our part to spread the word, throughout the year.  Mathematics, and for us particularly the mathematics used in data compression algorithms, is a vital discipline to the television industry.  Without data compression, the entire digital video industry would collapse; moreover, encoding technologies must continually improve, to enable evolving video resolution standards, from MPEG-2 for SD in the 1990s, to H.264 for HD in the2000s, to new HEVC technology for new 4K digital standards in the 2010s.

As ever, education is imperative for growth and progress, and STEM education holds the key for technical industries everywhere.  The flexibility inherent in the media consumer culture must be paralleled by companies that are able to innovate and adapt quickly to the changing technological demands.  This is only achievable with a technically-oriented  workforce, to whom STEM education is a priority.  Join Telairity in encouraging the education that will allow our industry to flourish, and help inspire young minds to pursue careers in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics.