Editor's Blog: Confusing communications?

Or is it just a more important subject than ever?

Years ago, when I used to call someone for the first time from silicon.com and had to explain what we do, I described the publication as one that deals with issues relating to information and communications technologies. Some of my colleagues laughed. They said I only threw in the words 'and communications' because I happened to be speaking to a telco or some other relevant company.

But I wasn't being crafty. It occurred to me back then that the impact of communications was only heading in one direction. And today we see that taken even further.

It's an albeit unusual day but as I was looking down our morning list of news this morning I saw nearly every story had comms at its heart.

We planned to write about BlackBerry services going down, mainly for those in North America. Then we had the story about how Air France was putting back and extending a trial to allow use of mobiles on flights.

There were others, like the C&W angle to a big R&SA contract, and even Peter Cochrane chipped in with a blog about iris scanning at Heathrow Airport. OK, so it's not comms per se but I felt like it was very much for today's mobile worker.

Covering all things mobile and wireless is obviously not the only reason we're here - but we're also not the only ones riding this wave. Yesterday I was involved in Gartner's Wireless and Mobile event in London and I've been trying to think of a theme that emerged on that first day.

It's not an easy thing to do but one thing - excuse me if it sounds obvious - is that, as analyst Nick Jones put it, the "mobile and wireless space is getting very confusing". It used to be that handset vendors supplied handsets, network operators operated networks, search engines allowed you to search, fixed-line telcos sold broadband - and so on.

Now, we could take numerous examples of the above, say Nokia, Orange and Google, and we see companies that have spread themselves far and wide.

I do wonder how sensible a lot of this expansion is. Some companies see no alternative. An Orange, for example, absolutely doesn't want to just be a bit pipe across the airwaves. And its competitors - all companies you could name - feel the same. There may be a place for a company that does that extremely well, allowing you to connect very well and no more. But probably just the one place.

I think we'll only know the success of various corporate expansions after the next downturn - which will surely happen, though hopefully not entirely aping the telecoms bust at the start of this decade - when we get to see who hasn't scrapped their newer units.