We speak of Gen Y’s and now Gen Z’s affinity for technology, and there isn’t a day that some analyst isn’t weighing in on the growth of mobile broadband. But it isn’t often you experience it first-hand though the eyes of someone close to you. A few weeks back, I joined that small minority in the Bay Area that owns an iPhone (News - Alert). But that wasn’t the watershed event, after three generations of BlackBerries. No, it was when I brought it home and handed it to Maya, my 6-year-old daughter.

 

It was only a few months back we purchased a Nintendo DS, and we have no less than seven laptops in the home including a cute looking white and green OLPC. OK – we’re not too green, but I did manage to recycle a pile of cellphones earlier this year. She latched onto the thing like nothing I’ve ever experienced. A pizzaburger slathered in fudge wouldn’t have made a bigger impact.

 

Maya took all of two minutes to navigate, another minute to find YouTube (News - Alert), and the only reason she’s not downloading the entire contents of the App Store is that I’ve not given her my password. No e-mail as of yet since she can barely write. Stored movies and TV shows, on the other hand, are a big hit. Beginning with the OLPC, and later with a Thinkpad, we’ve steered her to the Internet, but something just wasn’t there.

 

Her first true online experience was thus via a smartphone. We may have problems with the little screen and the tiny virtual keyboard, but she sure doesn’t. In fact, her fingers seem to be the ideal size. The iPhone is just right size for carrying around as well, or dragging into the car. I joke that when I’m old and grey, my grandkids will look back on laptops as quaint, suitable for a dusty library or even a museum. They’ll have what passes for a smartphone by then, something tablet-size for school, and a flat-screen in the TV room, all connected and sharing content a zillion and one ways. Just as less and less of us know what an IP address is, these little GPRS, EDGE, and 3G speed-bumps on the way to mobile broadband will be distant memories.

 

How does all of this relate to the user experience and the role of the operator?

 

First-off, the network is just there, and it works. Maya, as all 6-year-olds, frustrates easily. Luckily, I didn’t experience any of this. She has expectations. Downloads from the App Store work out-of-the box. The browser, YouTube widget, and e-mail never fail. But what if they do? What if, buy some chance in her infinite wisdom, she tweaks some setting to the extent that she come running to be, teary eyed, claiming ‘iDon’t have the Internet anymore?’ I’d be calling the CSR (News - Alert), and ideally, they’d quickly interrogate, over the air, what went awry and quickly send corrected settings? Better still, the phone would include a bit of self-diagnosis and monitoring, so if there is an issue, the CSR has a running start?

 

The operator? Well, that’s more complex.

 

With the iPhone, the user experience (as long as the network works, which is another story) is all Apple (and a vast army of application developers). My daughter probably couldn’t care less what network the device is on, as well as it is fast. In fact, I don’t think she even has the concept of what an operator is. Today it could be AT&T (News - Alert). Tomorrow, Verizon or T-Mobile.

 

When I was six, I knew there was this thing called the ‘phone company.’ She knows there is a thing called the Internet. Following-up on my musings of the last few weeks regarding app stores and the like, this is an area where the operator really needs to regain some identity. The hold on the home-screen is tenuous and temporal, and the current debate on network neutrality (a throwback to a decade ago when I was thick into DSL and working with the ISPs) makes things even more interesting.

 

So, I saw the future. Maya is that future. Do the mobile operators see theirs? And do they like what they see?