Some of those who chose to mostly agree with this scenario did so while expressing reservations about parts of it. A number of them suggested that governments and/or corporations concerned with retaining or gaining more control over use of the Internet might limit some types of connection in certain parts of the world, and others projected a potential lack of universal standards and protocols in a world of changing technology.
Michael Zimmer, resident fellow at the Information Society Project at Yale Law School, wrote, “I agree almost entirely with this prediction… My only hesitation is whether there will be universal standards and protocols accepted by most operators internationally, since US mobile providers have shown little interest in providing full interoperability and open devices to take full advantage of new mobile services.”
Social media research expert danah boyd of Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society wrote, “Traditional carriers have little incentive to include poor populations, and the next five years will be rife with battles between carriers, municipal, and federal governments, handset makers, and content creators. I don't know who will win. If the carriers continue to own the market, network access through mass adoption of the mobile will be far slower than if governments would begin blanketing their land with WiFi (or network access on other spectrum channels) as a public-good infrastructure project and handset makers would begin making cheap accessible handsets for such access. The latter dynamic would introduce network access (and telephony) to many more people, much to the chagrin of carriers.”
Ross Rader, a member of the ICANN Registrars Constituency and executive for Tucows Inc., wrote, “This scenario may likely happen over the next few years, not the next 12. The only real obstacle to this level of adoption and social integration lies with the willingness of the telecommunications industry to resist the temptation to segregate and verticalize its offerings. In other words, the communications network market must be made much more competitive than it is today. Handsets need to be freed from applications, and applications need to be freed from networks. Only truly open networks will drive the sort of adoption envisaged in this scenario. We are starting to see the first glimpses of this today with Google's Android, Verizon's open network initiative, the power of the iPhone, but much work in all of these, and other, areas remains to be done before the networks, applications, and handsets markets are fully competitive.”
A few respondents said they believe corporate leaders are interested in the positive diffusion of affordable technology tools to less-developed areas of the world. Peter Kim, a senior analyst for Forrester Research, commented, “Handset manufacturers have already started to focus on countries with lower GDP. Continued efficiency in production and increase in computing power, along with the natural desire of humans to connect will help make this scenario a reality.”
Many survey participants expressed concerns about pricing. One anonymous respondent wrote, “The success of the mobile phone as a universal-access device is contingent on adoption of flat-rate style charges, as is normal for Internet applications, rather than high per-minute charges which currently dominate mobile-pricing structures.”