How long have you been involved with the net? About three years. I never really had a great deal of interest in it before my involvement with mobile phones. My main interest now is trying to deliver a service to a small-screen device and to access that content quickly and smoothly.
Any favourite sites? I'm a Leeds United supporter so I visit www.lufc.co.uk all the time. I'm also a regular visitor to the BBC site, and when the Superbike racing is on, I visit the Yamaha site at www.yamaha-motor.com.
How important will mobile technology become? Penetration of PCs is so small, but the penetration of mobile phones is reaching 40 to 50% even in quite under-developed countries. So there's now this massive potential to deliver a service through an internet backbone to the real populous. I started getting interested when I found that you could put an internet-type browser on the SIM itself. Every single mobile phone has got a little smart-card and it's only really used for security. There's loads of spare capacity.
How secure are mobiles for e-commerce? Mobile phones are capable of delivering a digital signature that is acceptable for legal documents. If you can accept that as a signature then you can start using it to sign leases, buy cars and all sorts of other things. The public infrastructure for smart-cards isn't going to be secure enough to be acceptable until about probably this September. In the meantime there's Symmetric Security which basically means you do a little sum on the SIM and a little sum on the network then compare the results. If you both have the same result then it's taken as being correct. However, that's only really as good as anybody who trusts you as an operator.
Do you see it as an extension or an alternative to the internet? I don't think anyone can really envisage themselves browsing the internet on their mobile phone - tiny little screen, tiny little keyboard. If, however, someone enabled you to view the top10 albums or the Premier League football results then that's the kind of information you want to know when you're on the move. It's more a kind of internet buddy which gives you information and e-mail while you're mobile, but doesn't try and swamp you with stuff.
How do you see the net developing? I really think that the net is going to take on the fact that mobile is big - providing that it can be delivered over the mobile range. I have a little browser that we developed which is set up to send me only the information I'm after.
Anything you dislike about the net? Intrusive advertising. You get a page up and you have to go through another six pages before you get to what you want! If that's the only way people are able to pay for their sites then the fewer people visiting the site, the more advertising they'll need for revenue. Hence less of the information you want to look at is there for you.
