Burnin' in Atlanta

Next week is the week for the wireless industry. CTIA's Wireless '98 will be held Monday through Wednesday.

Wireless is the hottest factor in the bubbling telecom equation. More wireless heat-particularly in the form of rapidly developing wireless local loop (WLL) technology-is imminent.

Here's what I'm hoping to see in Atlanta next week:

Loop of plenty. Call it what you WLL-including fixed wireless access-the wireless local loop is primed to rocket into your consciousness. It's a dream technology, unless it's your worst nightmare.

Just last year, AT&T Wireless stunned Wireless '97 (not to mention the whole wireline segment) when word leaked that it was commercializing-on the extreme QT-WLL. But this versatile technology isn't running unseen below the waterline anymore. It has surfaced, armed and dangerous-if you are an entrenched wireline carrier.

The WLL market includes two parts: one, a basic access piece focused on developing economies, and the other, a competitive bandwidth machine vectored on entrenched carriers in more sophisticated markets that vacuum bandwidth.

That sucking sound you hear is North America going about its daily business in the information age, vacuuming bandwidth. That sound is getting louder day by day. Wireless access will be a big part of the bandwidth mix within two years.

3G. Its time hasn't come quite yet, as cellular and PCS carriers-both pressed by competitive pressures-focus on near-term goals. But third generation technology will capture headlines later this year and certainly early next. In Atlanta, 3G will incite excitation.

The 3G world will be a world of broadband services, a wireless world of wireline services.

The big global technology companies all are targeting 3G, some to recoup opportunities lost in the first two generations, others to build on the success they've enjoyed so far. There's going to be a lot at stake in the 3G sweeps.

Preview coming next week.

Managing the management piece. Soon you will wake up and see that there are only three kinds of wireless service providers:

* Wireless carriers without sophisticated services

* Wireless carriers with sophisticated services that are easy to do business with

* Wireless carriers with sophisticated services that are not easy to do business with.

Consumers will put the first type out of their misery quickly. The third type will linger but die. The second type will attract and retain customers.

What will the second type have that the others won't? Fully empowered, integrated wireless intelligent network technology with a powerful customer care component. WIN is technology-and a destination.

Data. At long last, wireless data is going to have its day in the sun.

Diversifying customer service sets is pivotal to building calling volumes and higher revenues, driving prices down, building more volume, higher revenues and.... You get the picture.

Wireless has flubbed data in the past. The CDPD experience has been depressing enough that some frustrated commentators have likened it to ISDN (though anyone who equates CDPD to ISDN doesn't know much about ISDN's long, tortured history; equating CDPD and ISDN is like equating the Knights of Columbus and the KGB).

But data is a natural for users synched with taking their personal communications infrastructure-particularly e-mail capability-with them everywhere. Wireless networks are digitizing and growing more intelligent at a breakneck pace. As networks digitize and as sophisticated terminal devices increasingly leverage the intelligence of these networks, data is going to take off.

People in this society need and will pay for both mobility and data. 'Nuff said.

And more. Of course, there will be plenty of other compelling technologies in Atlanta, notably the wireless sector's traditional mainstays: test and measurement, power, RF, OSS and billing.

If you can't make it to Atlanta in person or if you are in Atlanta and want to know what's happening all around you as it happens, check it out on Telephony's Web site (www.internettelephony.com). Our reporters will be filing stories each day, throughout the day, every day during Wireless '98.

It's about information. These days, there just isn't a good reason not to be in the know. Log in, lock on, load up.