We live in a mobile world, but we're not entirely sure what that means or how it will look. We know people in Africa are using cellphones instead of computers. We know social media are going to be the next big thing.
Most African cellphone users are more concerned about where they can charge their phones than about checking out Facebook. And they will be for a while yet.
Services such as banking are crucial, as was confirmed by the Mobility 2009 research study by World Wide Worx. The annual survey, sponsored by First National Bank and BlackBerry, is a bellwether of the state of the mobile order in South Africa.
A related inquiry, into small and medium businesses, found that ease of use, quality and dependability are more important than price. People will pay - provided it works.
Some clever things are being done with cellphones in Africa, including levering the joys of the Internet and its services onto the mobile platform.
Brian Seligman, one of the unsung heroes of the cellular industry in South Africa, told a remarkable story last week about getting off a train from Shangha in Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, and getting 3G data coverage. He was speaking at a panel discussion on the future of the Internet organised by Justin Spratt for the Gordon Institute of Business Science.
"Mobile broadband video is the fastest-growing app in the world," said Seligman, who is a senior manager for data at MTN, reminding everyone that 200million YouTube videos are viewed and about 200000 uploaded every day.
By 2013, he said, "it's expected that 90% of all IP traffic on the Internet will be video and 64% of all mobile IP traffic will be video".
Seacom didn't come soon enough, but the cellular networks are nevertheless going to have to be ready for that kind of influx.
Forget crime, bad service and other concerns ahead of the 2010 soccer World Cup, I think the biggest worry should be the hundreds of thousands of visitors to the country wanting to use their cellphones to shoot and upload video and pictures.
The tourist du jour is a mobile broadcaster in his own right - sending pictures and MMSes home - and surfing the Net, getting e-mail, Facebook and whatever else you used to be able to do only on a computer.
Combine this with the steadily advancing "cloud" of computing services and we start to see the vision of mobile Internet use that everyone is so excited about.
"The Internet has become the 'how'. It is no longer the 'what'," said Fred Baumhardt, chief technology officer at Microsoft SA, who was not only witty but honest.
He said the world's largest software company "won't roll out a data centre here because we don't have a guarantee of constant power". But he enthused about how the cold weather in Ireland is ideal for heat-generating data centres because it does away with the need for expensive air conditioning. Where has Microsoft been hiding this guy?
When change happens, it tends to be quick.
Today is the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Three months later Nelson Mandela was released from prison.
The Cold War ended.
The momentum for mobile services is building and cellular apps, such as those popularised by the iPhone, are, I suspect, truly the next big thing. But more of that another time.
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