Mobile networks are creating a ‘real-time’ future

The expansion of mobile means that governments and businesses will have to change in dealing with real time data and much more complex networks.

This is according to a BBC Tech Lab' blog post by Dr Paul Twomey, president of internet administration body ICANN, which deals with tasks such as managing domain names and IP addresses.

He said that the expansion of mobile networks, combined with smartphones and internet-enabled devices, removed barriers for developing countries to enter the global economy.

Marrying this to next generation operating systems such as Google Android and the iPhone is creating a "truly networked world", where decisions need to be made using real time data.

"Worldwide, we're seeing an unprecedented expansion of internet networks, driven most recently by convergence with mobile communications," Twomey said.

"This mobile internet revolution is going to greatly expand the commercial, social and political feedback loops which the internet enables and fosters."

Twomey said that the manufacturing and retail sectors had taken advantage of these new networking possibilities, enabling information to flow more "transparently" which lowered costs and helped the economy to grow.

However, he criticised the services sector in areas such as government and health care, which had not taken advantage of the increased information flow.

The ICANN head also said that we were moving into the realm of machine to machine' internet where machines were communicating with each other rather than people.

Twomey said: "The introduction of Internet Protocol (IP) version 6 into common usage means that the address space available to connect devices to the net is growing from 4.2 billion with IPv4 to 340 trillion, trillion, addresses."

"With pervasive wireless connectivity, this means everything can talk to everything," he added.