Early Bearer Aware Applications

In the future, we might see cellular networks tightly integrated into an overall fixed/wireless network concept and it won’t matter anymore whether a device uses Wifi or cellular network access. But this is definitely not the case today so bearer awareness in applications is a concept that remains neccessary for the foreseeable future. While I have already speculated about this concept in the past it is good to see that it is becoming reality. Let’s take some very data hungry applications I usually only use via Wifi on my Nokia N95 as an example. When I come home the phone automatically detects that my Wifi network is available which triggers a number of applications to jump into action. The SIP VoIP client automatically connects to the Internet and my phone becomes a Wireless/Cordless phone. Shozu connects to the Internet to upload the pictures I have taken to Flickr. And the podcasting application also detects that contact to the network has been reestablished and automatically checks for new podcasts in my favourite streams and downloads them automatically so I can listen to them next time I am out and about. And it all happens automatically. Depending on the country where I am at a particular time, I allow some of these applications to use the cellular network as well. That really depends on how far mobile network operators allow prepaid users to venture out into the Internet, both in terms of price and access restrictions.