Seamless mobility: A real trend

Apr 26, 2002 12:00 PM, Goli Ameri

If any doubts remain within the wireless industry that a powerful trend toward seamless mobility exists, CTIA 2002 has put those to rest. The strong presence of wireless LAN products and solutions, the high attendance at the wireless LAN session (I was on the panel and saw it firsthand), not to mention highly visible "keynote addresses" on the topic by heavyweights such as Sky Dayton of Boingo and John Stanton of VoiceStream at an industry convention dedicated to cellular-oriented products firmly planted the stake. But then again, CTIA has always been a flexible and "hip" organization, in tune with the sign of the times. It wasn't that long ago, before the bursting of the Internet bubble, that the organization modified its name from the "Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association" to the "Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association."

Seamless mobility is such a straightforward concept that it almost requires no explanation. Mobile professionals today and eventually all consumers in the future want to communicate and be able to do their daily business anytime, anywhere. As a result, there is real demand for ubiquitous connectivity between a wide variety of mobile devices and access technologies, which (for now at least) include wireless WANs and wireless LANs. Roaming and communications between these technologies is therefore a must for seamless mobility to occur.

As mentioned in eTinium's upcoming study, Wireless LANs: The Greatest Challenge to 3G, customers will use these technologies for different reasons and at different times. The 2.5G and 3G technologies such as GPRS, EDGE, CDMA 1XRTT and CDMA 1xEV-DO will be used for applications requiring instant gratification and bursty data: e-mail, calendar access, text messaging and MMS among others. But wireless LANs will be used in specific locations where users need access to their corporate files and Intranets.

CTIA 2002 gave the cellular service providers a powerful message: Meet customer needs and embrace the trend toward seamless mobility if you intend to be around in a few years. The interesting point is that these carriers are powerful members of CTIA and probably have input in the topic of the keynote speeches. Maybe congratulations are in order for Tom Wheeler, the president of CTIA, and his staff who had enough vision to see what the U.S. service providers are not seeing. While referring to Flarion's demo on seamless mobility, he said, "We were pleased to debut Flarion's technology to deliver ubiquitous broadband to mobile users, seamlessly across networks. [The demo] established that Wi-Fi and traditional wireless services are adjuncts that can exist and succeed together."

Even Andy Grove of Intel seemed to be giving a long-distance lecture to the wireless service providers. "Broadband access to the Internet is the next critical step we have to take...through a variety of devices and networks.... Always on, always available."

Boingo Wireless chief executive Sky Dayton said the cellular industry and wireless LAN operators such as his company need to coordinate technical and billing systems and policies so users can seamlessly move between networks.

There were a plethora of products (both hardware and software) introduced and showcased at CTIA 2002 with the intent of resolving all the issues surrounding wireless LANs and seamless mobility such as roaming and billing, security, seamless sign-ins and handovers. It almost felt like we were participating in a wedding ceremony, and in this piece we would like to take a look at some of the attending guests. 

Service providers

The U.S. cellular carriers are in effect divided into two camps: the visionaries of seamless mobility and the followers. The visionaries are smaller carriers such as VoiceStream and Nextel, and the followers are larger ones such as Verizon Wireless, Cingular Wireless and AT&T Wireless. The situation with Sprint PCS is currently not very clear, since at least they have made an initial investment in Boingo.

Nextel, for example, announced an agreement with a start-up, RadioFrame Systems, which is providing the first platform solution to integrate wireless voice with WLANs in confined spaces, in the footprint (approximately) of a 12x4 device. RadioFrame claims that its standards-agonistic system is designed to alleviate the load on outdoor wireless networks, resulting in fewer dropped calls and more capacity on nearby cell sites. The company uses a software-defined radio system that detects and registers wireless users within an indoor facility, so calls for those users are forwarded to the RadioFrame minicell site instead of a standard, outdoor cell site.

Of course, Nextel will just begin trialing RadioFrame's system, and the jury is still out as to the functionality of the system's design. The concept however makes tremendous amount of sense and is a true panacea for indoor coverage issues of cellular service providers in crowded hot-spots as well as having the ability to support the much coveted wireless LANs.

VoiceStream Wireless along with its parent company T-Mobile International, the mobile phone unit of Deutsche Telekom, announced they would combine their GPRS and 802.11 networks in early 2003 by offering a combination GPRS/802.11b PC Data Card and other handheld devices designed to work on both networks. The company's vision is to provide wireless data access via an integrated GPRS/EDGE/802.11b service offering for ubiquitous coverage and high speed.

VoiceStream has clearly understood that, as a national carrier, not only is the company able to provide seamless mobility but it needs to if it intends to differentiate itself from the follower guerillas. VoiceStream intends to use its existing assets such as billing and customer care systems to offer services on one bill and reap the benefits of higher ARPU.

Verizon Wireless appears to be preempting the expected success of WLANs by positioning its 2.5G CDMA 1XRTT Express network as 3G and marketing the service for laptop computers. Express customers can connect their laptops to the network by either using the spendy $299 Sierra Wireless AirCard 555 modem, which adds voice, circuit-switched data (why are we still talking about circuit-switched with GPRS deployments?) and short messaging service capabilities to a laptop, or the $79.99 Kyocera 2235 handset. In addition, customers need to pay an extra $30 a month to use minutes from their voice plans for data or pay even more for heavier data usage at speeds 50 to 65 Kb/s. Sounds like an awful lot of money for slow Internet access and the complexities of connecting a phone to a laptop, not to mention keeping track of elusive megabytes of data download!

PC cards

One of the most important ingredients of seamless roaming are PC cards that allow a laptop to switch from one network to another. Several vendors announced interesting products at CTIA including Nokia and GTRAN Wireless for both CDMA 1XRTT and GPRS networks. Nokia announced the D311 WLAN/GPRS PC card due to be shipped during the 3rd quarter of 2002.

The card offers 40.2 kb/s in GPRS mode and up to 11 Mb/s in WLAN mode. To facilitate connectivity, the card enables user profiles allowing them to select the optimal connection method that is available at any given time. In addition, to address the security concerns of enterprise customers, the D311 is compatible with VPN clients over both GPRS and WLAN networks.

GTRAN Wireless Inc. announced the DotSurfer 5000 PC card, which integrates dual-band CDMA2000 1X and Wi-Fi technologies. GTRAN which already offers a GPRS + Wi-Fi PC card, plans to develop a 1xEV-DO in the near future as well. 

Chip sets and networking technologies

I have combined chip sets and networking technologies in the same category because many of these companies have a base technology (usually the ASIC) that they would like to see implemented in a variety of products. Only the success of their alliance and marketing programs will determine the ultimate nature of their products.

Flarion Technologies demonstrated its flash-OFDM technology during the opening keynote sessions at CTIA where a multimedia user was seamlessly handed off from Flarion's flash-OFDM mobile WAN (overlaid on a wireless carriers' existing network and spectrum) to an 802.11b LAN with no interruption to the streaming session.

It is difficult to put your finger on Flarion's exact technology, but the flash-OFDM system comprises RadioRouter base stations (developed in conjunction with alliance partners) and wireless flash-OFDM PC cards, all networked together by IP-based mobility management software. Flarion chipsets are used to build the flash-OFDM wireless modems and are expected to enable future devices with its reference design.

Nomadix announced an access gateway appliance so that any commercial entity will be able to set up a hot-spot location and reap the financial benefits. Nomadix has added enhanced billing features in its firmware to be integrated with Boingo's back-end systems for authentication, billing, settlement and technical support so network operators can easily share in the revenues.

Lucent Technologies demonstrated session initiation protocol-enabled VoIP calls over CDMA2000 1X and 802.11 data networks by using Compaq iPAQ Pocket PCs.

IpUnplugged, a Swedish company and a developer of networking products and solutions, demonstrated seamless roaming between a CDMA2000 1XRTT network and a wireless LAN along with Lucent.

Ashvattha Semiconductor produces chip set designs that currently incorporate GSM/GPRS, GPS and Bluetooth, but the company plans to integrate wideband CDMA and 802.11B wireless LAN in the near future.

Roaming and billing

Roaming and billing issues have been the greatest nuisance to the wide-scale deployment of wireless LANs. Several companies including CIBERNET and Bonsai Networks as well as Boingo are now addressing the issue.

CIBERNET and Bonsai Networks demonstrated an end-to-end plug-and-play solution for public and private wireless LAN network operators. The combined system will provide user access and authentication, standardized roaming, financial settlement and flexible combined billing for Wi-Fi sessions and cellular minutes.

Boingo, of course, was the first company to address the issue of roaming between different wireless LAN networks and assume the billing and service responsibilities for its affiliate providers. Boingo's goal is to basically create a large-scale national wireless LAN network where users can connect anytime anywhere without worrying about the hassles of billing and logging on. Its software includes a network sniffer and a profile manager for easy log-on, a searchable database of hot-spot locations and a "Personal VPN" feature for added security.

Boingo, which provided wireless LAN access at CTIA 2002--deemed to be the largest implementation of WLANs in a public space--announced partnerships with several vendors including HP and Agere to offer the Boingo wireless service on the HP Pavilion notebook and with the Agere ORiNOCO PC card. The company also announced an agreement with GoAmerica to offer the wireless LAN service as part of GoAmerica's menu of mobile services to individual and business subscribers.

Columbitech has developed a VPN technology that will allow notebook and personal digital assistant users to roam between different wireless network topologies including LANs, WANs and Bluetooth with one single session.

Security

Security has always been an issue with wireless LANs, but the concern was exacerbated in early 2001 when researchers at the University of California-Berkley were able to find additional holes. Many companies and organizations including Weca, Cisco and Microsoft have been working hard to address the issue.

A new approach to WLAN security was introduced by Red-M, a developer of wireless middleware and networking solutions. Red-M maintains that most wireless security solutions only address the IP layer and above with functionality such as VPNs and firewalls, whereas the company's approach is to provide a five-layer security mechanism by integrating these with device and link layer security as well.

Interference

Spectrum interference in hot spots between various wireless LAN systems as well as with Bluetooth is still a theoretical concept because deployments have been scarce. The topic nevertheless has been cause of concern for some time. To address this issue, Paratek Microwave, a manufacturer of electronically tunable components and scanning antennas, introduced the DRWiN WLAN scanning antenna which uses its narrow scanning beam to maximize the gain toward an access point and thus lower interference, double the data rate and extend the range of coverage with a higher quality of service.

Wireless LANs may have had slow deployments in the past couple of years, but there is no doubt that the technology itself is the killer app and it will become as ubiquitous as cellular phones in the next three to five years. We forget that the two technologies that the telecom industry takes so for granted, cellular phones and optical networking, took anywhere between seven and 10 years to become mainstream. Seamless mobility between wireless LANs and WANs is therefore a must, and CTIA 2002 boldly showcased the trend. Let's hope that the wireless service providers are paying as much attention to this real consumer trend as they are to their investment bankers who are pushing consolidation as the panacea to all their financial problems.

Goli Ameri is the President of eTinium, Inc. She can be reached at gameri@etinium.net or (503) 968-8437.

Visit eTinium online.