Comment: Cannes stars 3G handsets and IP stacks

You can tell the excitement attached to an event by the number of people who think it's a great place to go. And by this standard next week's 3GSM conference in Cannes will be an exciting occasion.

What makes it interesting this year is that it's not just the normal GSM gang going. This year, the computer biz is making the trip; and at no little sacrifice, too. Get one thing straight, the Cote d'Azur is no picnic in winter. The water is freezing, the wind fierce, the beaches are no eyeful of beauty, and the hotels are all full. So when I say "Intel and Microsoft will be among the exhibitors" I am not mentioning a trivial boondoggle by a couple of vice presidents.

What makes it interesting, however, is not just who will be there, but why. And the why, this year, is innovation - on a huge scale. For example, I'm expecting the first working example of a Personal Mobile Gateway - designed by IXI Mobile software and shown by a genuine phone manufacturer.

I'm expecting 3G handset announcements, of course, but this year they will be of devices that may actually ship during our lives. And above all, I'm expecting the IP stack to start featuring large.

At some stage in the future, it now seems, the Internet Protocol will dominate. Not just on LANs and WANs, but also on backbones and comms links. I know of rural areas where the entire GSM phone structure is provided over an IP link. Within five years, will it be the majority, or just a large minority?

I think this will be seen as a watershed year, when convergence really got serious "behind the scenes" and compromises were agreed. Whether we'll say "what a good idea!" or "what a horrible mistake it was!" remains to be seen.

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