Back in the Dark Ages, when I first started in the cellular business, mobile phones were big (transceivers the size of large phone books), expensive ($3,500), physically installed in a car (in the trunk, or boot, to be more accurate), and cost a fortune to use ($45 per month for the privilege of having a phone number, and 45 cents per minute to use it).
These behemoths provided the user with “mobility” and broke the chains that bound them to their offices – at least as far as voice communications were concerned. In those days, there were no hand-held phones and it wouldn’t have mattered since the systems were so immature you couldn’t have held up a call on a portable anyway. Good times.
If you remember back to those days you can recall many conversations that typically ended with, “I’ll take care of that as soon as I get back to the office.” As time progressed and vehicle-mounted cell phones were replaced with hand-held cell phones, the degree of mobility improved, but the conversations typically ended the same way. You could carry on conversations, often without dropping a call, but your ability to do much more than that was limited by the technology and phone capabilities of the day.
Fast forward to today.
The advent of smartphones has provided a new sense of freedom that comes with a great set of capabilities to match. No longer do we hear conversations that end with promises to take care of business when we get back in the office or back to our computers. We can do what we need to do in the now. We have access to data and applications that allow us to perform tasks that used to require our office computers or a laptop tethered to the back-end office system. Mobile applications have changed the game and that allows us the freedom to avoid our offices all together. (I’m not going to harp on one of my favorite topics, design the app right or pay the price.)
We have come far in a short period of time. Gone are the days of being chained to our desks – as is the inability to access critical business data when and where we need it, or to immediately answer a customer’s question. Technology has truly saved us from ourselves.
OK, so maybe I am exaggerating just a wee bit. You may have to visit your office once in a while, or log into an actual desktop or laptop computer (perhaps to read or to write a blog post). The truth is, you need to do it a whole lot less now than you ever have, and that provides a certain amount of flexibility and freedom. I’m sure most people who struggle for freedom around the world don’t think about mobility as the primary driver for their fight, but it’s one of the perks they can look forward to at the end of their efforts.
Tags: Brian Philbin, Business Mobility, Mobile Politics, Mobility - General
