Chair: Ram Ramjee (Lucent Technologies)

Panel Members: Petri Mahonen (University of Oulu), Charlie Perkins (Nokia Labs), Andrew Campbell (Columbia University), Yabusaki Masami (DoCoMo Labs), Rajiv Laroia (Flarion)

Third generation wireless networks came out with a vision of providing anywhere, anytime, and anyhow connectivity. The alphabet soup of acronyms that populate the 3G standards world and the ever-escalating costs of 3G deployment has resulted in questions on the viability of 3G deployment. On the other hand, there is a slew of emerging alternative technologies, loosely classified under the umbrella of 4G, such as 802.11, HiperLAN, OFDM, and all-IP wireless network architectures. The panelists will debate the evolution and future of wireless networks.

Chair: David B. Johnson (Rice University)

Panel Members: Michael Karasick (IBM), John SanGiovanni (Microsoft), Maurizio Montagna (Alcatel), Nigel Davies (University of Arizona)

The next area for explosive growth for networks has long been expected to be the mobile Internet. This is a natural expectation with the growth of the wired Internet and parallel growth of wireless communications. Indeed, with the sophistication of new handsets increasing, and the addition of bandwidth and packet data services to wireless networks, the stage seems set. However, this growth has not occurred. The introduction of WAP has had very little impact on the wireless data market. Which applications will make use of increased bandwidth in 3G networks, and fuel the growth of the mobile Internet is an unanswered question. In this panel, we will discuss the reasons for the success of certain applications and failures of others, and look ahead to the future of applications on the mobile Internet.

Chairs: Adam Wolisz and Holger Karl (Technical University of Berlin)

Panel Members: Hari Balakrishnan (MIT), Mario Gerla (UCLA), Jean-Pierre Hubaux (EPFL Lousanne), Michael Karasick (IBM)

While ad hoc networks are generally agreed to be important for some specific applications (e.g., military applications), their potential commercial impact and market share (particularly the lack of even the prospects of any substantial products despite the vast amount of research that has been done in this context) as well as their importance in the face of ever-increasing coverage with high-bitrate wireless access networks might be questioned.