Lesson 2: Technology Infrastructure

Got my first and second comments for my blog from Prof Gilbert. I would like to thank him for his encouragement on my interest in designs. I guess what Prof Gilbert did mention in the discussion was really true. This blog for this module have add in more interactivities between the students and the Professor. Hence allow us to get to know more about each other and share information across as well. Enjoy reading his comments and awaiting more to pour in soon.

Met up last thurday with my team mates for my project to discuss on the Starhub case study as well as prepare for the presentation in class on the questions posted by Prof Gilbert.

This is the first assignment for our MB362 module. And its quite an interesting one for us to work on since its on Starhub, a telecomunication company all of us are pretty much known of in Singapore. We had our group discussion and exchanged our ideas on the case study article as well as prepare our answers to the questions in a Powerpoint slides for our presentation later in the day.

My team was called upon the first team to do the presentation, most of the teams came up with quite similar answers. Hence, the are also pointers exchanged between the different groups and Prof Gilbert. We touch on the major issue of new entrance in the telecommunication market in Singapore, namely MobileOne and followed by Starhub. We also discussion on the impact of the new entrance to the market as well as the roles they play in this market.

One interesting topic during the discussion mention was the goals of the firm. And all the team stated that the important goal of Starhub was to establish itself as the leader of the market over time. However, Prof Gilbert quickly point out the point if it is always necessary and true that every player that enters a market should try to be the leader of its field.

And guess the answer is NOT always true.

We should actually look into different aspect of the business and evaluated if the main objective of the emerging companies should be the leaders. Just like company taking debts to finance their investment activities. On the general view of debts are always bad, however if the companies are able to manage their debts well, it may turn out to be the source to generate profits and revenues.

We also touch on the bundlering of services provided to gain market shares by starhub. Value added services as well as backend capability to provide customers with single billing services. Convergence of services are the next level of playing field in such a highly penetrated and mature market in Singapore. Actually not to increase market shares but more to retain customer base in this fiercely competitive market.

And in search of the next generation of mobile phones and features I would like to have in my pocket is the ability in the mobile device to share information. Yes.. yes... handphone features of today have gone a long way since the beginning, however with the ability to connect to internet and bluetooth connectivity between handsets are still limited to data rate as well as distance between nodes.

How I wish I am able to set up networks between my peers in the mobile world. With all of us connected in a peer-to-peer networking environment that allows each and everyone of us to transfer information even if we are distance apart. Hopefully this can be seen sometime soon with the introduction of 3.5G HSDPA network as well as the coming 4G intelligent broadband mobile network.

Coming back to the topic of the last seminar, Technology Infrastructure. Learning about the grow of technologies along the way as well as the backbone infrastructure network that enable all this wonderful services available today. Rekindle back to the good old days of the snail mail of sending information across the island and the world, I could not held but really appreciated these works that are done by the innovators and creators of all these wonderful technologies.

We move on to a simple lab session on creating a simple HTML file that can be view in the browser on our laptops in the seminar room. And I really appreciated Prof Gilbert effort to help all of us to gain access to the laptops in the seminar room this time round as we are not being able to log on in the previous session. He really ensure that we are able to really get a feel of what we are studying with real application execises and discussions to illustrate his course materials. Something I guess do help us to understand better on this module as compare to traditional way of delivering in a lecture-tutorial way.

Once again looking forward to this thursday seminar on Infrastructure for Mobile Commerce.

Cheers!!